Recently I had the pleasure of participating in LEGO train displays at two train shows here in the Northeast United States. The first was the annual Amherst Railway Society’s Railroad Hobby Show with the New England LEGO User Group. The second was the Great Scale Model Train Show with the second ever L-Gauge Modular Standard display. These were both great shows, and were a lot of fun. Here is a report on both these events.

Amherst Railway Society 52nd Annual Railroad Hobby Show

Every year around late January, the Amherst Railway Society holds its Railroad Hobby Show at the Eastern States Exposition Fairgrounds (The home of The Big E) in West Springfield, Massachusetts. Each year roughly 20,000 railfans and public attend the Show. The show occupies four large buildings on the Expo Grounds, totaling roughly 11 acres of show space filled with trains. The Amherst show is the largest railroad hobby show in North America, attracting major model train manufactures and vendors, numerous railroad historical societies, and dozens of model railroad club layouts.

Farm on the NELUG layout.

This year, the show was held on Saturday January 25th & Sunday 26th. The New England LEGO Users Group was there displaying their amazing Lego train/city layout at the show again this year. Fellow PennLUG member Nate Robinson and I traveled up to participate in the display, represent Brick Model Railroader, and experience the show.

The New England LEGO Users Group has displayed their LEGO train layout at the Amherst show for the past several years, and were back again this year in their usual spot inside the Mallary building. NELUG’s layout featured several operating loops track, a large rail yard, a detailed city area and plenty of great landscaping details.

This is the 3rd year I have attended the show and participated with NELUG. The club has been very friendly, and has always been welcoming of guests to the display. I love spending time with fellow LEGO train fans at the show.

Monson Railroad Steam Locomotive #3 at the show.

The Amherst train show itself is amazing, and sometimes a little overwhelming. There is so much to do and see at the show, so much inspiring layouts to study, so many one of a kind railroad items to spend money on, and so many new products to dream about, that the show is impossible to cover in one day. You could spend the full two days at the show and still not see everything. It really is a wonderland for the train hobby. If you have the means to attend, I highly recommend it. I’m already planning my trip for next year.

Amherst 2020 Photo Gallery

L-Gauge Modular Standard at the Great Scale Model Train Show

The original Great Scale Model Train Show and companion Hi-Rail & Collectors Train Show are held in Timonium, MD in February, April, June, and October. The show is held in the “Cow Palace,” a 3 and 1/2 acre building on the Maryland State Fair grounds in Timonium, Maryland. The show hosts huge vendor, model train manufacturer, and layout display areas. Nate Robinson again attended with me, but Glenn was also able to make it to the show for Saturday.

The town of Red Lion, part of the LGMS LEGO train layout at the Great Scale Model Train Show.



The winter show this year was held on February 1st and 2nd, and was the first time a L-Gauge Modular Standard, LEGO train layout was displayed at the show. The display was organized buy Monty Smith, with participation from several area LEGO clubs including PennLUG, Charm City LUG, and WamaLTC.

Nate Robinson’s 30 car boxcar train circled almost half the layout. Meanwhile Glenn Holland’s BC&G 13 ran like a finely crafted watch.

This is only the second time an official layout has been organized using the L-Gauge Modular Standard (LGMS), and with the exception of myself, was made up entirely builders who have never participated with an LGMS layout before (even Glenn). As a result, this show was a true test of the LGMS concept, and I’m very happy to say that it was a great success.

My Red Lion 1940’s layout was part of the LGMS display. The plan included and LGMS compatible corner module to connect Red Lion to the LGMS main lines.

Nate Robinson built this excellent set of LGMS modules for the layout.

Monty Smith, the Layout Chief for the display has shared a few thoughts from his experience. These have been reprinted here with permission.

Monty’s Reflections on the Great Scale Model Train Show LGMS Layout.

Right, I’ve had a couple of days after the LGMS show this weekend to consider how it all went, and I offer unto you this write-up of all the learning points I could come up with. Most of it pertains directly to LGMS, but some of it is just general train show matters. While I have many years of show experience displaying by myself, I have very little experience displaying with groups, and this was my first time leading the charge for such a group. It was a good application of my skill set, but still a learning experience.

