G'day all!
<>This is Shannon, Michael's wife and co-conspirator in the garden railway venture. Just wanted to post a quick update about the local toy show in which we participated this past weekend.
<>Had originally thought we'd set up on the floor, but once we got there and found the organizer willing to supply as many tables as we'd need, we opted to put 6 tables together and put our 6 x 15' layout up off the floor. The show was held in an auditorium, and this was the first year the organizers had displays up on the stage. There were 2 of us up there, our G-scale display and a couple of fellows with a fantastic N gauge display. This made for a fantastic size comparison. There were 4 other train displays as well, but we were the only G-scale. We assembled our display from an educational angle, as most people in the area had never heard of trains made for outdoor use. We spent most of our time those two days doing a lot of explaining. We had some buildings from bman's layout as well as one of his trains, and our track and 2 buildings, and a local nursery donated the use of a waterfall. We also had some brochures from Garden Railways magazine to hand out. The weekend went very well, and the second day our trains were joined by some brought by another fellow who was there with farm toys but also has quite a few G-scale trains. We also had the size comparison chart up, as well as a garden railways book, an LGB catalogue, and our photo album which chronicles the creation of our own garden railway. We tried as much as possible to show people the possibilities of the hobby - not just trains, but the garden aspect as well.
We had a LOT of positive comments, and a LOT of people were just wide-eyed as they came up the stairs and rounded the corner to see the biggest toy trains they'd ever seen! Children's reactions were the best. One young boy came back so many times we even showed him how to operate the control and let him do it for a while, which had him absolutely thrilled.
We even had a visit from a local reporter, and he's interested in doing a photo spread and article on our layout sometime this summer! We were also invited to display our train at 2 other toy shows in the next month or so, but right now we're not sure whether or not we'll take them up on that.
Tried to post photos but don't understand the instructions, so this is our photobucket page - just click on the Toy Show 2007 link to see the show photos. http://s76.photobucket.com/albums/j23/msmann
JITO wrote: http://s76.photobucket.com/albums/j23/msmann
http://s76.photobucket.com/albums/j23/msmann
For those who's links dont activate.
Have fun with your trains
Thanks!
They're very easy to do, really. Got some cheap shirts and washed and preshrunk them first. Used a photo i'd taken of (real) rails going off into the distance, and used the vignette effect in Corel Draw to soften the edges and give the oval size. We used some do-it-yourself t-shirt transfer stuff you just print yourself in your printer, and then ironed it on. Simple as that. Did the text in Word - just did it as big as it would fit on a regular sheet, landscape. You just need to make sure the printer prints in mirror image.
p.s. Very off-topic but i've got to say this: vsmith, i LOVE the dalek!!! EX-TER-MIN-ATE!!
Back to topic. Yes, the children's reactions made all the work worthwhile. :)
-shannon
Hey Guys,
Once again thanks for all your efforts to support the hobby and our group. For those of you who don't know I met Michael and Shannon for the first time at my open house last fall. Our group "Prairie Rails" is starting to grow. The guy who lent the trains to Michael and Shannon on Sunday has a lot of equipment but no layout yet. Maybe this summer we can talk him into building! Nice to see the hobby growing here in the "Great White North!" Later eh...Brian.
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