Houston Japan Fest Layout

[Mudkip Orange]

So I've got a 10' x 10' tent and two 30" x 96" banquet tables.

 

Now to plan. The way I figure it, I've got three options.

 

1a) Set up the tables in an "L" shape, so that I have 10' of frontage. The problem with this is that the 30" table width limits me to the R282/315 corners.

 

1b) Rip a couple sheets of plywood to 38" wide and place them over the banquet tables. I would prefer not to do this as it will be either (i) wobbly or (ii) require a lot of benchwork construction for a temporary layout.

 

2) Push the tables together and have a 5' x 8' display layout.

 

Right now I'm leaning towards option (2). A first go at it is below. Constructive criticism is welcomed.

 

 

Spectators are at the top of the plan, looking down. Operators at the bottom. I don't personally own any Viaduct track, but the sets are common enough that I feel like I should be able to find someone who has one in the next month. If not I'll just rock ground level rails with perhaps one up-and-over.

Edited March 8, 2014 by Mudkip Orange

[Mauka]

Aloha,

 

I know nothing about train shows, never having the chance to attend one. 

Love the track plan, looks like it allows up to four trains to run and in different directions.  That should attrach some attention, and you have room for a overhead station near the spectator area, should should draw them in. 

 

Is there enough room for the spectators and operators?  5x8 in 10x10, that leaves 2' on one side, and 2.5' front and back.

 

Alan

[Mudkip Orange]

they'll be outside of the tent. The way I figure it is 1' buffer on each side in case there's a little drizzle, which leaves a 4' x 8' covered area for seating etc.

[Mudkip Orange]

Another thing I'm wondering is what the longest I oughtta run a train is. I saw that James May's Toy Stories episode where they had the Hornby race, and even the Class 395 gave out eventually.

[cteno4]

Mudkip,

 

This is great this is happening! All sounds good. few things from our experiences, especially after doing this all again from scratch in the last 4 weeks for the nyc japan week show.

 

one issue with plywood on top of tables is that you cant run wires under it, ok if you are doing your wiring on top of the boards though.

 

you will need to probably figure out a way to attach the two pieces of ply together. perhaps pieces of 1x2 across the two sections at 4 or 5 places along the layout. this will help keep things flatter and also keep the top nice and sturdy, dont want a bump to split the two pieces of wood. for our on the fly set ups over the years (until we had the sectional module) and for the nyc show i just made a top out of 1x2 frame around 1" pink extruded styrene insulation board just drill some holes thru the 1x2 with dowel pegs and they hold themselves together well. only downside is they are now $17 for a 2'x8' piece so not cheap anymore! but they are really light weight and very rigid and flat and dont bow or warp.

 

just using two tables alone might work, but it will be a total crap shoot at what tables you get. they maybe very different height and also some tend to have a raised edge banding that would make it tough for track to go from one table to the next well. some are so beat up on the ply tops you end up with a slope for 2-3" around the edge of the tables. You just never know what you will get. you can of course shim the table legs to even things up and then try to shim track to get over any bumps between tables, but it can get tricky and usually where things go bad with track and detrainments (this happened this week as one of our tables was 1/2" lower on just one corner. finally figured it out after the outer viaduct would not go around w/o derailing and some shims fixed it). also at this week's show we did not get the exact sized table we had ordered from the company supplying them. we figure out something that would work, its just to say that beware if you have to totally rely on them for an exact size table for your whole thing to work.

 

you may need some crowd control barrier of some sort, especially if its just you there manning it. folks natural tendency will be to come right up and they love to point and even touch and grab things (small children as well as 50 year old ones as well). we have good luck doing a ttrak setup at 2x8' without barriers with little kids but that works because the layout is small and we have two people to watch the kids at all times and also the ttrak modules are usually a couple of inches off the table tops due to the girder system i use for the modules. this really helps as the little ones natural tendency is to want to grab ahold of the edge of the layout. with our ttrak they can do this on the table not the modules then! but still they can shake things (kid quakes we call them). just putting the layout like 18" back from the front of the tent and running some ropes around the poles (layout level and half way down or the little little ones just run right under the top rope) should do it.

 

while in my exhibit work im a big fan of not hardening and trusting your audience and they then respect you, its just too hard with this sort of display with the public, they just are in a different mode at a festival than in a museum, they just see to want to touch as well as bend way over the layout to look close and take photos, not realizing their jacket is snagging every detail on the layout and crashing a train, let alone getting off balance and falling on the layout (we almost had this happen this week with a bloke leaning way over the stanchion barrier to take a photo). For the most part we have found the public really really good with the layout and in the end little to nothing damaged or destroyed.

