[Brian Considine]

Exchanging a few views on another topic I wondered how many of the members here exhibit at shows - be it layout, demo stand, society stand or whatever.

Most people here know that Dave (BRITHO) & I, together with the assistance of Pam & Maggie operate St.Laurent en Ardennes on the exhibition circuit. SL was orignally built by Bill Roberts who was going to retire (scrap) it until Dave & myself "rescued" it, gave it a makeover (ongoing) & returned it to the exhibition circuit.

We try to interact with the paying public as much as possible, after all, it is their door money that has paid for you to be there.

It can be very hectic & tireing, but we all find it well rewarding also. We enjoy ourselves too & take a fairly laid back approach (hence taking the ICE3 through the station at max speed when there are lots of children watching). They also (the children that is) enjoy counting the wagons on the long freights & "penguin spotting".

As far as we are concerned we are putting on a show & entertaining people, hence the frontage of SL is the "stage" & the storage loops are "offstage". During the last outing at Brighton there seemed to be as many photo's taken of the storage loops as the front. The cameo scenes are popular & all the SL "crew" are depicted somewhere on the layout.

We get a fair amount of people asking if we mind if they take photos, which of course we don't, in fact we find it complimentry that people wish to take photos of our layout - amazingly, some operators object !

It would be interesting to learn other peoples views on the subject, so please post your input.

 

[Brian Considine]

QUOTE (Doug @ 25 Feb 2008, 14:38) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Sound like fun. Show us some photos then.

I did have the intention of taking some pics but it really was too hectic - the next show should not be too diffecult so I will have the pics then.

SL will be reassembled in the workshop in the next couple of weeks so I will do some then as well.

 

[Brian Considine]

QUOTE (80class @ 25 Mar 2008, 21:38) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Seriously, these sort of incidents seem to be all too common these days. I guess we'll all have to either get used to it, erect steel barricade around out layouts or else stop exhibiting if things continue to get worse!

We have now taken SL to about 10 or so shows now, we have had our fair share of finger prodding and fortunatly only minor damage to date. Barriers supplied to date varied.

However, at the last outing (Brighton Model World) we asked for barriers & within minutes the Brighton Centre Staff had provided some steel crowd control barriers (thanks guys) - result - absolutely no problems at all in 3 very busy days & easy for people to take pictures.

Pity that these measures seem necessary, but that's life.

 

[Brian Considine]

QUOTE (ebaykal @ 26 Mar 2008, 09:31) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Brian, talking about taking measures........

..a recently visited Hobbyshop.

Humans have the instinct or whatever you call it ,to touch and mingle things.
Looks damm ugly but the shop keeper thinks otherwise.

Baykal

Hi Baykal,

Shops are a little different - maybe that's why people think they can touch an exhibit ?

Generally, in shops it's expected that people pick things up to look at & touch them.

Most shops I have seen that have working displays & such tend to have them under glass (in the UK anyway). At least, hopefully the mesh gets the message accross.