Wondering if a n open house is worth the hassle. Would be great to get ideas as my layout (12x15) is not compleat by any means. Upper and lower main lines is in and the helix mountain and canyon/river scenery is compleat, scenery about 45%, not much in buildings, industral areas yet.
My question is
Should one wait untill close to compleation, if it ever is…LOL and what were the problems with your open house,
Thank you for your replys…John
John, it would depend on your purpose for having the open house. If it is to reach out and establish relationships with local modelers, or to recruit some help, you might as well do it any time. If to ‘show off’ your layout and your handiwork, then you run a risk of underwhelming people with something that they have to imagine as finished.
People that came by in the early stages where blown away with my layout simply because my benchwork is robust and made of 2X4’s. I only had a few layers of foam down, so it looked pretty cruddy to my eyes. However, when it came to the finished product, I got far and away the most impressed responses (not that I was looking for compliments, I just wanted them to see what I had been talking about for the past few months).
Problems? You get a derailment sure as God made little green apples. If you’re lucky, it won’t lead to a short. Little ones will have a hard time seeing if the layout is high, and they may have an irrepressible urge to reach out and grab. Some onlookers will be content to watch for some time, others will lose interest quickly. Some will want to run your layout, others will refuse to touch the controls.
You’ll get pointed questions from some people, others will tell you what they think is wrong with what you have done. Some will point out that the horse has fallen over, or that the boiler on your loco isn’t straight.
Of course, many will just smile, watch contendedly, and clap you on the back.
Ya opens yer doors, and ya takes yer chances.
Thank each one of them for coming.
If I had one, no one would come. I’m all alone down here.[:(]
Remember, the scum of the earth is everywhere. Some people will show up at an open house and pocket things while nobody is looking. Some folks don’t notice that they’re tracking mud all over your living room carpet. What you might want to do is invite a group of friends over for an evening of trains and hamburgers. That way, you can get the open house feel without it being open season.
[:)] Do it, but do it right. I am involved in an open house schedual where I live. There were almost 100 participants last year and over 100 the year before.
I have been paticipating in it for about 8 or 9 years now.
It is a well orginzed set up that could be done anywhere if a person desired. If you can get some other local modelers to join you on the same day make up a map showing the locations and publicize it through a couple of hobby shops. NOT IN THE NEWS PAPER. You don’t want to be overwhelmed and don’t want local thieves comming in to check you out.
We do it for the entire month of Nov. I have had as many as 30 people show up in one day. A friend of mine had 60 + show up. I live in a rural area hard to get to he lives in a houseing development. This has been going on for about 15 years now and last year I helped in organizing it. We published 2000 scheduals which were placed in about 8-10 hobby shops in the area. We cover all of Delaware a large part of southern New Jersy Southeastern Pa. and northeastern Md. It started just northern De.
John:
I had my layout on the NMRA tours 2 years ago. I found the biggest problem was getting people to help operate, especially as I had not had time to do any operating with them. If you’re pretty well restricted to model railroad types, it should go well. You need to be available to answer questions and your crew should do the operating. If you have enough operators, get some running trains and one doing some more intricate operating (switching two cars in a yrd may be enough).
We have a major self-drive layout tour about an hour away. One of my friends has his layout open and usually has one friend to help plus a couple of (female) relatives supervising the main floor.
The hardest question to answer will be “How does it work?” The ansewer they need may be “Electricity” “I pull this lever” “Lenz DCC with pneumatic switch machines and wire-in-tube signal controls”.
I had a open house(layout tour) for the local NMRA Region Convention. The layout ran fine with no derailments. The scenery was only about 20% complete, but all benchwork, trackage, and electrica was complete.
Only run a couple of trains(all in the same direction) with dedicated operators. My son(then 8) and I ran a freight and a small local around the mainline. I found that I had to park my train as I had to ‘talk’ a lot answering questions. We had about 60-70 visitors that afternoon. Nothing broken or stolen as well. The biggest question was about my benchwork(no legs, cantalevered off the wall). And the experts all told me that I should have soldered all of my rail joints(I dropped feeders from each rail section, and have had no rail kinks from expansion/contraction).
Not sure if I would want to do a general public open house. Too many hands(big and small) grabbing at stuff. Also I do not make the location a target for a break-in.
Jim
Thanks to all above for the input. I will contact a club layout in the next town and spread the word here a bit when I get a few more things done. Should be in a month or so.
I hear those of you that say dont advertise in the paper. I hear of people having problems during yard sales, dont need that type of problems.
I think it would be fun to do, have one friend that could operate as well as my granddaughter, the older one that is, the younger one I have to hang her by her heels and handcufff her, just kidding, shes getting better and granpas getting nicer LOL.
