AVRR will be on the road again! A Christmas display, Dec 9, 2011

About a mile from where we live is a restored 1820s carriage/stage coach stop. George Washington never slept there, but the Marquis de Lafayette did.

They will be having a Christmas open house on December 9th, and the director has asked Kim and I to be a part of it. We will find out exactly how much space we'll be given on Nov 29, but for the moment, I'm going on the ass-umption of about 8' x 12' inside. The time period will be 1925-ish - because I simply don't have much 1880s era stuff, nor a trust fund to raid to get it.
 
If we have the room, it will be 2 simple loops for reliability and run a passenger and a freight train counter-rotating.  Kim also has about 50 ceramic Christmas houses, so we'll probably set up a village from those, even though they're closer to O scale.  And I still have about 20-25 of those little artificial pine trees of various sizes -- other than that, I'm actually open to suggestions!
 
This is what we've done on past road trips... but I'm pretty sure the uncompressed buildings would simply overwhelm an indoor space.


http://www.the-ashpit.com/mik/roadtrip.html
 
Anybody else doing a holiday display this year?

I thought I'd show you all what we've got to work with. This is the room we're to set up in. The room is 13' x 13' - minus a 6' x 7' section where the visitors stand. which leaves us usable space in an el shaped footprint with one leg about 5-1/2' wide and the other 6' wide. Room enough for r-2s.... just




At the moment, I'm leaning towards two ovals one inside the other, with the outside one being a bit bulbous at the bottom of the el. And then put Kim's Christmas houses in a village all their own over in the narrower leg. 

I think I'm probably going to use old reliable #6 (the custom LGB 2017) with Kim's Kalamazoo coaches on the inside loop, and the Connie with a mixed freight running the other way on the outer.

The open house is from 6pm to 9pm on Friday the 9th. (We don't get the room until noon, so it's gonna be fun!...) There is a Civil War thing the going on rest of the weekend. -- if I had more 19th Century style stuff, we'd be more inclined to stay Saturday, too... maybe next year?

Meanwhile we went to the dollar store.....  the 'model railroading' purists may shudder, but I think the casual visitors will like my special holiday hopper and gon loads.

Car is loaded up with all kinds of stuff. We get the room at 1:30... giving us about 4 hours to create a miniature winter wonderland.  Camera batteries are charged.  I think we're ready... I hope

Hope it goes well Mik!
 
A couple of weeks ago, my local model shop here set up an oval of track in a cafe that recently closed (due no doubt to the recession here in the UK), for the Annual Christmas Fayre.
 
A Piko Steam loco and 2 hopper cars was running around a Christmas tree.
 
However, immediately after the Fayre, the layout was dismantled, and the cafe is looking empty and forlorn once again....

Well, it went off, not without a few hitches. My connie decided that there were a few spots it did NOT like, and one of the power packs was acting up (the train would speed up and then slow way down on it's own). There was a real good crowd while stuff was acting up... then, of course, they thinned considerably after I mostly got stuff sorted out.
There were also no lights in the room to see to fix stuff after it got dark.... We'll have to figure out something before next year.

Anyway, to the photos...
Setting up


Santa's little helpers?


village borrowed from the garden


merry go round - I still need a 3v power source to make it go!


Fat old Mikster with "fans"?


kids and trains, that's what it's about!


Mary Anne


W/out flash...


Kim's village


good old #6. Never a problem


Storyteller in the next room


Downstairs

Thats a mighty fine show Mik - you can see a great deal of effort and hard work has gone in to putting it together (and taking it apart afterwards!). All credit to you and yours
 
Really like it. Full of interest and detail. Don't you find though, that Murphy's (or Sod's) Law always intervenes when something happens - big crowd pullers - it always happens to me after a shunt or derailments sends a loco or truck over the edge. "Normal service will resume in a couple of minutes folks" usually ends up with the crowd thinning out when you get over the glitch!

Looks like it was a really good evening, and a really great train display! Must have taken a while to set up and tear down, not forgetting the garden layout re-instatement time, too.

Set-up with two people for these road shows take 4-5 hours. Tear down about an hour less.
 
It's also an excuse to go through stuff and fix bad glue joints, fading paint, etc.
 
Unfortunately, the last two outings have been marred by boxes getting dropped. Last time it was a tote of automobiles that slid out and hit the pavement when the door was opened. This time it was figures...
 
So I have about 40 resin figures (people, animals, etc) to repair/rebuild/repaint before spring

hats off to yousir