BMR report: de Nederlandse Modelspoordagen in Rijswijk

De Nederlandse Modelspoordagen (Dutch Model Railway Days) is one of the biggest model railway events in The Netherlands. It has more than 150 participants, ranging from small sellers to huge model displays. The event attracts thousands of visitors each year. I have been a regular at this show since 2018. Around August every year I tend to get get a few phone calls from the organizers of the event asking me if I’m able to participate again, which I of course do! The organizers of this event feel, like us, that LEGO is also a real model railway scale (and we all know that they’re right!) and a hot topic to attract youngsters into the hobby of scale railroading.

The Setup:

This year Raised and a few other builders tagged along for the ride, which was very convenient because we were given a quiet big space in the venue. The setup this year contained 2 layouts and a TrixBrix stand. The two layouts consisted of a 6-wide LEGO scale layout, and a 8 wide 1:45 scaled layout. The 6-wide layout consisted of Gerard Salden his LWR (Locomotive Workshop Rotterdam) and Station Zwolle by Victor and Fred Beijert. Both showed that you can build incredible and very large models in ‘official’ LEGO scale. The 8-wide layout consisted of Bahnbetriebswerk Neukirche (its final convention before being torn down) and Raised’s Dutch landscape layout.

The TrixBrix stand had a demonstration layout for there new automation project and a couple of TV screens showing videos of Bananenbuurman. He was also responsible for handing out flyers and giving more information to the visitors. Lastly, during the entire weekend Tamas de Groot was there to help out with our trains and to run around a couple of his 6-wide MOCs.

One of Tamas de Groot his models, a BR 44.

The tables were inconveniently deep, but that was mostly because they are normally used as market tables for the sales people (none of us have any modular tables as of yet… we should really do something about that). So we had to had climb on the tables to get to a train, which of course always stopped somewhere which you just can’t reach from the front of the layout. If you’re just as flexible as me, it’s a really fun thing to do every two hours.

Backdrop:

Just like we discussed in our LegoWorld 2019 report we used a backdrop for our layout again. We normally use white foamboards. However at this event our layout was positioned in such a way that a few black curtains gave a nice clean black background. We of course took advantage of this by organizing a few photoshoots. Everything went well until Enrico pulled a little to hard on the curtains and almost killed Raised. But hey, that could happen to everyone, right?

One of the many photoshoots we organised during that event.

Those large inconveniently deep tables did gave you the ability to have a birds-eye view of the layout.

Running trains?

Tradition stipulates there has to be one or two accidents at the show. My TEE showed a couple of design problems which have been fixed by now. One was that the streamlining of the motor unit would fall off and land right underneath the train, which resulted in several derailments. UrbanErwin’s mat 64 liked to lose at least 1 part for every lap that it ran. Oh, and we have to mention Raised his amazing magic trick with his NS 6400. 1 second it was on a siding, the next second it was just gone. At the exact same time, at the floor next to the layout a big pile of red and white bricks did appear. I’m still figuring out how it managed to do that.

UrbanErwin his Mat 64 resting after a long day at the event.

And there was the pile of red-white bricks

Recognizability

We did learn a very important lesson this event. During this 2 day long event we handed out hundreds of business cards and flyers. We had to restock our BMR business cards once every hour. The reason behind this is quit simple: model railroad fans want to look up more information at home, they want to find more information about layouts, products etc. Besides the fact that we had LEGO and a few flyers and business cards, they didn’t really have a clue what we do in the hobby. The amount of questions we had to answer for visitors was just staggering, but a lot of fun to do.

We feel the solution for this problem is adding more information about ourselves to the overall layout, like most of the old-school model railroaders already do, we found out. We do always have some information boards at our LegoWorld layout but those are always provided by the organization. Adding those on a regular base to the layout and maybe even a BMR banner gives visitors a lot more information and, hopefully turn more people towards the dark side, which is also known as LEGO trains!

More trains!

But the wait is over, here are some pictures and a video of our trains in action.

I would like to thank UrbanErwin for trusting us with his mat 64, which is still being held hostage at Raised’s house. It does seem to enjoy itself quite a lot there. Oh, and a thanks to the amazing organization for having us, we can’t wait until next year!

Ciao!

–Enrico.

–Raised.