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Attendees:
Peter Guenther
Amy Hughes
David Kohrman
Ken Koleda
Chris Leach
Sandy Leach
Larry Pieniazek
Spencer Rezkalla
Jason Spears
Overall Picture Directories:
Spencer Rezkalla |
Jason Spears |
Peter Guenther |
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Larry Pieniazek |
Ken Koleda |
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Report by Jason Spears
MichLTC had the pleasure of working with the COSI Museum in Toledo, OH the weekend of December 13th, 2003. It is a pretty neat science museum geared towards kids. MichLTC and COLTC (along with 2 other non-LEGO model railroad clubs) were brought in to display as part of a Trains weekend.
MichLTC was given a spot near a large fountain they had in the middle of the museum. The floor above opened up to look down upon the fountain and our display. Above our display was a cable stretched from one side of the open area to the other. The museum had a bicycle that was attached to this cable and they would let kids and adults alike ride this bicycle back and forth along the cable. Having people above the layout over the weekend was a mite disconcerting.
Setup went well once we figured out where to unload. A few of our members were trying to unload in the service tunnel before we found out that we were allowed to just pull up to the back doors. Tables went up pretty quickly as we ended up with enough people to work teams. Ken and Chris worked together on one end, while Larry and I worked on the other. Ken's son Trevor was a big help bring legs and bolts around, when needed.
Peter showed up just as we were finishing the table setup. We promptly gave him a bit of ribbing about his timing. Baseplates and track went down quickly. David showed up a little later as we were positioning buildings in their blocks. Once we had all the buildings in place, David setup his EL. Amy wasn't able to make setup on Friday night so David had to leave the EL uncompleted around her block. This was finished up in the morning.
This show featured a mix of two sidewalk styles. We used white tiles on one side and grey plates on Chris's side. A few months ago, Spencer, Chris, and Ken started working with the new dark grey road plates and light grey sidewalks with plans for storm drains and vent grills. Also Chris and Amy have been working on separate tree designs using the large leaf piece, which were merrily growing throughout our layout.
During the day a few TV stations visited and took some footage and the local paper, the Toledo Blade, interviewed some members of COLTC. An article showed up in the Blade Sunday morning. Spencer caught a brief story on Channel 13 and was able to tape it. Also the COSI museum said that they were likely to receive footage from the other stations and would help us get copies of the other video bits.
This show was probably among our worst for kids that felt a need to touch the layout. We had no less than 5 derailments/crashes over the weekend. One individual was so taken with Larry's coal car that he grabbed it and started to make a break for it. His guardian was nearby and gave him a bit of trouble to return it, I slid out from under the layout far quicker than I would have suspected was possible. It turned out the boy was just gonna take a look at it, but he still caused quite the train wreck. With help from his guardian, we were able to return the coal car to the layout. It seems COLTC had a similar fiasco, a girl apparently liked one of the cars in Paul's drive-in theater enough to just snatch it. When she started to walk away with it, Mike G told her firmly to "Put it back". She gave him a dirty look and he repeated himself. She did with a huff and a slam of the vehicle, so it turned out ok, but very strange nonetheless.
COSI apparently sometimes will allow private parties to come in after hours. Saturday night was one such night, as a local business had rented it out for their employee and family Christmas party. We were told to expect around 900 additional people. Our layouts were just as big a hit with this crowd as they had been during the day. We got a one-hour break between the regular museum crowd and the private party, but this made for a long day, as some of us didn't leave until ten that evening. (I had a little reprieve as I ducked out in the middle of the day and went back to the hotel room for a nap, which helped a bit as the night droned on.)
Sunday morning, Chris brought along his monorail to complement the two loops on the COLTC layout. Paul Jassen had a mono with a camera buried inside the leading car. The signal from this camera was sent to his drive-in theater. This made for some very interesting footage. Once Chris and Amy finished setting up our loop, Paul loaned us his camera mono and our layout was then being shown at the theater. Paul also had a number of very cool custom monos running on their layout, including a Metroliner edition, a Santa Fe inspired one as well as a very theme park styled one. All of which were the envy of us MichLTCers.
Originally the museum had requested that we be completely packed up by 6pm. They had been planning for another group to be coming in after hours, but this event was rescheduled. Although we no longer had that deadline looming over our heads we still choose to do some selective deconstruction of the layout starting around 4pm. Some of our members had a long drive ahead of them and getting those people home at a reasonable time seemed like a good idea. The museum didn't officially close until 5pm, so we took special pains to make sure the trains ran for as long as possible. David's EL ran until near 4:30, the outside loop was going until like 4:45 and the inside loop didn't stop until just after 5. Managing this was interesting. We pulled all the minifigs and cars, then the trees and the monorail, after that we got creative and pulled the yard and the very baseplates the main loops were running on. We had a few snafus with teardown once the museum closed. Larry had an unfortunate spill with the track, dumping 4 blue tubs of track into the snow. He spent the rest of teardown drying his track before re-packing it. Also some of the bolts were stubborn as we tried to take the tables down. We eventually were able to work the nuts past the damaged threads and got everything packed up in our vehicles by 6:30.
It was a pretty neat show. Working with other LEGO clubs continues to be a blast. Downtown Toledo seems to have very little going on during the weekends, which made it challenging to find a decent place to eat after the show, but we would likely display at COSI again, if they were to ask us to come back next year.
-Jason
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