Talking T Gauge

trainspotter-usa · Joined: 04 Sep 2008 Posts: 315 Location: Minnesota

Well I'm back from the St. Cloud train show and pretty exhausted!
The show went well and Hitsu ran almost perfectly for the entire 5 1/2 hour show.
People were amazed at the small size of the trains and stopped to watch every time they saw a train pass by. Many folks thought it was Z gauge so I had to put them straight on that point. Quite a few folks knew it was T gauge. Mainly because they had heard the show manager on local radio in the previous weeks plugging the show. I too was interviewed by the local radio station, which also bought people into the show. People came up to the layout and said "I heard you on the radio earlier"
I learned a lot from exhibiting the layout and it means that there will be wholesale changes to the layout before it goes out again. That does mean a rebuild but it will still be Hitsu. Just Hitsu version 2.0.
So what was wrong?
First the track was too close to the edges at points. Which I never liked the look of anyway. But when stock fell off the track it fell off the layout luckily only onto the table the layout rested on but it would have been so easy for it to fall onto the floor.
Second, I had for this show added the catenary simply because it looked different. But that made it so very difficult to clean the track and as a result I actually broke or bent many of the masts. This even resulted in one of the trains being pulled off the track by the pantogtraph and managing to pull a coupler out of the coupler pocket! As the track had to be cleaned hourly the catenary getting in the way became rather annoying after a while.
Keeping the wheels clean with the wheel cleaner was easy and as a consequence the running really was excellent. At one point I ran 4 powered cars together and they ran wonderfully together.
I'm very happy with the experience of operating Hitsu . But I think now I will be taking a little break, letting my eyes recover and coming up with a new concept for the trackplan.

Ian
_________________
I CAN see how cool this stuff is!!!
http://more-t-please.blogspot.com/

TBA · Joined: 08 Sep 2008 Posts: 120 Location: Massachusetts

So now you're a celebrity, eh? Laughing

Maybe next time you can have a piece of Z scale equipment and track handy for spectators to drive home the size difference.

A low wall of thin clear plastic sheet at the edge of the layout might help errant trains from finding the floor.

It's good to hear layouts running well at these public events.
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Brian Austin

zomer · Posted: Sun Dec 14, 2008 10:27 am Post subject:

Congratulations Ian. Sounds like all went well. Good to see that T-Gauge is being well accepted by the general community. Do you have any pictures of the layout while on show?
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Victorian T Gauge Blog
http://www.victorian-tgauge.blogspot.com/

trainspotter-usa · Joined: 04 Sep 2008 Posts: 315 Location: Minnesota

Actually I don't have any pictures of the layout at the show. I was so busy keeping an eye on the layout and telling the public about T that I just didn't have the spare time. I didn't even get a chance to look around the show myself. I did pose my finger in a few shots for members of the public though

Ian
_________________
I CAN see how cool this stuff is!!!
http://more-t-please.blogspot.com/

zomer · Posted: Sun Dec 14, 2008 10:38 pm Post subject: