Trainorama 2002 – UofM Fieldhouse – Dearborn, MI

Posted by administrator on 2002/10/27

Attendees:

Kai Brodersen
Peter Guenther
Tony Hedglen
David Kohrman
Ken Koleda (& son Trevor)
Chris Leach (& wife Sandi)
Stefan Garcia (& mom Victoria)

Larry Pieniazek
Steve Ringe
Scott Sanburn
Jason Spears
Garry Stahl
Steven Weiser
Erik Zempel

Overall Picture Galleries:

Peter Guenther	Ken Koleda	Scott Sanburn

Saturday Night – October 26th, 2002

Saturday’s setup went pretty well. We started just about 6:00 pm. The tables went up a little slower than we thought they would, but I think we will get faster over time. Tony’s Lumber Yard was a tad tricky to setup, it came in on the tables and we had to get the legs under it without dropping anything. Once we started laying baseplates down, we noticed that a minor error had been made with the layout, a row of baseplates had been forgotten, and so the layout was only 5 baseplates thick on one side instead of the standard six. Fortunately this was an easy fix. We just add some more buildings. Regardless of how much planning goes into the layout there always seems to be changes when we see it all in person and so a few of our members have taken to bringing along extra buildings just in case.

We got the majority of the layout done, with a few sidewalk issues unresolved and a few creations not present we called it a night around 8:30 pm. David Kohrman was expected to be late, and we bumped into him in the parking lot as he showed up. He was quickly dragged along to our traditional Big Boy after show dinner.

Sunday – October 27th, 2002

On Sunday people started showing up around 7:00 am and continued to drift in for the next hour. Larry P’s track side buildings were laid in, and David Kohrman setup his two blocks, one with his Hudson’s and Academy of music, the other with his new municipal building. After few test runs, some sidewalk laid, cars and minifigs scattered about, and it was 10:00 am. Time for the show. The initial crowd wasn’t the rush we had come to expect from GATS, but was still pretty decent. Talking with the organizers of the show, about 800 people had come through by about noon. With the minimal amount of space within the layout, most of the club members were forced to interact with the crowd, answering questions, keeping small hands from derailing trains, etc. Ken and Troy Cefaratti of BLOC came up from Ohio and introduced themselves to most of the club. They seemed to think the layout was pretty spiffy.

At one point the lights went off and the scoreboard sounded. It was pretty odd. The power was still running, so the trains kept going. Peter Guenther went over to his Haunted House and turned on the fiber optic lights he had inside. This created quite the interesting effect, with lights turning on and off in different parts of the house. Stefan had a engine with a light running at the time, so our layout was interesting even in the dark. The lights were turned back on right away, but the lights they have in the Fieldhouse take about 8 minutes to get back to full bright.

Teardown began a few minutes before 4:00 pm with the plucking of trees, vehicles and minifigs. We managed to complete teardown in about 1.5 hrs which we felt was pretty decent after the 6 hr setup.

-Jason Spears