Open House for grade schoolers - Should I hold a Proto-op session?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
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With National Model Railroader month coming up in November, I am once again mulling over in my brain whether or not to hold an open house for my HO railroad. I haven’t done this to date for the general public. I only invited a rather close circle of friends for my proto-op sessions in the past

As background, my railroad spans most of my 32x30 foot main basement, and also goes into my crawl space with frontal access to a 22 foot long double deck at the edge of the crawl accessed from the sub-basement (I have a three step ranch style house). There is a eight foot helix and an eight track staging yard buried further behind the double deck extension.

The railroad is set in 1952, and is my home road, the Spokane Southern. We run a lot of GN and NP power.

I started running proto-op sessions one year ago, and we just had a 6 hour (24 fast clock hours) session complete with car cards, scheduled trains, train sheets, but didn’t do train orders (that is the next step). The layout ran well, and 7 people stayed busy for 6 hours with no boredom. Given the success, I am very pumped up right now about the state of the railroad, and feel it is time to start showing it outside of my regular scope of friends.

I am considering offering a Saturday open house for the grade school and high school students that may be interested. My two sixth grade daughters both participate in Train Club at their middle school, as did my 9th grader when he was at middle school. I would estimate that between the lower, middle, and high schools that I would make the offer to that there is maybe 20-30 kids that might be interested. Lets say that 15 would actually show up.

Now that I have the railroad running with car cards, I really don’t want to run trains at random, as it just makes getting ready for the next session, so, it anything is just “running around”, it would probably be my '47 Empire Builder. I think this gets boring, but would allow me to talk a bit to visitors, a

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Based on the open houses we have had at our HO scale club over the years, visitors have no interest whatsoever in “operations” – they just want to see trains run.

We have had many younger visitors make comments like, “Is that all the faster it will go? Make it go faster! I want to see a train wreck!”

So just put a couple of trains on the main line running around in circles and that will probably be enough to entertain your visitors. And watch out for the temptation of visitors to grab stuff as it goes by or put something on the track in the path of the train.

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My experience has been demonstrating for pre-schoolers rather than grade schoolers, so the experience may not translate perfectly. From what I know about grade schoolers, though, I susptect it will.

Inflict an operating session on them only if you want to ensure that few if any will ever get involved in the hobby. Kids like noise, action, and flash. Save your HO road for older kids and adults. If you want to encourage younger kids, set up a lionel layout with operating accessories, Railsounds, and high-speed trains running more or less constatnly (bhind the ones you use with the accessories).

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I’d have to agree - even those kids already in the hobby are going to me interested in seeing things run, not a few trains going to specific destinations. You might have one or two die-hards who do know something about operaton, but the majority wil have too short an attention span for that.

Interesting there’s a Railroad Club in your kids’ school. My wife teaches middle school (6th grade) and I’ve been trying to get her to propose such an idea (with me acting as a volunteer) but no luck. They also have a during school hours ‘club’ period but she definitely rejected the idea of any sort of model thing, mainly because I wouldn’t be able to help duringthat time.

–Randy

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If the kids were allowed to “operate” then you never know, they might like that. Kids usually like to just watch trains but if given the chance to actually operate with a throttle in their hand just might be a good thing. I would keep it simple though.

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I actually disagree with those who say kids would be bored by operations. It sounds like you are talking about having one or two kids per adult operator. With that level of supervision, you can get the kids involved. With the adults at the throttle, and explaining what is going on, let the kids throw the switches.

This past April, I did a public show with a Lionel switching layout, where I did exactly that. The kids ate it up.

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I’ll add my 2 cents. I agree with the above people. Kids want to see trains running. When they stop, they are quickly bored. In my own experience, I remember going to a train show when I was 12 and one layout was doing an operating session demonstration. I spent all of 10 seconds watching before moving on to the other layout that was just running trains around and around, which I watched for at least a half hour. If some are interested, you may want to have an optional time afterwards to show the operations, but don’t make it too complex. If they don’t understand it, they will quickly tune out.

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Guys, the reason kids want to see trains running is because that is all they know. I see this as a perfect opportunity to show kids “what trains do”. That aspect can be just as exciting as the simple motion. It just has to be persented in the right environment, and I think Jerry has it.

