Bob McCown said:
a fledgling Whimsy
If I still had the health to do drawings and cartoons that phrase is a wonderful idea starter, well, it still is no matter who has what ability.
Ya know, our weekly creative writers group meeting is Saturday,
we do a 20 minute timed writing to prompts,
that phrase would be useful there, too …
Todd Brody is , or seems to be the master of whimsy here with is MIK builds like the “can” can last year, and his whole layout is one entertaining view after another.
Eric Mueller and Todd Haskins do well with their Playmobil 1/24ish and Todd’s “colorful” workers and how he sets up and uses the people to tell a story in his videos. I get Fred’s posts on operations as that is how he and his club run things . The club I belong to has 2 different modular sets that we take to different venues to display and to attempt to attract people to the hobby. One part of our club wants to expand our module with more buildings and scenery, while other argue its too dificult to set up. I’m not sure if anything like a “Timesaver” would be good for a public venue to attract people as you would need several of them to keep the flow of people and reduce lines waiting. I saw one at a swap sale once and the line wasn’t real long but the kids wanted to do more than on or 2 moves before being ushered away to let the next one do some moves.
At our club open house tours, and the other open house tours, it would be difficult to do “operations” while talking to people visiting for the first time, watching kids so they dont do the wrong thing, (because some parents don’t seem to want to bother with disipline), so that is why a lot of layouts are set up for roundy round . I hope in my small layout I have enough of both to where i can run a train around the garden when wanted to show visitors what i have, aqnd when i want to go out and move stuff around the layout. As for “operations” with dispatchers, car cards, waybills timetables and all that, I doubt my small place could entertain more than 2 people. I still want to go to one of Andy’s sessions, just to see it in person, and would also love to go to RLD’s open house and run a long train around his layout.
When it comes right down to it the only thing a train is going to do is run on whatever track you have down, so by default there is not a ton of visual “excitement” that can actually happen, so you either watch them run around your layout with buildings and landscaping and give them things to look at that way, one thing about that, when the grandkids have come along with us on tours, the layouts with a Treasure Hunt paper of hidden or odd things to hunt around the layout are their favorites. This hobby garden trains has some really incredible craftsmen that are building almost everything we can buy, and that part attracts others too. In a roundabout way, this hobby attracts people with a lot of different interests and we cannot put them all in one box. there is everything from serious exact scale replicas to wonderful whimsy, fun , and don’t take it seriously. Whimsy will certianly be in my layout, and hopefully everyone will enjoy it.