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Attendees:
David Kohrman
Jason Spears
Overall Picture Directories:
David Kohrman |
Jason Spears |
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Report by Jason Spears (with passages contributed by David Korhman)
This was MichLTC's first chance to do a multi-club show, so we were pretty excited. (NILTC and Michiana-LUG were also displaying at this show.) In the midst of David's hecktic exam schedule he took the weekend off to join me in setting up a 10 ft by 15 ft town and train display. We borrowed some rolling stock and track from Larry and used the club baseplates, tables, and skirting. Aside from that, the whole layout was just the creations of us.
The castle layout was setup on tables provided by Cantigny Park. A 5 ft by 10 ft display, half water, half land. A few buildings were borrowed from Peter Guenther, Larry Pieniazek and Ken Koleda, otherwise the castle display was all my shops and houses.
We started setting up around 4pm. Due to his class schedule, David wasn't able to get there until around 7pm. Scott Sanburn, of Michiana-LUG, helped me setup the MichLTC tables and then I helped him setup the their tables. David and I noticed that this was a very relaxed setup. Typically we are in a large cement floor hall, with dozens of vendors and other displays setting up. But with just the 3 clubs it was relatively quiet and we worked steadily into the night. I believe we called it a night around 11:30pm. Ondrew Hartigan, of NILTC, had a number of things to finish up and stay around to burn the midnight oil.
We picked back up at 7am. David and I were able to get most everything done on the train layout before the crowds rolled in. I still had a lot of work to do with the castle layout, so the morning attendees got to see me setting up the minifigs in the village, then arranging the battle scene, and finally arming the pirates and piling them up on the ships.
Once the show got rolling we had a relatively steady crowd throughout both days. I think there was somewhere around 800 on Saturday and 900 on Sunday. I don't how we lucked out but the kids (and adults) at this show weren't as grabby as normal. Over the whole weekend I think we only had one derailment and only had to request a few people not to touch.
David set out a number of his 12v trains on the yard and was surprised by the attention they received. For some reason kids kept asking to see the yellow freight train run, which he eventually did after pulling a Frankenstein with the motor. David had 4 different adults who also collected the 12v line ask about how to convert them to 9v (not that complex), how to make 12v equipment work in the U.S., where he got certain sets, etc.
The EL was well received at the Fort Wayne show (David is also a member of Michiana-LUG), but a show in the Chicago area really helped. Except for a few kids calling it a subway (?) everyone recognized it as the EL. Many recognized it as the old style EL either from the design or color scheme. One dad told his kid "that's the train your grandfather use to take to work". David overheard one person say it was a 5000 series train. It did its job.
David brought a new light yellow house to this show. One kid kept coming back to the layout and spent an unusual amount of time looking at the yellow house and taking pictures of it. After a while David engaged him a conversation where he said that it was his favorite thing in the entire show and that he was really into building houses. The kid wanted to know how he had gotten all the various roof slopes. Here was a ten year old interested in houses. If only the Lego designers could have been there...
The castle layout got its fair share of comments as well. Quite a few people asked if the battle scene was intended to be a Lord of the Rings reference. I assured them it wasn't. I don't recall an army of skeletons in the books, but I suspect any fantasy setting will have to combat that assumption for years to come. The castle elicited the usual questions. "How long did it take to build? How many pieces are in there? How do you get it home?" While most of us don't time ourselves while building, nor do we count our creations, I made some estimations and showed a few how it breaks down into eight sections.
With the smaller and less grabby crowds we had more opportunities to interact with them. Some of the people were obviously really interested in building and LEGO and for some of those I would take them over to the castle layout and open a building or two to show off the interior detailing. This was a hit every time and frequently would pull a few people passing by in to take a closer look. I may just have to build a few town creations with cut-away sections to give the crowd a peak into the life of these minifigs.
Well, doing displays with the other groups was a lot of fun. It was great to be able to see how they do things and get a chance to borrow some building techniques. It was a fun show and with three pick-a-bricks nearby, I will be looking forward to next year.
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Layout Details:
Layout Pictures:
Town/Train:
Castle:
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