At about 3/4 of the train shows I attend, if more than 5 to 7 people are in the train room, it tends to get very crowded and the owner resorts to cycling visitors in by group; with the others lounging outside the train room.
Do you invite groups of people to watch your trains and if so, is there plenty of space. The average American has grown somewhat over the last few years, as well.
Dave Vergun
When all is said and done, I’m guessing that there will be room for at least 20 maybe 25. I have devoted a lot of the floor space to aisles, and double decked the layout. The minimum width is 3’, but there might be a couple of small spots that have to squeeze down a bit.
I hope I can fit at least four when I can build one. Right now I have room for myself and one or two spectators. Talk about cramped!!!
A couple of interesting tidbits:
–In the 1950s, it was a popular spectator sport to see how many people can fit inside a telephone booth or VW Beetle.
–In MR’s Trackplanning 2004, an article on trackplanning discusses putting the model train dispatcher inside the low-clearance helix. I think I’d go nuts in there with trains buzzing around my head.
dav
6 Adults if I’m lucky.[8D]
I can see Elliot now, running his trains from inside his helix. [:D]
I could probably squeeze in up to 20 people around the layout. However, it would be tough for two adults to pass each other in the aisles.
I will never be able to show a layout to folks in person. However, back in my high school days I had a old 1989 Colt. We once carefully loaded 14 people into it stacked like lumber and drove it 4 streets over to another house. There was no bounce in the shocks what so ever. But the giggling from the boys and girls has be the high point.
The number of people at trainshows looking at items on the tables are sometimes 4 deep. It can get very easy to lose your wallet etc in such crowded situations.
We need about 3 feet of aisle space now. We have gotten more portly in the last 10 years or so.
Depends on whether they are standing up or stacked like cord wood.[(-D][:-^]
Well its a 2 and a half car garage… so I’d say, the layout, a car and about 10 folks[8D]
Well now that I have AISLEWAYS!! LOL!!![:D][:D][:D] I can fit about 8, but no one can pass anyone in the aisleways. Right now though, there’s nothing to see except benchwork.
Nah Pat, mine is a walk around design, more like what you would find in HO or N scale modeling.
The benchwork consists of 3 long peninsulas which form 4 aisles, and a cross aisle at one end to connect them. Each is long enough to hold 5 or 6 adults no problem. The 3’ width is even enough for me and Big Girl to get by one another if we suck it in a little, so normal adults would have no problem getting past.
The thing is that from any point in the room you can’t see more than about 20% of the layout.
Getting in and out of the helix is a bit of a pain, and once construction is done, I should almost never have to go in there.
By the way Pat, I’m still looking for that film, I haven’t forgotten. The problem is I’m running out of places to look. Big Girl and I were out in the garage yesterday, and will be again today, setting up for that garage sale. I’ll grab a ladder and check a couple of high spots where it might be hiding. If it isn’t there, it may be gone. I hope I didn’t give it to my ex mother in law.[B)][:(][:I]
I can squeeze in 1 spectator, and that one has to be atletic as well to get in the train room. But I’m not in the first place interested in how much spectators I can handle, I’m interested in how many trains fit in…
Most of my spectators however are around 10 to 14 years old, and they manage to reach the attic…