Our club just had our annual open house tour of 9 garden railroads in the area. We collect cash and food for the local food bank. It was our 7th year. We had 346 visitors at our house.
Since I am the only layout on the tour running battery power, I get a lot of questions about it. One visitor asked “Are you the only one that uses batteries?” I said “Yes”. He said, “I thought so because every other layout we have visited, there was someone cleaning the track with a pole.”
And then after the tour, all I ever hear from the other hosts are the list of problems they had and all of the stress trying to keep things running all day. Most of the problems are associated with track power; dirty track, bad rail joiners, locos stalling on turnouts, dirty wheels, etc.
I had zero problems (including no dead batteries). I had three different locos sharing the duty for the day. All performed flawlessly. And as always, the visitors loved the station stops. “At the other railroads, the trains just jerk to a stop and then take off real fast. Yours look so realistic!”.
These tours are a lot of work. But they provide incentive to get things working that need attention. And the feedback from the visitors is always very rewarding. They always thank us sincerely for opening up our home to them.