Switching can seem intimidating, but it’s really just a mental puzzle. Good exercise for young minds. Letting them actively participate by throwing switches, makes it like candy, not the medecine that some here believe.

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If the kids don’t understand or know what an operation is or what it is supposed to represent, they will loose interest in the first 30 seconds, and they will just end up in a corner goofing around with thier buddies. One kid per adult where the kid actually operates the trains with adult guidance might be the only way an operating session would work. And then, a shortened, simplified one might be in order. Six hours is a long time (unless you are already a train freak!).

Trains are supposed to move. They don’t really care from where or to where they are moving.

I think it might be better to have separate days for each of the age groups.

I applaud your intentions of getting young people interested in model RRing, but I fear, if done wrong, it might backfire. Maybe just have the members of the school train club over and see how things go with them, and work up from there.

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Some suggestions:

Kids who like trains have an excitement that is contagious. I think having them over to see the trains is a great idea. You will have an impact in a few of them as they see what is possible in Model Railroading…

You might try a two parter: Have kids who are interested come over one day and let them see the trains going around on the main line. If possible, let those who are interested drive a train. From that session determine who might be interested in coming over for a simplfied operating session held another time. This first meeting gives you a chance to asses temperment and weed out the individuals who are not really interested in running while still allowing everyone to see the layout. I would serve food and keep it fairly short for the first time. I have noticed with kids all it takes is one or two who think it is “stupid” and they can embarass or distract the kids who might enjoy running trains. By weeding these guys out the second round, your chances for sucess are much greater.

For the operation session, I would suggest simplifying the operation to simply letting the kids drive trains and occasionally stop to drop off or pick up a car. Kids like things to move quickly, so long switching puzzles or meets where a train sits in the hole for ten minutes (real time) will be boring and cause a loss of interest followed by some sort of misbehavior (or a least goofing off). I think having a kid back the loco on the train from the round house and get it out on the line stopping here and there could be fun. Make sure you set the scene by explaining what they are doing and building up the game/imagination aspect. Have lots of adult helpers around, but let the kids do it themselves as much as possible. Put away delicate, prized equipment so that breakage from inexperience is held to a minimum (btw: I have had ADULTS damage more stuff on my layout than kids ever have) Keep an eye on the overall vibe of the session and when interest flags its

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I think something the “kids just want to see trains run” suggestion people are bringing up are forgetting that this may be an unusual sort of open house. The kids attending might very well be into trains enough to appreciate something like this.

My suggestion on the matter would be to do a bit of both. First, setup a few trains to run around the layout while you describe your layout. In your speech, gradually transition into the operations part of things. At this time, divide the kids up into “stations” of some sort and take them through a quick operating session. If you give the kids hands-on experience in operating a layout, I think you wont have too much bordom. But like TrainNut said, you need to drastically simplify the session so that there isn’t too much of one thing and the kids are doing more running of trains than waiting and watching.

One question I have… is your layout DCC? If it is, I think giving kids the oportunity to move around with their trains will also add the the fun.

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Our club meetts in a restored CPR sternwheeler. During the summer months the ship is open to tourists so we have lots of people aboard on our meetting nights. We usualy let kids run the trains. You would not believe the look on their faces when you hand them a throttle. It is very rewarding to see. We have never had a kid cause any problems. They are very good at runnung at scale speed etc.
Tom

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By middle school and up, I think they will be somewhat interested in operations, at the same time, I’d say there had better be something running most of the time, too. Since these are kids that are going to have to sign up and show up, they at least have enough interest to want to be there, so that should help.

Whatever you decide to do, I think you will want to be flexible. If the kids are losing it, you might need to throw out the original plan and run trains. If that isn’t going to make you happy, you might need to think about whether this kind of open house is what you want. It has the potential to be a great way to get the kids (and their parents) interested, but if they get bored because the way you operate doesn’t suit their interest, you’ll lose them just as fast.

I guess my point is that if you decide to do this, I think you need to let go of the idea of worrying about how things will be set up at the end with regard to you next session. This event has to stand on its own, and be considered independent of anything wlse you do. I have kids who are thrilled by this kind of thing, but in my experience any hands on event (that isn’t routine) never goes as you expect. That’s not to say worse, just different, so you have to roll with it.

My, that was windy…