RECRUITMENT: The standard is of course still rather new, so it was a bit tricky to source modules, especially corners. I think everyone who participated built their modules specifically for this show (or at least modified existing builds to meet the standards), and I had to ask folks not only to build corners, but I asked one participant to include a switch leading to the staging yard on his corner module. I think it would do well for any layout coordinator to have at least one corner module (or a pair of turnaround loops, perhaps?) in their personal collection, just to make the recruitment process a bit easier. I would also advise vetting your module entries before the show.

Some quality collaboration was shown by one participant who built a wye into their module, which required intruding on neighboring modules by 16 studs of track on the outside mainline. He arranged with the adjacent module builders well ahead of time to make sure this would be accommodated, and it worked out just fine.

LAYOUT PLANNING: Thankfully, the LGMS concept makes it easy to plan a layout, just arrange the modules within the space allotted by the show organizers. Our layout was quite narrow at 10 feet wide (only 5 feet wide inside the layout, and a double-depth module made things worse), so I think I will have to arrange for a wider space next time, as it was just a little cramped and crowded. One participant observed that having two separate areas for people to sit in can be isolating at times, socializing is easier when everyone can sit near each other. In the future, I will arrange a layout so that there is enough space for everyone to sit and chat in one area, or at least have those areas directly adjacent (separated by only the width of one module).

The layout included a crossover on one module to connect the inside main to the outside main, as the outside main had the switch leading to the staging yard. The yard lead and crossover were separated by some distance, and included a tunnel and bridge in between them. For future operational efficiency, I would recommend placing such crossovers as close to the yard as possible.

SETUP: Setup went very smoothly, everyone involved was very experienced with shows, so we had the majority of the layout done in 4 hours. One member arrived later than everyone else (In retrospect I should have made sure to have all participants’ phone numbers) and while awaiting his arrival, we began making back-up plans for the apparent gap in our layout. Once again, it would probably do the layout coordinator well to have a last-minute-replacement module or two in their back pocket, just in case. We also found that the floor of the venue was rather uneven, which resulted in a bit of a grade around one corner, which created issues for some trains. Next time we will bring a level and spend a bit more time shimming the tables.

OPERATIONS: My intention was to have a sign-up sheet with hour-long blocks for everyone to pick times that they’d like to run trains. This went completely out the window. Some members did not have motive power of their own (understandable, as the motive power they did own was 9V) and at least one participant never ran a train throughout the weekend. I was expecting the signup list to overflow, but instead I found myself asking multiple times over the weekend if someone could please run a train. In light of the lack of motive power, I brought a “community” engine for anyone to borrow if they needed it. My goal was to always have two trains running, but I had to settle for one train at times, simply because nobody was available to run a train, or their locomotive batteries weren’t charged up yet. In fact, at one point, I was the only person at the layout (other participants had gone off to shop or get food) who was running trains for well over an hour. Bottom line, I think I’d like to more strictly enforce the sign-up sheet for the next show, but I’ll make the time blocks more flexible, as some people wanted to run for longer than an hour.

STAGING: First of all, my dumb/optimistic brain said “Oh, we can just use venue tables for the staging yard, it’ll be fine!” NO. IT WASN’T. In fact, I am so disillusioned with venue tables that I will be investing in my own fleet of 30×60 tables, both for my personal layout and for group shows. The staging yard (on two 30×96 venue tables) had some VERY nasty bows in it, which meant that rolling stock would run away when you placed it on the track.

The yard was made of unballasted track (I didn’t consider it reasonable to ask anyone to produce a vast amount of ballasted track in this particular arrangement for this single occasion) but I did, at the last minute, decide to place some 48×48 baseplates under the track (rather than tablecloths), to keep in line with the “all-stud-surface” rule. I had a single R104 switch leading to two of the six staging tracks, the other tracks were accessible by R40 switches, which pretty much didn’t work at all for our 8-wide rolling stock (I could’ve sworn my 8-wide stuff put up with R40 switches before, but it certainly didn’t this time). I will invest in more R104 switches for the staging yard before our next show.

