You could invite a couple food trucks.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
The caterer sounded like a great idea. What was the objection from some of your members? It sounds like the loss of a few dollars would be made up in less work and less worry for the members.
If you have a local school that serves lunches, chances are that the kitchen employees have the certification. Around here, every school kitchen has at least the head cook certified. You may be able to hire one of them for minimum wage just to be present in the kitchen.
Let us know how it turns out.
York1 John
I don't know what visitors have come to expect at your show, but around here, most atendees expect to be able to get a breakfast sandwich or a donut and a cup of coffee in the morning, and later on a hot dog or hamburger and a soda. Switching to only prepackaged snacks (and I think serving hot coffee would be the one thing that would cause you to require the permit) I think would (hmm, not trying for hyperbole but can't think of another way to say it) turn people away and sour them on the show. Especially if the only other option requires them to leave and drive somewhere else for 'real' food.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
I thought using a caterer would be an easy solution, but three out of the five members of the Show Committee would rather run a simple snack bar with prepackaged items, pop, water and coffee. I have to call the Health Unit on Tuesday to see if we can do that without a permit.
There are pros and cons to each option. If we run a simple snack bar we will make some money but we will have to do all the work. If we go with the caterer we won't make any money but we won't have to do any of the grunt work. We could charge the caterer a fee but we would rather keep the prices down. All we will have to do is make sure that the caterer has proper liability insurance with both the venue and the club listed as co-insured, and that we have a contract that holds us blameless. It also frees up some bodies to do other things at the show. Unfortunately, the exhibitors won't get a free lunch. I'm sure there will be comments about that.
Personally, I like the idea of serving decent hot food even if we don't make any money. I just think it will make the exhibitors and vendors happier rather then them having to drive a couple of miles down the road to where the fast food restaurants are.
One of the tasks that we could use the freed up club members for would be to go through the crowd finding out how people heard about the show. We are spending about $1500 on radio ads. That is a major chunk of our revenues. It would be nice to know how well the ads are working.
Cheers!!
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
I can see it coming. The show we sponsor, we have always had the Scouts run the kitchen (with adult help of course), and the profit is theirs. If they get to be such sticklers here, hopefully one of the adults has the certification.
That sure sounds like a "when you have lemons — make lemonade" kind of solution, Dave.
Sure sounds familiar, too. We (The Middlefield Model Railroad Club) used to sell sausage sandwiches and other snacks at our shows. This was back in the mid-1990s. Things are certainly stricter these days. I'd have to agree that there is a risk involved with that rare, but still possible, chance of food poisoning or allergy reaction. That would put you and your club at a big risk.
By "farming it out" you will spare yourselves the exposure to that.
Glad you found a good solution. I remember, too, how the dealers really went for the "free-lunch" coupons that we passed out.
Best of luck, Ed
We have run into a bit of a snag with regard to the cafeteria that we run at our February train show. The Health Department now requires that we have at least one person present at all times who holds a Safe Food Handling Certificate. Otherwise, they won't give us a permit. They have never imposed this requirement before so it has caught us off guard. The cafeteria is fairly essential because all the local restaurants are some distance away.
We thought that taking the food handling course would be easy, except there are no courses being offered in the area before the show. Then we thought that we could just go online, study the regulations ourselves and then write the exam. The manual is 160 pages! The only exam scheduled is in mid January. Nobody has the time or the inclination to do that much reading in that short a time. So, back to the drawing board.
We threw around all sorts of possibilities, none of which was very attractive. It finally dawned on me on Sunday that perhaps we could get a caterer to operate the cafeteria, so I went on line to see who was out there. Sometimes things do actually go my way. I started looking at about 7:00 pm. Within a few minutes I found a local caterer who does exactly what we want, so I sent her an email. Amazingly, I had a response in a few more minutes (she is a night owl like me), and not much later I had a quote which was excellent.
In addition to meeting the Public Health requirements this saves us a whole lot of running around gathering supplies, and it frees up a bunch of bodies that we really need elsewhere in the show. What's not to love?!?
We will have to forego the small profit that we have made on the cafeteria in the past, and we won't be able to offer the exhibitors a free lunch as we have done, but we can live with that. The caterer has offered to give both the exhibitors and the vendors free drinks. Bonus!
Why we didn't think of this years ago is anybodies guess.
rrinkerI can see why you let Henk do the public speaking - he speaks well on camera and got in all the various aspects of model railroading in a concise manner and in a nice quick blurb so they couldn't cut him off to make the story fit the available time.
Thanks Randy,
Henk is a good guy. He is one of the driving forces in our club. He has done a ton of work both on our new layout and the portable layout. He has also been instrumental in sorting the club out in terms of getting our corporate paperwork up to date (that was a nightmare!), and in rewriting our club policies and bylaws, most of which had been either lost or ignored over the years. He does a superb job as the Secretary as well.
