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[quote user="wholeman"]I seemed to notice a problem with the layouts. Most of them were too tall for the little kids to see. Other than parents/grandparents holding the little ones on their shoulders or picking them up, is their anyother way?[/quote] In my opinion lowering the layout is out of the question.  1) It needs to be a comfortable height for the operators to reach without bending over.  2) It has to be tall enough that kids cannot participate with their hands (its hard enough to keep the ones that are tall enough, you know the 5ft and over crowd, from participating without being asked).  At last years show our G scale club had a kid run up and push a train off of their lift bridge onto the floor.  Parents and kid dissappeared quickly into the crowd.  [quote user="wholeman"] I wonder if some sort of platform for the little ones to stand and watch the trains would be a viable solution. [/quote] A platform is not viable for 4 reasons.  The 1st (already mentioned) is liability.  2nd reason is many states have fire codes that state a minimum through aisle width (Mass. I believe it is 10ft or 12ft), a viewing platform wide enough with proper railing and stairs and all that to minimize risk for a liability lawsuit would cause a rather large reduction in vendor space, which means the show does not make as much money or worse looses money.  3rd, most venues for these shows are not exclusively model train shows.  Which would mean that someone has to store all of those viewing platforms the rest of the year.  4th, a viewing platform would necessarily need to be somewhat heavy and bulky.  Clubs for the most part do not have infinite resources.  Just hauling the modules to the show gets quite expenisive.  Add cost of hauling your own platforms for viewing to the show and you either have to bring a much smaller layout, or you break the bank getting there and back. Edit:  This year at Springfield I noticed several young ones setting up their own folding plastic step stools to view our layout (thankfully supervised by parents).  That seems to be the best solution from the liability standpoint and the not breaking the parents/grandparents back standpoint.
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