ok. earlier today, i had an idea. now, call me crazy, but what if like a town hall/office or a meseum(i spelled wrong) would allow you/someone who asked, to build a train layout for show. Do you think they would allow it? it is on their budget though.
do you think this will work?
- Thread starter HOtrainman
- Start date
HoTrainman, I don't know about the budget part, but there is a museum in my area that has a ho scale layout. The stipulation was, it has to depict the history of the local area, and be open to public viewing, meaning somebody has to be there to operate the layout.
Loren
Loren
Our local club here in Polson, MT is in a museum owned building. We were fortunate to have a member of the museum board as a club member. We have the same understanding that grewsome mentioned above. So far it has worked well with the exception of an incident last summer when a local kid figured out how to get a stick under the plexiglas divider and push some buildings onto the track. We have a lot of sweat equity into finishing the interior of the building and had support from Plum Creek Timber with materials so the museum gained and we gained. If you are interested, I would suggest talking to some of your local museum folks. We have been told by the museum staff that there are people who come specifically to see the trains and we do a school program in the spring plus a Christmas open house.
Once when I went to a local railway centre, I thought about doing such a project in their museum section. It would have been a showcase layout for british-outline HO. But when I chatted to one of the staff about it, he directed me to the remains of a layout salvaged from this proffessor's house that some of his colleagues at the museum were going to restore. I visited the centre again, and there wasn't much evidence of work being done on the layout. It seems such a shame as there was plenty of space in the museum, but no-one was interested in a project like the one I had planned!
I'll throw in a bit of an addendum to my earlier post, since Alan brought it up. It takes a lot of people who are dedicated to the project to make a museum layout function. We have a coin operated system to make the trains operate for short periods of time. We run three trains on continous loops in a 24 X 32 foot building so the loco's and cars can get a lot of use and require maintenance. Our membership is getting older(as are a lot of clubs) and many of the more active members head south with the birds for the winter.
For an individual to do all of the above would require lots of time and energy. It could be done if you limited the size of the layout. As for the local museum or other entity funding the project totally, I doubt it. Most communities have only limited budgets to begin with and trains would not rank very high.
For an individual to do all of the above would require lots of time and energy. It could be done if you limited the size of the layout. As for the local museum or other entity funding the project totally, I doubt it. Most communities have only limited budgets to begin with and trains would not rank very high.