 

if you are planning on doing scenery at all then i would simplify the track plan a lot for your first outing. if its only running trains then a complex layout is fine as you can spend all your set up time clipping track and getting it all running right. if you do scenery then that will take time to set out and also space. if folks have scenes to look at they dont need to see the trains do as wild of pattern running. also for your first outing and especially if its just you i would keep things easy on yourself. all sorts of odd things to deal with at events like this, never know what will crop up, something always does, so you need to roll with something so not having yourself pushed to the max is good. also being around the public all day is exhilarating but also stressful and exhausting at the same time!

 

also especially if its just you, alone, dont plan on doing a lot of operations or having to man the throttle all the time. the public will have a lot of questions and will want to talk to you, so having something that just runs well on its own is good and then when there is a lull go back and take out another train, etc. talking to the public really is the other half of the equation to the layout. folks get a much deeper appreciation if they stop and chat for a moment or ask a question, and they will remember you and the layout soooo much better and that means you get invited back! they also then tell others to go see it more!

 

you will need someone to spell you at some point probably during the day so think of that if you are alone.

 

have a thin plastic tarp just in case of rain you can throw over the layout. even a medium rain with just a bit of wind will whip into a tent. we have had this happen only once for a 10 min shower, but the plastic was perfect and layout stayed dry. only needs to be like 2mil stuff so you dont knock stuff over.

 

if you do any scenery thing of doing them in sections you can plunk down rather than many little bits. the more pieces the more headaches packing, transporting, finding, setting out, etc. formica is perfect for this. its thin, light and stiff but harder to get not laminated anymore. foam insulation is great to make some little hills or outcroppings quickly that you can plunk down. if you have a base board you can just paint it or cover with brown craft paper to have a neutral color under everything. one issue with painting plywood is if you do it will warp some. if you paint only one side it does it worse as the paint shrinks as it drys and thus puckers the wood.

 

for the nyc layout we covered the modules in that brown craft paper ($10 for a big ass roll at home depot that you roll out for floor protection during painting/construction) that has a nice earth tone and spray mounted it to the module tops. after the track was laid out we then could trace out sections that needed to be other colors for the scenes they were (like gray for city area, green for rural, etc) and just cut them out of colored art paper and spray mounted it to the brown paper.

 

we then traced the track plan onto the paper with a pencil and marked all the track joints. then started to take the track work apart a few pieces at a time and drew a sharpy line down the middle of the traced pencil lines (track center) and marked the track joints well with cross marks and also the track name on the line. this way the whole track plan was there to just plop track on top and go. much easier than looking at a small plan and trying to clip it together. also we took the track off in areas and bagged them up so that you did not have to try to find a particular piece of track from the whole pile. this took maybe 2 hrs to do on the nyc layout and it made for a super rapid setup of the track.

 

do do a test run of your track set up whatever you do to work out the kinks on how you are going to do it and get some idea of how much time it takes. usually things take longer than you think when you do them at the events.

 

we try to just run trains for 30 min or so before moving to another one. they can go much longer, but probably better not to overtax any one train and switching out to a new train is always fun for the audience. ask the kids what train they want to come out to run! they love it.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Mudkip Orange]

This is all really helpful. Danke

[cteno4]

Mudkip,

 

cool, sorry in looking at what i wrote i realize is was on a bit of a high just getting back from nyc. All meant to help and you to have the best show you and and a great experience so you want to do it again and again and again!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Mudkip Orange]

Absolutely no apologies neccessary re: the wall of text. The issue of table surface mismatch wasn't something I'd thought about but it's definitely going to be an issue in the field since we're setting up on grass/dirt. I don't know if I'll go the full foam module route like JRM v1.0, or if I'll have something a little more jerry-rigged (e.g. a pack of Woodland Scenics 2% risers and some brown tape). But there'll be something.

 

I also agree that having even rudimentary scenery will do more for watchability than more complex routing. At home I am a yards and points type of guy, but I think if I was 5 years old I would want to see the train disappear into a tunnel. So tunnel portals are on their way, along with a fair bit of Tomytec.

[cteno4]

mudkip,

 

ugh grass/dirt! one thing to do is bring some like 3" squares of plywood to set the table legs on. they tend to sink into the ground as the day goes on (especially if missing the bottom foot and just a piece of tubing).

