Legoworld 2018 Train Layout (1:45) Report

As some of you might know by now, I’m one of the few Contributors (the only?) of BMR that lives on the other side of the pond, ie. in Europe and more specifically in The Netherlands. Compared to the US, some things in Europe are a bit different structured when it comes to running a Lego Train Club. For one, there are no such things as LTC’s in Europe. Second, instead of organizing in regions, we tend to organize ourselves per country. This means that most of our LUGs are bigger and more diverse than in the US, with builders doing Space, Castle, City and all others in one club. Third, since train builders are a minority in most of these clubs to begin with, we tend to not do big layouts like the US-based LTC’s. Fourth, most of our exhebitions are part of bigger Lego festivals, but almost never part of a Model Railroaders event. This means that one a whole, most of the European train layouts are or one-off builds by 1 or maximum 2 builders, or are static displays on a kid-centered event that don’t really give the love that our scale-craziness “deserves”. Deserves obviously in quotation marks because indeed, we do get credits for our trains, but on a different level than US LTC’s that might show off at the NMRA for example.

Trains at Legoworld

The standard pre-show day at Legoworld in Utrecht, NL. Tables with shrouding, supplied by TLC.

However, that all doesn’t mean we don’t build elaborate layouts. It just means we do it a little bit less often, and when we do it, it’s mostly because of some huge show that wants to show off the best there is when it comes to AFOL building. For us in The Netherlands this typically means Legoworld, a yearly one week event that is held by TLC in Utrecht, the so-called center of our little country. Legoworld actually used to be organized by one of the local LUGs, De Bouwsteen, in Zwolle, but at one point after some intense co-operation with TLC, it was decided to hand over the organization to our favorite commercial plastic bricks producing company.

Anyway, in the last several years there always have been some kind of group train layouts, most of them organized on an ad-hoc basis (which is partly also due to the way my own LUG, Lowlug, is organized) but with some standard rules, the major being the use of MILS and the Lowlug Lego Train Standard for connecting track between modules. In the previous years this was a six-wide style layout, but for 2018 we as members of Lowlug decided there should be a layout specifically for eight-widers as well, and the rest is history.

I can now ofcourse keep on telling how this all came to fruition, but to be honest, one of your fellow members is currently writing something like that, so I’m just going to leave you with one fact: Before setting up the layout at the show, we had never tested if everything fit together. It actually did really well, proving once and for all that the internet has some great promises for us in the future.

Layout

Different than ‘normal’, our layout was build in diorama style, meaning most of the layout was a straight line with a backdrop, with a half circle on both ends that lead into a Shadow Station + track. This means that half of the layout wasn’t part of the actual layout, just like in for example most British model railways.

Fiddle Yard — The Shadow Station, with several of our trains standing by

There were some really great advantages to this design, the major being that we had an extremely long line of sight for running our 10+ container trains. It also meant we could have a station-to-station layout, meaning that at both ends we had a station where (theoretically) trains could stop. This also means there was an actualy ‘story’ to be told to children coming to visit Legoworld; the train left the one station, ran trough the Dutch landscape, and then arrived in the other train station, before making a turn and running out of sight.

Part of the layout, with the Shadow Station on the left, and our diorama on the right. It’s a bit dificult to see the height of the backdrop, but I can assure you, it was just a little bit too high…

There were also some major downturns for this, one being that some of our BT devices didn’t have the reach that was necessary (our layout was more than 10m long, which tends to bit of a problem for BT), and the fact that the backdrop was a little bit too high, meaning it wasn’t possible to see which trains were running through the diorama if you were standing at the shadow station and vice-versa. If you want to know if the line is clear, this can be a bit of a pain in the butt. During seven days the most shouted sentence was simply “Is the line clear?”. The second one by the way was “Whose part is this?! Is it yours again raised?!” when again something fell off one of my trains..

The favorite part of running any lego train: Fixing all those loose elements every 10 minutes.

