Our new club held two week-end’s of ‘open houses’(just ended). After 6 months of construction, all we had to show was the lower level ‘staging’(16 staging tracks that vary from 15’ to 30’ long) and a 6 turn ‘helix’ to the future ‘upper’ level. We spent a week cleaning up(27x27 area) and got free advertising spots from about 6-8 local papers, radio stations, etc…
Now, understand that the club layout is located in Grand Meadow, MN - a very small town(pop 945) about 18 miles south of a 100,000 population center(Rochester, MN). We had about 250 visitors, multi-page articles in one of the local papers, and even the ‘mayor’ showed up! The real good news is that we may have 3-4 new members in the future. We are now looking at running another show between Christmas and New Years for the local folks in the area.
We are located in the Grand Meadow Business Center and the landlord really loved the show(a lot of folks walked through is building, and now know it is there).
After New Years, we plan to start construction of the main ‘upper’ level. The plan is to have all benchwork, trackage, and wiring finished by next November(maybe have some scenery complete as well).
The layout is completely DCC(Digitrax) and we had a lot of kids ‘running’ the trains with the wireless throttles.
Jim Bernier