Also, I think “Staging” was not the correct term to use. The purpose of the yard, in my mind, was to have a place to set trains on the track and provide seamless transitions between trains as one train leaves the yard to run on the main line, and the previous train enters the yard to be put back in its boxes. Instead, the staging yard very quickly became clogged with parked trains. So, I would say any layout needs FAR more staging (after all, it’s a bit frustrating to take a train off the track after your morning run if you’re just going to get it back out of the box in the afternoon) if the goal is to park trains in between same-day running sessions, rather than just a setup track. It would also be wise to have some staging directly accessible from the inside loop, even if it’s only one or two sidings. One club I spoke with at the show had a reserved staging method, where each participant had their own staging track to use as they please. Given that only 3 or 4 of our ~12 participants were looking for space to park a lot of rolling stock, I’d like to try this out at the next show.

SKIRTING: I provided the skirting from my own show equipment. I had enough to cover the outside of the layout, but not the inside. I prefer to cover both outside and inside edges to hide all the boxes and clutter under the tables, but I ran out of skirt. I had a couple of gaps in the skirting, and one module with an arch bridge on a lowered table (like ~10 inches off the ground table) did not get any skirting, as I didn’t have anything to suit such a low table. I think a “recommended practice” of providing black skirting for your own modules would have solved these problems.

PUBLIC INTERACTION: Everyone was very good about engaging with the public. Some kind of LGMS banner would have been nice, as we got asked many times what our club was, which required a slightly lengthy explanation about how we’re all in LUGs, but this is a collaborative effort. We received nothing but compliments from everyone who visited our layout, quite a few fellow exhibitors remarked “I’ve seen Lego setups before, but never anything like this!!” I think this speaks well to the high layout standards set by LGMS.

BRIDGE: My drawbridge failed once during the weekend, when a very heavy locomotive set (the owner had added a pound of fishing weights to each of three engines for increased traction) attempted to cross. Because of the unexpected weight, the leaf span separated from the substructure, but I have intentionally arranged my bridge so that each end of the leaf span is over the table. Note that the weight was not too much for the actual construction of the bridge, merely the hinge point for the leaf span. It was a bit of a spectacle, as a train was passing on the other main at that exact moment, but the trouble was soon corrected, and a makeshift repair was made to the bridge to keep us operating for the weekend. I will address the issue when I bring the bridge into the workshop for upgrades before the summer. I would suggest some kind of standard or recommended practice for how much weight a bridge, or any track substructure, can hold. I also found that the uneven floor of the venue caused the leaf span to not sit QUITE level, which caused some issues for sensitive rolling stock on the gaps between the leaf span and the rest of the layout. Again, more time on shimming was needed.

TABLE HEIGHT: The 32 and 3/16 height meant that most of the tables needed something under the legs to bring them up to proper height. Everyone had their own methods of raising their tables to that height, some of which were better than others. Everyone using the Lancaster 30×60 tables used some manner of wooden blocks under the legs, which others observed could be knocked off their blocks by an accidental bump, which could spell disaster. Not to re-open the argument again, but I think an advantage of the previous table height (37 and 5/16 or whatever it was) meant that your table-raising methods for a 30×60 folding table would have to be more robust. Either way, several of us agreed that a “recommended practice” should be added for a proper/stable/secure way to raise the Lancaster 30×60 table, if we’re going to keep recommending that table as the go-to.

LIGHTING: The overhead lighting in the venue was garbage. One side of the layout was very much in shadow. An HO scale club at this show brings their own overhead lamps that hang off the backdrops of their modules, I’m considering bringing a few rented towers of LED concert light fixtures to wash the layout in a favorable light. Might even drag in a friend with a video camera and some photography lights to film our trains for a few hours.

I am open to questions and comments, and I look forward to applying all the gathered knowledge to making our next show even better! Make only new mistakes!

This small, but excellent module from BrickZfrom9to5 shows that even a simple 30″x30″ LGMS module can look great.

Final Thoughts on the LGMS layout at Timonium

A Monty pointed out, this display was not without it’s challenges, and certainly will be a learning example for future LGMS improvements. But I think it’s a testament to the soundness of the LGMS concept that several builders, most of whom have never collaborated before, were able to come together and create a LEGO train layout that looked amazing, and functioned well. Throughout the weekend I heard compliment after compliment from show attendees, and even praise from other model railroad clubs. Everyone was impressed with the detail, and artistry of our layout. I think it’s safe to say we all had a great time during the show, and everyone involved is interested in returning for future shows. The next Great Scale show is coming up in May, and we are in talks to with the show organizers to display again. As soon as we know more, we will post an announcement here on Brick Model Railroader.

Great Scale Model Train Show LGMS Photo Gallery