As some of you already know, my buddy Steve is bringing his new bride by to meet me in a couple of days and of course I want to make a good impression. Anyways, once I get that behind me, I’m thinking about scratch building an old 1950s drive in movie theater. It’s been years since I’ve been to one of these, but from what I can recall they were made of mostly tin and consisted of a ticket booth, a sign showing what movies were playing, the big screen, the combination projection building and consession stand and speaker poles. I’ve got about ten extra automobiles I can use for the patrons cars so I’m at least that far ahead on that.
Depending on your scale, you could get one of those small screen DVD players and disguise it with some trees and scenery… A drive in with real movies! I’d suggest “The Last Man on Earth” with Vincent Price, or “Attack of the 50 foot Woman” Classic 50’s camp!
Nope, Ipod too expensive, would be too small, and it would be hard to desgise, plus the fact that it would be hard to select movies.(iPod is in my left hand)
Sounds like a fun project. My wife and I visited a drive-in theater outside of Jefferson, Wisconsin a few years ago while on vacation - very enjoyable and good memories. I seem to remember that some of the drive-in’s had playground equipment for small children right near the screen but you would want to verify that as my memory sometimes fails me. This seems to be an interesting website for drive-ins:
There was a drive-in theater near my home town in the 1950’s and into the 60’s that had a kiddie-land right in front of the screen which included an electric train ride, manually-pushed (okay, kiddie pushed) merry-go-round, slides, sand boxes, etc.
Finding toys that could represent this in N-scale would really be a challenge.
Here is one of my ideas for a versitile cool drive in movie theater. Use an Applie Itouch MP4 player. Build a little cardboard screen to fit in front of the Itouch screen sideways. Use a wood dowel for the pole. The play a movie put behind the cardboard screen and it will look very real and no wires!! When not in use pick up your Itouch and go. I think it is one of the best plans because you can take your "movie theater’ with you as a lot of people do with their MP3 players all the time.
Millford New Hampshire still has a drive in movie theatre,We try to go at least once a year as it is a bit of a drive from Londonderry,That one has a swing set in front of the screen and maybe a merry go round for the kids.When I was a teen in Michigan I once snuck into a drive-in by hiding in the trunk of a car,You could have a couple of teens getting out of the trunk of a car.lol
There was a modular n-scale exhibit a couple of years ago that had avery small (b&w) tv playing old cartoons; the tv was set into the background, framed as if it were the projection screen. The effect was very good. Sorry, I don’t remember the name of the club or where they were from.
A favorite drive-in in my past sat right next to a railroad right-of-way, so the movie was usually interrupted by the wail of the whistle.
A lot of drive-ins had very tall board fences to prevent onlookers from outside the property.
As a matter of fact I was thinking about building it near the tracks… I have a blank area on the layout about 9 X 5 inches that I was planning to squeeze it into if possible.
The old Starlight drive in over in Brenham Texas was built back in the 1950s, and was real popular back in its day, but as indoor theaters took over, they began showing adult movies in order to make up for their losses. The city got so many complaints from people passing by on highway 290 that could see all that was going on that they finally took them to court and shut them down.
Use an iPod (or some screen) under the layout and use fiber optics to project the image up into and out of the projection house and onto the drive-in screen.
Circuitron has fiber optics.
I don’t know if this would work, but it would be damned cool if it did!
Don’t forget the wires and the electric heaters on the speaker poles, cars with kids making out in front seat & uh, reclining while making out in the rear seat (a lot of cars with really fogged up windows in winter). Some of our drive-ins here in Illinois had horizontal rows going across a hilly incline and at the same time frequently had sloping parking spots in the rows so that a car in a row behind another row was slightly looking over the car in the other row rather than through it (we often bottomed out the cars going from one row to another) .
Some nights were “car load” nights where everyone in the car got in for say a 2 person charge. Don’t forget the friends in the trunk. Usually there were signs in the driveway leading to the ticket booth advertising it.
There’s a classic O. Winston Link photo of a small rural drive-in, with a screen that would scale to about postage stamp size in N scale. There was a Korean War flick on the screen (F-86 in flight) and a Class A 2-6-6-4 stomping by right outside that tall board fence. I’m willing to bet that nobody could hear the jet!
If you’re modeling the transition era, a drive-in doesn’t have to be huge.
Thank you Andre. Yes, I was aware that the kit was available, but wanted to try and build it from scratch. I did however copy the page you offered - just in case…