WAMALUG: Show: June 3, 2000: Manassas Railway Festival

Our layout at the Manassas Railway Festival was similar to this image of a layout in Chris’ folder on Brickshelf.

Crowds gather around the tent we were under.

Stephen made his first report Sunday in the 5351st message to the mailing list, reacting first to the pain of sunburn:

...say AIEEEEE!!!!

and then to the attempt to match faces up to names from the mailing list (which included Margaret D. Keys) and Christina’s first attendance at a show. She brought binder clips for the Plexiglas and her medieval house, which was placed in the “rural” section of the layout.

The folks at Manassas contacted us about setting up a table at their train show so we rolled out in force for our first outdoors show. It was a beautiful day, perfect weather to be out and about. As usual, we were the big hit of the show, attracting more than our share of crowds and interested passers-by.

The show was also the debut of Plexiglas barriers on the tables. They worked ok, but kids still liked reaching over the barriers to grab passing trains and anything else in reach. Hopefully we will figure out a way to avoid this problem in the future!

Our downtown was an interesting mismatch of buildings this time. Chris’ normal stock of buildings were packed so we had to make do. Luckily, Martha’s excellent hardware and bicycle shop made it, along with a new music gazebo and the formal introduction of Rich’s Blue Station.

The best addition to our table was the new “other corner.” For a change, we built a rural area with farms and fields and Chris designed a wonderful mountain with little fishing pond.

Just off the rural area was the bridge crossing with Jenn and Dan’s black trestle bridge.

New to the yard was Chris’ improved engine shed with lots of wonderful detail inside (including a spiffy “working” arc welder). Chris also built a sister engine to his very popular GP-35.

Not to be outdone, Tom built a great-looking pair of black Southern Railway locomotives.

Some rolling stock on display at the show:

Tom’s Extended Vision caboose.

Cool things from the show:

• Dan and Jenn’s (and others’) rural area was great! (especially the fields! great effect!)
• Chris’ hill pass
• Kevin’s 70’s construction yard and windmill
• Martha made a great downtown (even if some of the buildings we normally have weren’t there)
• 
  Rich’s Soccer field (even if it was corrupted)
• The Plexiglas was cool. People really liked being able to get right up to the models—tho’ kids did have a tendency to reach over it :-/
• Tom’s big black engines
• Cletus’ collection of trucks just keeps getting bigger and better—and he didn’t leave any of them this time! :-)

Funny quotations in retrospect:

• I can’t get all the tables in my car

  Chris’ plaint led Stephen to drive all the way to Reston to rescue the tables left behind, so we were frantically still putting together the display at ten o’clock. :-)

• Watch the cars roll

  Our tables were on a slight slope, so the rolling stock had a tendency to roll down the track. We all know how poorly LEGO® trains take hills!!

• Really, I can drive these things!

  Cletus took control for a while and managed a derailment every 10 minutes or so. :-)

• I can do better than that

  Kevin took over and had a Metroliner tip over on a curve right when the outer cargo train was passing, resulting in a spectacular 12+ car pileup.

• I brought some sunscreen

  Martha brought some sunscreen but not too many of us were bright enough to use it.

Some of the participants went to dinner afterwards.

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