 

we have a box of tiny wood scraps and hunks of a few different thicknesses of chip board to use as levelers when we do the cherry blossom on the roadway (nothing level on a road!). little thin chipboard hunks just wider than unitrak are perfect to boost track a tiny bit if you find a dip. just cut up a big bunch of them from kleenex boxes, gray matches the roadbed.

 

yeah the foam modules take a little time to construct if you dont have a shop handy. another trick on the table top for both leveling things out and for better appearance can be to just use a big chunk of fabric over the table. you can get brown flannel for as low as $2 a yard like 56" wide. this can give you that base color and also just help smooth things over if you dont do a larger surface on top of the table. wargamers do this.

 

tomytecs are great to plunk down, got a bit of scenery already around them. dark gray construction paper makes great roads.

 

you're spot on, having the train disappear for a while is big treat. even our little ttrak street car setup has a station over one of the end 180s and the trams disappear and it makes them squeal with delight and run to the other side once they figure out thats where it reappears!

 

quick and dirty little hill with a tunnel can be built by making a cardboard tunnel and then card board base everywhere else and then wadding up news papers and taping them down well with masking tape. great way to get the shape you want. then just do paper mache over it with paste or dilute plaster mix, then simple paint and ground foams. you would be surpised how fast it is. foam works well but can be a bit longer to shape out right and be prepared for a mess of foam shavings to deal with!

 

a little bit of track complexity is nice so that its not just all loops, helps if there is a little unpredictability in the course of the train and the tracks wander in and out some and are not all straight ovals. folded figure 8s of various sorts are ways to mix things up simply, but not really practical for double track. elevation changes are a real hassle to get just right so we have avoided them for all the show layouts due to the issues that can arise. last thing you want at the show is to be dealing with track and derailments.

 

having a shinkansen loop and ground loops works well as it sets you up to talk about the separated hsr track etc as well and is a simple way to get 4 lines on smaller configs, just need to weave the ground level thru the risers. but you need a viaduct loop then...

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Mudkip Orange]

Here's my current working track plan.

 

 

All the scenery will be construction paper except for the mountain which will be drywall joint compound over 3/4" extruded foam.

[Melandir]

I can give you an advice, for festivals start to think for a modular layout, the club I joined recently used it and the flexibility it provide is invaluable, the last weekend I attended an exibition and the club was able to create a square layout of about 15 mt every side

 

Here a video that has been taken with a small cam placed directly on the loco running on the layout

 

 

All trains in the modular layout are digitally controlled with a Z21 and with a smartphone/tablet you can really foollow your train during the trip and play with it

 

We have also discovered the limit of the Z21, after 9 clients are connected the Z21 will crash, we have provided this information to Roco hopefully they will work something to increase the number

Edited March 12, 2014 by Melandir

[cteno4]

Modular is great, but usually for larger clubs. Right now i think its just Mudkip by himself for this event and not much time to get it together.

 

Mudkip, looks very nice. tunnel will help break things up and give you a nice scenery feature as well. colored paper works well for the base layer then you can plop things down on top of it. even small bits of the foam painted and some ground foam on them and a tree to make little scenery islands to spread around then. you can make a pile of those really fast.

 

also another simple trick is just a bag of colored lichen, just toss some small clumps between buildings and such to make some fast bushes. doesnt take much to get the mind's eye going and it will fill in the details!

 

it was fun at the nyc show as so many folks were amazed at the detail level we had but then i would point out to them that it was just in spots, not everywhere, their minds eye was filling in all the rest! 

 

when is the event?

 

So glad you are doing this event! Going to be such a surprise and treat for everyone attending! you will get a lot of great compliments and just seeing folks see the layout and get a big grin on their face makes it all worth it!

 

jeff

[Mudkip Orange]

As it turns out, our own qwertyaardvark is going to be joining me on this thang.

 

Final track plan is below; yard might get a little thicker depending on what track he brings.

 

[cteno4]

Mudkip,

 

Hey looks good. Keep it simple, you will have a lot to deal with and set up!

 

Think you will have a lot of fun with this and maybe find a few more Modelers around the area.

 

Great qwertyaardvark can join you! That will be great!

 

Looking forward to hearing about your fun!

 

Cheers,

 

Jeff

[Krackel Hopper]

Mudkip - how was the Huston Japan Festival? Successful layout? Any pictures?

[cteno4]

Rumor has it from chat that lots of fun was had!

 

Curious minds want to know more!

 

Jeff

[cteno4]

Mudkip and qwertyaardvark have a nice article about the Houston festival layout up on the JRM site with some pictures now.

 

cheers

 

jeff

 

http://japanrailmodelers.org/pages/modelingjapan/houston.html