Interestingly, he hates speaking to the press. That job usually falls to me and I am not quite as good at it as he is, but I wasn't there on Saturday when the media showed up.
Nice news spot. The portable layout looks quite nice. I can see why you let Henk do the public speaking - he speaks well on camera and got in all the various aspects of model railroading in a concise manner and in a nice quick blurb so they couldn't cut him off to make the story fit the available time.
Thanks Mike,
Nice Dave. I like the name of that lumber yard, right at the very end.
The new picture of the layout plan is much clearer than the first one, excellent!
Mike.
My You Tube
We just completed a two day display (Friday and Saturday) of our portable layout at the Painswick (Barrie) Library. Things went quite well! The layout only farted once. The Zephyr got messed up. Heaven knows why. Other than that, we were able to run trains for hours on end without problems.
Attendance was good! Most of the guys will let the children run trains so we made a lot of kids very happy.
We also got great media coverage from the local TV station, CTV News Barrie. In fact, they visited us twice. The first time was just to cover the show and they were kind enough to to put us on both the 6:00 pm and the 11:00 pm news on Friday night.
The second time was to visit Donald J. Trump. No, you didn't misread that, and I am not making any sort of political statement whatsoever. We have a club member whose actual name is Donald James Trump. No kidding!! Needless to say, Donald has a lot of fun with his name. He carries his Driver's Licence in his front pocket so that he can prove his name. We even have a 'Trump Finger Cut Lumber' sawmill which Donald built on the portable layout. He is a good modeller. Unfortunately he wasn't at the show when they came to interview him.
The second CTV visit got us onto the Saturday 6:00 pm news and they gave us a great plug for our big February show and sale. They even put us on their Facebook and Twitter pages.
Here is a link to one of the news spots:
https://barrie.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=1863420
The spokesperson is our Secretary, Henk.
Here is the track plan with larger place names:
Hi Isaac,
I will go back to the drawing and make the place names a bit larger so they are easier to read.
Thanks for your interest.
Regards, Isaac
I model my railroad and you model yours! I model my way and you model yours!
Oh Joy!!!
We were just informed by the hosts for our February Train Show and Sale that the roof in the new area we will be in leaks in a few spots under certain conditions, namely when the snow is melting. So, if there is snow on the roof and we have a couple of nice sunny days during the show, some of our vendors and exhibitors might get rained on.
We are going to make a trip to the venue when the roof is leaking to mark exactly where the problems are and hopefully we will be able to design the floor plan around them. The roof can't be shovelled. It's glass.
On the plus side, we have rented 90% of the vendor's tables with two months to go, so we should have a full show.
hon30critter richhotrain Can you tell me where your club got those background buildings? I like them a lot. Rich most of the buildings are just regular Walthers kits that have been 'flattened out'
richhotrain Can you tell me where your club got those background buildings? I like them a lot. Rich
most of the buildings are just regular Walthers kits that have been 'flattened out'
Rich
Alton Junction
Here is the current track plan. The background structures are located on the far right (north side). The green line down the middle of the peninsula represents the ridgeline of the hills. The lower right yard is longer than shown and all the tracks connect at the far end to permit run arounds.
richhotrainCan you tell me where your club got those background buildings? I like them a lot. Rich
most of the buildings are just regular Walthers kits that have been 'flattened out' (I'm not exactly sure which kits were used but the same thing can be done with almost any of them). In other words, the back wall has been installed beside the front wall to make the building twice as long, and then the side walls are cut back to whatever depth fits the scene. In many cases, one end wall can be added to the front/rear wall assembly to make it even longer, and the other end wall can be cut down to form the sides. You can also go two kits high (or more). Flat styrene strips are used to reinforce the butt joints.
A couple of the background buildings are Walthers Background structure kits assembled as designed.
As doctorwayne has admirably demonstrated, if you want bigger buildings use two (or more) kits. One kit in particular that can be used to create large background industrial buildings is Atlas's Middlesex Manufacturing Company. Two kits can make a four story high x 71" x 2 3/4" deep structure, or an eight story x 35 1/2" x 2 3/4" structure. Four kits would be impressive! I believe wayne has a large structure made from the Atlas kits.
https://www.walthers.com/middlesex-manufacturing-co-kit-15-x-5-1-2-quot-38-1-x-14cm
Here is a Proto 2000 kit that I stretched out. I should have purchased two kits and doubled the height. I think they can still be found on eBay:
The original kit:
Nice! Thanks for the photos. You guys do good work!
Nice Dave! . I'll have to go back through the thread and find the track plan, so I can see where these scenes are.
Thanks, keep'em coming!
Great photos, Dave. Keep 'em coming.
Can you tell me where your club got those background buildings? I like them a lot.
I took some pictures on Tuesday night as requested.
