Wendell Hanks said:
To Dick Friedman and others who have shared garden railroads’ data to gardners:
What responses did you get and what can you predict you will get to the idea of animating a yard with a train?
I predict the unstated is “What! Leaving toys outside to rust? Setting them out every time you want to use them is labor intensive!” This is the unstated argument so often tucked in the back of the heads of people who hear me. I preempt the discussion by indicating, just as with the “real” RAILROADS, the track can stay outside with no damage – such as our track in its 14th year outside. Their responses show surprise which affirms my suspicion the unstated objection has been stated and resolved.
Further, the life-span of the track and the durability of the trains consistently is an unstated concern. In short, presupposing what the listener is thinking has worked - two neighbors, with NO interest in “model trains” put an “animating” train in their garden – with no miniature houses, no figures, just the train as a start!
What’s your own experience with listeners?
Whose kidding anyone.
If the remaining LS manufacturers or Garden Railways do not activate the gardening industry’s interest in yard animation with a train, its us. That’s right, submitting ideas to garden centers and photo stories to garden magazines for everyone’s self-interest increases the numbers of future customers --both for gardening and large scale trains.
Yes, I get a lot of that too. People are surprised that I leave the track and bridges outside ALL THE TIME!(http://largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-surprised.gif)
While it can be time consuming to bring out a 25 car train, A simple carry case can be cobbled together to bring out a small locomotive and a few cars. That’s all it takes to have a train, and have motion in the garden.
But I think one trap that people fall into, in any scale/gauge, is that they think that in order to have a “proper” train set up, one needs a spaghetti bowl of track, a few dozen houses, and a few dozen pieces of rolling stock. Magazines tend to show huge empires that look finished, and are unachievable by many people. They don’t tend to show the small, manageable, set ups that most people can achieve.