Thanks…John
John,
Go for it. My layout was on the NMRA 2000 National convention tour and it was great fun. You will meet some nice people and have a good time as well. Don’t worry about completion of the layout, no one’s is ever done. Be sure to serve some snacks and get some one to help run trains…
David, Jim & Guy
Next year the NMRA national convention is going to be in Philadelphia. I live approximatly 45 miles from there. Some friends have suggested I contact them about getting on the schedual. I am concerned about numbers. Maybe you guys can help me out here. I have a people space problem. Only about 6-7 people at a time can comfortably be in my layout building which is seperate from my house. There is no place to get out of the weather if you can’t get in. With the local open house I have not had any problem because people are usually in groups of 2 or 3 people and rarely come 2 or 3 groups at a time. What can I expect, I have heard of bus tours, I am sure there will be 15 passenger Vans. [?]
Lester,
If the weather will not be a terrible factor, ie. freezing cold etc. maybe set up a small tent out front of your layout building and have refreshments there. Just an idea.
Don’t worry about too many people. In Cincy, if a layout bus had too many people, overflow just waited outside. You’ll love it.
As far as open house is concerned, I’ve done one with the layout only half done and people liked it and gave me some good ideas. The door is always open for any visitors or the monthly ops sessions. Sharing is one of the really great parts of the hobby.
I hosted a public open house in May and it went pretty well. Nothing broken or stolen. Also John, where are you located in northern CA? Maybe I could come see your layout! haha!
I have done many open houses as I said before. My concern was haveing a bus load of 50 people show up. When I think about it a bus couldn’t even get in my driveway and I live on a rural road no shoulder. Also I just found out that one of the organizers is someone I know he should be able to answer my concerns
Les
Les,
I had buses show up at my place on the tour. My layout was able to handle about 10 at a time, so I set up an area in the yard with food and drink for the others to wait. With layouts in small places many people set up a token system and have people wait in line to get in. When the person comes out of the room they give their token to the next person who goes in. No token, no admittance. The total number of tokens is the capacity of the train room. Most visitors expect that space may be limited and are very cooperative and understanding if they may have to wait. Rent, borrow or buy one of those shade devices and set up some chairs and food and drinks. Train guys love to eat and talk. They will be more than happy to wait to see the layout. The NMRA here even gave us a token amount to cover the cost of food and drink.
I can’t stress enough what a great thing being on the tour was for me. I met the train guys I currently hang out with and had a wonderful experience. If there is anyway you can make it work for you, I think you will find the effort to be worth it.
I participated in the lower Delaware valley event last November and found it to be a lot of fun. I only had half a 4x8 partially finished at the time and it was well received. I am presently changing scales from On30 to OO/HO in the 1870’s and hope to have the layout rebuilt for this year. I have a web article on my open house at:
http://www.pacificcoastairlinerr.com/basement_follies/
This was basically the only scene finished on the layout and this picture has more detail than during the open house:
I know I enjoy visiting layouts in every phase.
Just a thought
Harold
I had my first real open house in the early 1980’s, then the NMRA nationals in Kansas City in 1984 and 1998. Also have had open houses for region meets, local meets, ATSF modelers meets and so on. I have never had anyone get out of line, I have had nothing damaged or stolen, and have met some really great modelers, known and unknown.
I also do garden railroading, so I am on tour for that quite often, which usually spills over to the basement at some point, and the garden railroad gets viewed when the HO is on tour.
Bob
Most of the layout tours in Cincy used the smaller buses (no more than 20) like the ones used in airports to shuttle parking. The big buses used for layout tours were mainly for the long distance, all day tours.
One guy in Cincy let his kids run a lemonade stand outside while only a few people at a time could go in. Worked out pretty good.
I was able to take a third to half a bus load at a time. The rest waited in the garden, and I had a train video on the TV in the den. Some people will come in and have a quick look at everything and leave, others will be fascinated by something. Someone will say “Oh, not another N gauge layout” and stay in the bus (wasting $10 worth of tour.) They’ll be very considerate of everything.
If there aren’t enough layouts in your neighbourhood, there is also the arrival/departure tour. This is on the day before or after the convention and those driving home can buy a map of layouts that they can visit that day.
One of the vistors had my wife convinced that we could set up a garden railway in the back yard and was well on his way to planning it!
I went to a layout at one convention where the modeller had had a scene featured in MR. That was the only scenery on the layout.
Oh, if you want to be on the list, call them now – it may be too late. They will come out and inspect your offering and the transit supervisor will find out how to get the bus there (or close).