[MOC] Train and farm display at Durham Cathedral

[BricksMcgee]

A few photos of a small LEGO train display I did as part of a small show at the weekend at Durham Cathedral as part of the 2nd birthday celebrations for the model (worth a look at the photos on their Facebook page).

This display uses standard LEGO City/Creator vehicles (not something I fancied building on top of 84 baseplates of landscape for the larger layout!), and techniques I've seen and experimented with myself. For example, the corn is based on an idea from a LUG show (photos in this thread).

Apologies for the quality of some of the photos - only had my phone with me on the day and some have come out a little dark! More of them are on flickr.

I'm working on the remaining three quarters of the layout for Bricktastic in Manchester this August, so there's more to come very soon, hopefully!

Doing this smaller show before then gave me a chance to test some of my ideas, so I'll leave you with some of my thoughts/discoveries:

1. having two long trains at the front of the small static layout does really block the view of the scenery behind (not an issue for the August show as trains will be moving!)

2. people really like finding the hidden scenarios in the display (e.g., hidden alien, construction worker caught short on the portaloo, farmer cleaning up after a cow) - gives it a little more impact, and rewards those who really look hard

3. the LEGO Minion to the left of the display was very popular (probably more so than my display!)

4. a lot of adults looking were surprised by what you can do with LEGO, and had lots of questions - so it's good to have some background knowledge and recommendations for local LUGs to help grow the community

5. using some actual LEGO sets was nice in that people recognised ones they had at home (and it saved me a lot of time!)

6. people will touch things! There were "no touching" signs on display, but no barriers (which I liked: more friendly). I purposely didn't have much towards the front that little (or larger) hands could get to. Nothing was stolen, and no harm was done - I'm not too precious about the LEGO I display so if kids (or the one adult I spotted) want to push the trains, I let them

Edited July 21, 2015 by BricksMcgee

[JopieK]

Nice job! I like your catenary! Keep on LEGO train-ing ;)

[BricksMcgee]

Nice job! I like your catenary! Keep on LEGO train-ing ;)

Thanks JopieK! Yes, worth the tedious effort now I look at it :)

The design of the catenaries are based on an idea I saw on Brickshelf on someone else's display (can't see the link now) - just adapted them a bit. For the show in Manchester they'll hopefully only be a single pole down the centre of the tracks which supports either side - uses a lot less bricks and less intensive to set up that way.

I had planned to link each catenary with LEGO strings with studs at either end, but it was very difficult to make them stable that way - so used some of the pieces on the telegraph/phone line instead.

[THERIZE]

Very cool! But why was there a minion?

Ps. The movie is terrible...

[dr_spock]

Nice. I do a kid view test by getting down on my knees and trying to see what the kids can or can't see on my display.

[BricksMcgee]

Very cool! But why was there a minion?

Why not? ;)

Nice. I do a kid view test by getting down on my knees and trying to see what the kids can or can't see on my display.

That's a good idea - will try that next time!