WAMALUG: Show: February 12-13, 2000: Greenberg’s Great Train and Collectible Toy Show
Prince George’s Equestrian CenterThe Show Place Arena
14900 Pennsylvania Avenue
Upper Marlboro, Maryland
Jeff made the original announcement of our appearance at the show on lugnet.org.us.wamalug
Our final layout was 10′×13′ with three independent train loops and somewhat more than 50,000 bricks. We were also able to set up an extra set of tables just out from the main display where we could set up other things (like the “eye-full” tower, with working elevator, and a Supercar display). The separate table was great as it let us play and build during the show. We used it to show off a “history of the Supercar,” including a motorized Technic 8448 Super Street Sensation.
Stephen managed to post his reactions in the 3173rd message to the mailing list already by Sunday evening.
An exhausting and exhilirating weekend! It was great showing off our models and even better seeing the great reactions we got from everyone—even those thugs from the N-scale groups… :-)
We were the major hit of the show. Greenberg all but begged us to come back. The one time I managed to break away from the table, I saw the other layouts and while they were nice, they didn’t have half the crowds of passers-by that we did! Not to mention the hang time we had—our crowds tended to stay longer and look at all the little details we had hidden all over the place (the fire and the protesters were my favorites, and the moving bank robbery was fun too).
A short list of the notably great things about our show:
- Our expanding bonus area
- Keen-o crowd barriers that kept tilting
- The touchy-feely table with supercars
- Our “special table” for other displays—even if Rich didn’t like being relegated to it! :-)
- Rich’s elevator
- More visitors than we could handle most of the time
- The track to nowhere
- A visit from Buffie! [Buffie Shervington was manager of the LEGO® Outlet Store in the Potomac Mills Mall at the time.]
- Chris is not allowed to build bridges anymore :-)
- Protests at city hall (with police snipers keeping a watch)
- Hungry shark
- A spectacular downtown mainstreet
- Spectacular secondary streets
- The campus fire scene!
- WHIPs
- A great yard with lots of little turns and twists
- Record take-down time
- …and at least 100 more things I could list!
On Monday, Chris had some clarifications and other highlights to post.
- W AMALUG HI way P atrol for those not in the know…
- We should try to make the mainline go straight through next time…
- The take-down time was about 45 minutes.
- The downtown construction employees eating lunch for two days on the skyscraper
- The looks on the kids’ faces when they saw how much LEGO® was there
- The eternal
I didn’t know LEGO® made trains
question - The cat in the tree, the cat in the trash cans, the cat in the hat…
- The unusable turn into the station due to platform placement
- The MindStorms container grabber, we have to work on this for next time
- Cletus’s roadrailers
- Rich reassembing his tower every hour
- Talking to a guy about “botball”
- My bridge falling apart
- Digging up the abandoned track
- The cohesive nature of downtown and the’burbs…
Martha had her own commentary:
I think we were very well received by the old school model railroaders—I noticed many of them bringing their kids down to show them our layout on Sunday.
A selection of Dan and Jenn’s photographs from the show:
























