An Idea for a Universal Module for a T-to-the-Fourth Power National Show
This is a photo of a track arrangement called a Grand Junction (or sometimes a "Grand Union"), not uncommon in street railways of the Reminiscence Age (1900-1950) .
Picture some skilled model trackworker in, for example, P Scale --- two inches to the foot, 9 1/2 inch gauge --- working assiduously at home to build that trackwork to pre-arranged, pre-determined track standards and clearances, and mounting that trackwork on a three-quarter-inch plywood base .
He then brings it with him in his pickup truck or small trailer*** to the Grand Transit-Traction-Trolley-Tram Model Electric Railways Meet at the Magnificent Resort Hotel and Conference Center in Center City, Florida [You'll notice that I refuse to get specific at this time ! ] , sets it up on a sturdy chest-high table in their Grand Ballroom, and waits for the other pre-arranged modules to show up.
Each of them brings their connecting straight line of a street scene OR even a trolley barn, conforming to standards in the widely distributed 2"=1' P Scale Module Standards Manual, connects one module at each compass point. Then everyone else excitedly places their Birney or Peter Witt on the tracks and our First Annual Grand etc. Meet gets off to a spectacular start.
Swarms of brand new garage-based entrepreneurs bring their scale accessories; building fronts; trackside details; 10- to 12- inch high miniature (action) figures, accurately dressed in their best NON-MILITARY 1937-era street clothes; some spectacular, highly detailed, large scale model automobiles, including the new Chrysler Airflow and the slick new Buick ("Ask the man who owns one") ; accurately uniformed street railway figures, such as motormen, conductors, track workers with tools; PLUS trolley and tram books, videos, recordings, and pictorial history books; and any other traction memorabilia limited only by their imagination and the size of their collections .
Trolley museums and model traction clubs desperately seeking new members will have set up information stands around the hall, staffed by bright, cheerful members, the very best representatives of their club . The Grand Junction would be placed in the very center of the huge Exhibition Hall to greet the awestruck public, press, and other visitors as they swarm around the exhibits . Smaller modules and display stands will show the very best of a wonderful hobby, models that most people had never witnessed in the original prototype size . Also present would be celebrities who have been keeping their shameful secret interest in traction and miniature modeling to themselves until now. Dozens of professional videographers as well as members of the hobby press and the Mainstream Media, including 60 Minutes and Fox News, would be running busily around interviewing hobbyists and politicians hoping to associate themselves with this wholesome, hometown, nostalgic vision of a previous, peaceful age. The thousands of miniature hobbyists, until now used to smaller scales, will stagger back in shock and admiration when seeing P Scale for the first time.
If you guys can pull that off, I promise to be there !! ... and will Blog about it for months !
*** If the best track builder is not the person with the biggest pickup truck, it may be possible to send the Grand Junction Module to Florida by a delivery service or trucking company.
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