Dillon Trinh Light Railway event: A Ffestiniog Railway Adventure

[Dillon]

Today, I hosted a special event at my local library, to which went quite well, being on a weekday, it was quite slow, but 8 people came. Which wasn’t bad, operated a quite a good number of narrow gauge 009 locomotives, the small size of the layout and the engines makes it easy to used one table.

 

It was a good start of the year, and I’m pleased with the result, oddly enough I used an old camera bag to carry my models, which is quite well. I’ll post the rest of the photos in the Welsh 009 thread.

[cteno4]

Hey Dillion, glad you tried this. Was there any other event going on with your setup? That may help it bring in more people as the libraries usually talk up their local events and get pr out. How long did you set up for? You ran some trains as well? Do any of your local branches have any maker spaces? They may be a good place to try. Lots of our libraries are getting maker spaces of one sort or another, it’s sort of the new library thing to give access to equipment many cant afford or need a lot of technical help to utilize.

 

I’m going to talk with our library system this year to see if there are any events they may be doing that we could do a set up at. They do a sort of mini comic con that we may fit with as anime and cosplay is big part of it. 

 

I’ve also been thinking it may be fun to try to see if we could get a group going at the library one afternoon maybe once a month to start out. We could have some mini onetrak or ttrak running and maybe get a group going making their own mini onetrak modules. Something to talk with the library programs people. Our closest library also has a kids center that does all sorts of creative projects and even has its own shop that may be interested in doing something like this.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[Dillon]

13 minutes ago, cteno4 said:

Was there any other event going on with your setup? That may help it bring in more people as the libraries usually talk up their local events and get pr out. How long did you set up for? You ran some trains as well? Do any of your local branches have any maker spaces? They may be a good place to try.

It was just me, which is evident from the background, but Monday was children's storytime, which I didn't know until when I was there. My local library doesn't have a makerspace, but it does have 3d printing, I operated my trains, but with the slow day, I only operated a few laps at a time with each model. But library folks were quite pleased with me operating my models at the end of the day.

[cteno4]

It’s a good start and great the staff was happy to have you there. I would reach out to them and see what you might do with any other events going on to try and boost participation. Setting it around story time seems like a great idea, especially if you do it on a regular basis for a couple of hours and the kids get use to it being there. 

 

Sounds like a good library that is into having stuff like this at the library. Maybe story time could do a train story to match up with your trains.

 

you could also set up a little build your own pwm throttle to easily set the max speed of any particular train and then have the kids runs some trains. Set up a couple of stations they ahve to stop the trains at. 

 

Good job!

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[Dillon]

2 minutes ago, cteno4 said:

It’s a good start and great the staff was happy to have you there. I would reach out to them and see what you might do with any other events going on to try and boost participation. Setting it around story time seems like a great idea, especially if you do it on a regular basis for a couple of hours and the kids get use to it being there. 

 

Sounds like a good library that is into having stuff like this at the library. Maybe story time could do a train story to match up with your trains.

 

you could also set up a little build your own pwm throttle to easily set the max speed of any particular train and then have the kids runs some trains. Set up a couple of stations they ahve to stop the trains at. 

 

Good job!

 

cheers,

 

jeff

Not a bad idea, though, the next one is coming around the corner, luckily, this one is Union Pacific Steam Power.