I had an open house this past weekend for my model railroad in San Antonio. I am sure many others have done this, so I wanted to open this thread so I could see other’s ideas for such an event. I hope everyone’s experiences were as pleasant as mine were. I guess there will be some bad stories, too. My layout is in a room by itself. Entrance is from the outside and not through the house. I had about 40 visitors. Here is what I found from my experience. No one stole anything. I was told to beware of people taking things. In retrospect, this was ridiculous. Maybe it was just the people; I knew most of them. It’s just that the people visiting were simply not a crowd that would do that, IMHO. I ran two trains and told everyone about the layout. I just ran laps and no switching or other operation. That was too much; I needed help. When I started talking, I finally had to just stop the trains as I have an open access the trains might fall through onto the floor. Later, I had some people who visited briefly tell me they were surprised there were no trains running. I am sure they were present when I was talking. You should run some kind of unique, recognizable train. I ran the Sunset Limited, and that was good. I had diesels that had flashing lights and I did not run them for some reason. I should have. Run good equipment with clean track. I had all that sorted out days before the open house, so I had no mechanical problems at all. My open house was from 4-8 PM. Everyone was gone at the end; I didn’t have to run anyone out, as I had been warned. Get a visitors log so you can tell who was there. I am sorry I didn’t do that. Ed Murphy from Vera Cruz, Mexico was the very first visitor and I am sorry I didn’t have something for him to sign. That would have been neat. I had cookies to eat; no drinks were served. No one had to use the bathroom, which was available upstairs. I took two bad pictures of other people taking pictures, so nothing to post. I have both an open house and an operating session scheduled in June at the Lone Star Region NMRA convention. Hope some TB guys can make it. Please add your experiences and ideas. Thanks.
I have no experience so can't say anything helpful. Congrats though. I am glad you go to meet Ed. I have never met him but he and I exchange emails from time to time and he just seems liek a great guy.
At the threeopen houses I saw in Dallas, there was a log to sign in when you entered. Most of the open houses of the layouts lasted for four hours and all the folks were most cordial and accomodating. Trains were in operation but they were doing laps as that's all you could expect from each host. It still was very interesting to see the different layouts and how they were setup. Stay cool and run steam.....
This is a good thread. I am a "Lone Wolf" modeler that has done 100% everything by myself. If it is on my layout, I built it, painted it, broke it, fixed, coaxed it, woooo'd it, petted it, cursed and nursed it. As such I have been very scared to have an open house. My local NMRA chapter has talked me into scheduling an open house next year. They schedule pretty far out. At first I declined. Then a few modelers talked me into it. My layout isn't the grandest or largest thing in the world, but it has enough personality to be interesting I guess. I agreed to do this because I think I need to model less in a vaccuum and open up my layout to suggestions and even contributions from other modelers certainly more cabable than I am in certain areas. After all, I owe it to my layout and efforts to learn from others. I don't have a clue as to what to expect with this open house.
I had one open house on the San Jacinto Model Railroad Club November Tour at my place many years ago, back when our club NTRAK layout was still quite small. My house has a dining room and living room right next to each other with no wall between, only a few columns. I had club members come over and move furniture out to the family room to the middle of the room or against one wall. That left an ample walkway around a 18 X 12 foot layout. Was real cool, you could sit on the couch against the wall and see the trains go by at eye level. We had plenty of club members show up to help run. I just checked my log and we had 103 people sign in over two days. We were open from 10-5 on Saturday and 12-5 on Sunday. We had a great time talking to folks and did not have any problems. We just ran three trains around the layout nonstop and talked. Since then we have had to set up in larger areas such as a library meeting room, a middle school band hall, an old auto dealership garage and various large rooms at a museum for the same November open house tour. I have only had a few things stolen like some automobiles. Other than that, I helped a friend run his layout when he was open during two different conventions. For those, they had busses bring in large groups all at once while individuals with their own cars were dropping in at random. Sometimes we had way too many people so we had to keep most downstairs in the living room and bring them up in groups of 15. We ran train videos in the living room so they could watch something. We just ran round and round but he got some good input on how to run operatons later.
Never had an open house as such, but each time family and/or friends visit, there seems to be a migration sooner or later to the basement to see the progress and to watch the trains run. I let both kids and adults handle things (I am only 4x6) and only one bad experience about a year ago when an eight year old nephew went over the mark on the transformer and we derailed on a 9 3/4" turn. I lost a handbrake, but no big loss and I certainly didn't make a big deal of it. The price of a detail part vs. a kid feeling lousy about model trains and Uncle Fotheringill.
I think a log book would be great, it's a shame I didnt have one when you visited Flash. I might have to get a book and leave it in the layout room for people to sign
Flash If you get a log/guestbook for future visitors, I'll make a point of stopping by and signing in next time I come through San Antonio. Thanks for the special tour. Regards Ed
Thanks, Ed. I do have a log book now and I am trying to fill in those visitors I knew. Let me know when you come by again.
Hey, When I owned trucks,I was all over this great country.I wish I knew & was involved in trains then like I am now.I could've seen alot of layouts.I was in Texas alot.Hopefully I'll get down that way again.I'd love to see your layout Flash.
Always a good idea to include a space on the visitors log for email address so you can email them to let them know when the next open house is.
I was honored to help Dave Nenna for an evening during last year's NMRA National Convention (Cincinnati) layout tours. Clearly, it helped to have at least two of us there, so that at minimum, the host can socialize and be a host, without having to worry about watching and running the trains. Trying to do it all by one's self is too much. I had my hands full just watching the trains and making sure they were running OK (with the small bus of people watching). (smile)
I set up a demo for some boy scouts once. I had three different scales running, O HO and N. I had more adults stop and look then I had scouts. Over all I didn't get any of the scouts interested but I found out who of the adults were!
