Years of Ntrak experience here and a couple of questions that we often get that I have not seen yet on this thread. Q - "Where does this all go when you take it apart?" A - Club modules go into club trailer and individual members modules go home with the members. Q - "Does the trolley get it's power from the overhead wire?" Referring to a member's set of modules with NCat. A - Yes, the overhead wire does have power which is picked up by the pantograph. Great thread this, and it's great that we have train shows to go to again.
Well you can look as much, but if you much as touch, You're gonna have yourself a case - I'm gonna break your face!
At a very recent (like, last weekend) N-Trak display, the rope barriers were set something like six feet away from the layout. That certainly prevents, ahem, "handling" of equipment, but it also seems to be a bit too far away for practical viewing.
It's a double edged sword between safety of equipment vs. crowd friendly and trying to advance the hobby. In one show a few years ago, we were running T-Trak so even more opportunities for a grab, especially with unsupervised young children. Well, an unsupervised young kid grabbed my rare Tomix Thomas (rare only because I was able to shove a decoder in there and since the 15 years ago that I did it, I've only seen another one in the East Coast with a decoder) and not only did he grabbed it but he tossed it in the air! Luckily I was near by and did a left hand catch (right hand had throttle) and saved poor Thomas! Of course I was screaming "NOOOOO!!!!" at the top of the my lungs which, I guess, attracted the attention of his mother. His mother came running over and apologized and said "He's never done this before!". I didn't say anything much to her as all I cared about was Thomas was saved! What I really wanted to say is "Oh really? Where were you supervising your kid lady? This isn't a Day Care!" Many people saw the incident and from that point on, we all walk and follow closely our trains as we run them.
"Unsupervised" Yep... Man, when I was a kid, my parents would have tanned my backside for something like that! In fact my backside was well tanned for far, far less than that! Dad always said that God gave me ample amounts of padding and nerve endings back there, for both safety and effect (in that order!) But they never did it in public. They just made sure I knew what was coming when we got home (adding to the effectiveness.)
It's that "wait until we get home" that really screws with your mind as you know what's coming and you're looking at the clock at how many more hours of mental torture you must endure before the act comes your way. Very effective and works with the physical act once you arrived home. Don't ask me how I know!
Drifting farther off topic... in reading the past few posts here, has anyone recalled the short-lived animated series "Wait 'Til Your Father Gets Home"? And specifically the theme song? (I should probably show myself out right about now, and get back to writing the October UMTRR...)
One of my favorite stories was from when we had our NTRAK layout set up at the local railroad museum for the November layout tour. It was a slow afternoon and a couple with their 5 year old came in. The little guy had a folding step stool which he deployed every few yards and checked out the scenes watching the trains run through them. Never said a word until he had completed navigating around the whole layout. He climbed down from his step stool, turned to his parents, spread his arms out as to encompass the entire layout and proclaimed to them, "I NEED one of THESE."