The Event

Since Legoworld is a 8 day event (9 if you include the pre-show day) and since trains are the one theme that needs the most attention during a show all the time, it’s a quite stressfull event. As said above, Lego trains tend to break down every now and then, but also batteries need to be charged, and to keep the public happy, you need to change trains as well every 30-60 minutes. I already can’t reamember anymore how many times an eight year old came to me asking me “Sir, why isn’t that other train running?” or “Sir, why are you taking that train off the tracks? With which are you going to replace it?”. Ofcourse the other question (mainly hinted on by parents) was “Sir, how long did it take you to build this, and how many bricks are in it?”, but that’s ofcourse part of showing your layout at a children’s event like Legoworld.

In total our group consisted of 6 persons, but due to private and professional appointments, most of the days between 4 and 5 of us were attending at any time. Because during those 8 days we had over 100.000 vistitors, it just wasn’t possible to have two unreliable trains run at the same time. So most of the time the inner circle had a DE3 diesel, or a NS1600 running, both of them wich were impressive (3 car close coupled in grey and a loco + 10 wagons) and ran without any hiccups. On the outer loop, we were most of the time experimenting with for example the PUP system, loco’s with the PFx Brick, or even sometimes running several trains at one track, all based on line of sight to avoid collisions. When you are 8 days at an event, you stop caring a little bit about prototypical running…

During the event, we ran a plethora of Rakes, all of them Dutch or German. For example, we had a Old School NS 1200 (designed by Baldwin!), two NS 1800 electrics and a NS 1100 that were coupled with or our IC train with four wagons, or our container train with 10+ wagons. We also had several Steam engines with DB and DR passenger wagons, a German V100 with 7 boxcars, a small “Sik” shunter, a 1930ies streamlined DE3 diesel, a NS 6400 utilitarian diesel loco with two coal wagons, but also for example the Torpedo Wagon for steel transport by Stephanix, who was showing his Lego Ideas “Anatomini” project at the tables next to us. Below you can see some of them running around.

Because we in fact only had two loops, most of our trains stood idle at sidings during the event. Because of the nature of Legoworld, it was possible for kids to see these trains at our Shadow Station, and next to that we had a small fiddle yard in the middle of the diorama. We had planned to do some shunting in this Fiddle Yard, but it turned out that most of our loco’s had to cross onto the main railway line to do some actual shunting. Since we always had a train running on those both lines this unfortunately wasn’t possible, so we decided to do line-ups on these tracks instead. Definately a lesson learned for next time.

Scenic Pictures and Impressions

A small Cargo running towards the end of the line

Most of the layout in one shot, from the typical Dutch Flatlands via a bridge over the railroad to the town with Classic Railway Station

The elevated Railway station at the other end of the line. A Hybrid of French and Dutch architecture.

Strange visitors on the layout

A typical Dutch familiy in front of a typical Dutch road crossing

The “Flying Wheel”, one of the idents of the Dutch Railways

A DE3 diesel rushing through the Dutch landscape

A Steamer running over the Elevated Track section

The most left part of the layout with tram. Our trains were turning in the curve behind these buildings.

Overview of the layout, seen from the Yard of the Railway Museum

Whoops! That’s what happens when you don’t properly modify your Double Crossing.

The reason you are here for: Running trains!

Media and BMR

Obviously, since one of us (being me) is part of BMR, we had to show BMR were actually attending. It wasn’t really big or anything (we didn’t sell any of our kits or merch, that would have been both almost impossible, and Europeans tend to care a little bit less about US boxcars, trust me…) but we did print contact cards with our Logos on it, which in fact were picked up quite often. So if you read this after picking up that contact card: Thanks!

Yes, those are Trainspotters in the background

Also, since this is the main event held by TLC and with Legos in The Netherlands, there is a lot of media attention every year. This year was even better than previous years, because one of our members actually showed up on national television, and the Dutch Railways made a short promo in which two of our other members starred. Yes, there is a lot of love for the brick in Holland!

Yes, both Enrico’s name, the Legoworld and TLC logos are blurred out. It’s a broadcast of the Public TV, after all.

2019?

So, after all of this, the obvious question is: Will we attend next year again? Well, what do you think yourselves? Ofcourse we will! So stay tuned somewhere March 2020 for a follow-up article here at BMR!