Weekend Promotional Event

Model railroading is not a very public activity in Summerside.  Not many people are aware that there is an active model railroading community in the area.  So, in an effort to increase awareness of the hobby and get some free advertising for Island Rails, we approached one of the local malls about setting up a layout for the day.

We thought we would be able to find a space in the mall common area where we could set up a small layout early in the morning and operate it for most of the day.  However, the mall manager offered us a vacant store where we could set it up and leave it set up for a few days!  What could be better than that!

So, this past Thurday evening we loaded up two trucks with our UMG modules and gear and set up our “small” layout.  It wasn’t so small and we pretty much filled the 14′ x 44′ store, but it was small by UMG setup standards (where we sometimes have to squeeze a layout into 30′ x 40′ spaces )

We were open to the public on Friday evening from 6 – 9 and pretty much all day Saturday from 10am to 6pm.  I couldn’t believe that there were people waiting at the door on Friday evening when we arrived!  There seemed to be a steady stream of visitors all evening.  The three hours went by so fast!

Saturday morning wasn’t much different with people waiting for us to open up.  There always seemed to be a few people looking at the layout and chatting until about 4:30.  The whole mall seemed like a ghost town.  A trip outside showed us why.  It was almost a double digit (temperature) day with nice warm sunshine.  Who’d want to shop on the first REAL day of spring!

With all the chatting I only managed to get a few pictures…

We used the new UMG Operator Cards for the first time.  These are the size of business cards and have the group’s name (UMG) and web address on one side and we “certify” new operators on the other side.  There is a post about these cards on the UMG web site.  Derwin is signing up a new operator, but the deal isn’t done until hands shake!

Some kids were very nervous about running a train while some couldn’t wait to get their hands on the throttle.  However, as nervous or excited as they were it seemed the younger they were the slower they went.  The older kids wanted to make the trains go FAST!  So fast in fact that we weren’t sure the rail stops at the ends of the earth would stop them!  But the little guys, and girls!, just wanted to see the train move and were hesitant to make them go too fast.  We didn’t sign up many adults as UMG engineers.  They seemed happy to just talk and watch.

Although we were not swamped with people, we did have a steady stream of  folks stopping by.  There always seemed to be 2 or 3 groups wandering through.  Here Brian is explaining something about model railroading.  Or is he explaining why we call orselves the Half Nuts Model Railroaders?

On the subject of “Lost & Found”… What, we weren’t talking about lost and found?  Oh well then… Ahem. On the subject of “Lost and Found” we had this interesting item dropped off to us by a passerby.  As soon as Derwin saw it he thought he had a new throttle!  We tried telling him it wouldn’t work and wasn’t a real telephone throttle, but he still tried to run trains with it.

I mentioned it got quiet later in the day on Saturday.  Well, it was really quiet from about 4:30 until we packed up at 6:00.  Then it got really noisy as the deconstruction began.  I took the opportunity  to take a picture of the whole set up before it was gone.  Here Brian and Curtis wander around hoping someone drops by.

We had lots of advertising for Island Rails posted and gave out lots of flyers for people to take home.  If the promotion was any indication the public portion of the Convention will be a success!

That’s it for now!

Scott