Toy Train Outreach at the 2011
Bedford Boomers Exhibition
For
the last 29 years the “Bedford Boomers” have held
their annual Model Railroad Exhibition at the McKelvie Middle School in
Bedford, NH. The Exhibition takes place on the first full weekend in
November, and it is the largest non-commercial display of model
railroading held in New England. The show is open to the public on
Sunday from 10:00 to 4:00. It features G, O, HO, and N scale layouts;
Garden Railways; live steam trains; as well as clinics and a photo
contest.by David Schwartz, TCA 96-43196 The Boomers fill much of the school with layouts and static exhibits, and live ride-on steam trains run in the parking lot. The show attracts a huge number of families with kids of all ages - the place is packed. This is where I first saw a kids’ "U-Run-It Railroad" on a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood inches above the floor. In the fall of 2011 the NETCA board asked me to become “TCA Kids Club Coordinator” for our division. NETCA has not had much success attracting kids to our quarterly Trains Shows, so I decided to try doing Toy Train outreach at the Boomers’ show, one of the largest in the area. I know other NETCA members who participate in the show, plus my kids really enjoyed it when they were very young. At a minimum I wanted to provide TCA literature and Kids Club information to the many families attending. NETCA member George Kenson put me in contact with the Boomers show coordinator, who arranged for layout space. I spent the week prior to the show building a portable kid-friendly layout. The assembled layout is 3 x 8 feet and only 30 inches high. It features a single loop of track and three sidings with many classic operating accessories. Buttons around the perimeter activate the accessories. I also borrowed NETCA member George Contrada's “Speeding Train Going Nowhere” layout which always attracts a lot of attention. John Luppino and other folks in the TCA office shipped me a large box of TCA literature on very short notice. My wife helped out at the Boomers show, and she deserves an award for bringing in even the shyest kids by asking, “Do you want to push some buttons and see what happens?” We had an entire school classroom at our disposal. The show opened at 10:00 AM, and our room was packed until 3:00 PM. At times it was really chaotic, with kids pushing buttons on both sides of the layout and reloading the Milk Car, Oil Drum Loader, coal dump car and log dump car. When the room was calm enough, I let kids ages 3 to 12 take the throttle of my old ZW transformer. Most of them had never run an electric train before. Another popular activity was running two Gang Cars in opposite directions on the same loop of track. I also encouraged kids to put a hand across the track to reverse the Gang Cars. The Train Going Nowhere layout was a huge hit with kids and adults. This layout was inspired by a plan in the April 1960 issue of Popular Science. It features a circle of track attached to a platform with a mountain in the middle. The platform is angled and mounted on a Lazy Susan built from an old bicycle wheel. The movement of the locomotive wheels causes the layout to rotate while the train appears to stay in one place. I had a large NETCA logo attached to the rotating mountain, and TCA literature on an adjacent table. Bill Trueheart of the Boomers invited me back next year, and he requested the layout for the entrance to the show. The Boomers put on a great show, and the big thing that sets their show apart is there is nothing for sale. However, the modular scale layouts don't hold the attention of very young children. We clearly got high marks for catering to the kids. One Mom whose son is "totally obsessed with trains" was delighted to meet another child who shared her son's obsession. "I'll contact you and we'll set up a train play date," she told the other child’s mother. Another Mom told my wife, "This is the best room in the place, because the kids get to play with the trains." It wasn't only the little kids who enjoyed my layout. There were two 20-ish-year-old guys who went wild over the operating accessories, and they pulled out their smart phones to shoot close-up video of the Milk Car and Oil Drum Loader. There were also a lot of nostalgic grandparents saying, “I had one of those when I was a kid.” The hands-on aspect of my layout was what kept people in the room for a long time. And while the kids were busy pushing buttons and running trains, the adults had a chance to look through TCA literature and ask questions about the trains and the organization. Most of the TCA Quarterlies and National Toy Train Museum brochures were picked up, as were many TCA applications, Kids Club applications, and Kids Club Newsletters. I provided a signature and membership number on the applications, so I hope we will gain some new members. With train shows all over New England, there are plenty of opportunities for NETCA members to do outreach. I strongly encourage other members to bring kid-friendly layouts and TCA literature to their local shows. Below is a link to a web album with photos of my layout and a video clip of the Train Going Nowhere. http://picasaweb.google.com/dschwartz1957/BedfordBoomersTrainExhibition http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mGcDdNTnBY Below are links to the Bedford Boomers Website and additional photos of the show. Their 2012 30th Anniversary Exhibition will be held on Sunday, November 4 at the McKelvie School. http://www.boomers-rr.com/Boomers/Home.html http://www.boomers-rr.com/Boomers/Boomer_Shows/Pages/Show_Gallery_2011.html |
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