One of our members has been working on background buildings. We now have about seven feet of 3D structures. They will get interior and exterior lighting, and of course, lots of details:
The roundhouse tracks are mostly in and wired:
The brewery scene is running. We deliberately made it more complex than would be realistic in order to provide some switching fun:
This is the wee beastie that will switch the brewery:
We are working on some other scenes. This one may or may not make the grade:
This is the Hearst lumber mill complex. It is definitely a go. Some of the buildings are just foamcore mock ups. The chimney stacks are stolen from a refinery scene but with a little adjusting they will work fine:
This will more or less be the location for the diesel repair/machine shop complex and the paint shop. They will sit on top of an access hatch so will make them easily removable so they can be lifted out of the way before the hatch is opened:
Brian has done a nice job of creating some hills over the first tunnel:
Richard has been working on a rock face that will serve as a background to a 'Main Street' scene. The long vertical rock face isn't exactly realistic, but there isn't enough space between the upper and lower tracks to do much else if we want to fit some buildings, sidewalks and a street into the space. They buildings will be quite shallow:
I got another couple of pieces of Shaper Sheet installed on one of the hills which will be our forestry scene. If you look carefully you can see the outline of the logging road and the switchback. The road will require some smoothing with Hydrocal before the scenery is applied:
That pretty much brings us up to date on the layout progress.
Just a quick update on the 2020 Show and Sale:
(Edit: I just realized that some of this is a repeat from previous posts.)
Our hosts, Bradford Greenhouses, have been very obliging with support for the new venue. In the area where the shows have been held previously, we didn't have to worry about crowd barriers. The new location requires us to cordon off a section of a very large space. We thought we would have to rent crowd control barriers but our hosts have acquired their own barriers and they will let us use them for free!
The new space also has relatively few outlets which is obviously a concern. Our hosts have assured us that we will have power drops wherever we need them. According to the Fire Marshal, the power has to either be dropped from the ceiling or the cords have to have approved cord protectors if they are on the floor. The cord protectors are expensive and people can trip on them, so having the power dropped at no additional cost is great!
The vendors tables are about 80% sold so by February we should have a full house.
We have also been able to give the exhibitors as much space as they asked for. One display will have two modular clubs in a combined layout. They asked for 20' x 46' and we were able to give it to them. That wouldn't have been possible last February.
York1I won't speak for anyone else, but I'm one that has been following, and I am never bored by pictures. They don't have to be professional quality -- I just love looking at what others are doing. Keep up the good work!
I'm also a steady viewer, and would love to see some pics!
Yes, those where the days, when you had to wait to see if they even came out - really so in the slides I have that my Dad took of various trips, since his camera was a simple Kodak 35mm that was completely manual and no throught he lens viewing. It was all a matter of calculation and skill to get a good shot. Even later on with a Polaroid - that film was ALWAYS expensive.
Today with digital though, just bracket every shot, take 4 or 5 of everything, which can be done automatically by many cameras, and then a few minutes later stick the card in your computer and keep the ones that turned out the best.
rrinker Even if you don't post them here, having the pictures would be interesting for the club. Both to show new members, and to show the public just how far you've come. A series of boards on easels or hung on the walls, with pictures from a given time, showing the progress from the empty space to the layout as it exists today would be a big hit with visitors.
Hi Randy,
Fortunately, we had a member who took tons of pictures of the initial stages of the layout construction. When he left the club to pursue other interests he gave me a memory chip with more than 500 images on it! Granted, many of them were more or less duplicate shots, but nonetheless we have a whole lot of pictures of the initial benchwork and roadbed being built.
I will have to get into the habit of taking lots of pictures. I need to un-learn my reluctance to take lots of photographs. Both my parents had the attitude that you didn't dare waste a piece of film. They never took spontaneous shots. Every shot was posed, painfully I might add! You can only hold a smile for so long!
hon30critterI wish I was more active with my camera. I have a fear of boring people with repetitive shots, but I could do a better job of keeping up with developments like the construction of the first tunnel. I'll take the camera on Tuesday.
I won't speak for anyone else, but I'm one that has been following, and I am never bored by pictures. They don't have to be professional quality -- I just love looking at what others are doing. Keep up the good work!
Even if you don't post them here, having the pictures would be interesting for the club. Both to show new members, and to show the public just how far you've come. A series of boards on easels or hung on the walls, with pictures from a given time, showing the progress from the empty space to the layout as it exists today would be a big hit with visitors.
rrinkerI have to admire your ability to stick to it.
Thanks Randy.
I'm not sure how much people are gaining from my club related thread but every time I post there are a couple hundred more views so somebody is interested.
I wish I was more active with my camera. I have a fear of boring people with repetitive shots, but I could do a better job of keeping up with developments like the construction of the first tunnel. I'll take the camera on Tuesday.