This is for any club member modular or permanent. Reading Ted's post about last weekend's open house got me thinking, when you host open houses or set up in public do you feel the crowds react more to prototypical trains like long coal drags, and unit trains, mixed freights or more colorful or fanciful like billboard reefers, operating cars and character and Holiday cars?
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Joe,
We hold a monthly open house at the Mebane display and have visitors of all ages. "Prototypical" trains for the purist are run along with kid friendly type such as Thomas. The layout has the capacity to have 8 trains operating at once so the consists can be varied. Buttons located on the fascia allow visitors to operate various accessories. There also is a train tree.
The visitors enjoy it all.
Check out the website and Facebook page for videos of recent open houses.
@coach joe posted:This is for any club member modular or permanent. Reading Ted's post about last weekend's open house got me thinking, when you host open houses or set up in public do you feel the crowds react more to prototypical trains like long coal drags, and unit trains, mixed freights or more colorful or fanciful like billboard reefers, operating cars and character and Holiday cars?
I know that kids react more to the fantasy and other colorful cars. Many of the younger kids like the small stuff, so I bring plenty of that to our modular shows. If you entertain the kids, the parents are entertained as well. 
The club in our town has a kids layout that is pretty impressive, that will allow two separate trains to be run at the same time, all by push button and set up to not have any collision scenarios or high speed capabilities. The will put theme trains on the tracks Thomas, Polar Express, even some Halloween themed plus Bunny trains at Easter. But the main line is prototypical except at Christmas where the Polar Express can be seen now and then.
Our club is located pretty far out in the boonies from the area small towns but only 5 miles north of I-40 on a bison ranch. The owners have a vacation rental business and we are housed in their 'RR Station' above the gift shop, game room, and laundry. It's a nice setting with a herd of 30+ American bison and several real cabooses to stay in. The layout is typical 'high rail' with a mix of realism and fantasy - Yes, the cow is being abducted by a UFO ..er, UAP and we have a large circus and all the usual accessories. Also have two 'cubicles' beneath the layout for the little kids with a Frozen setting and a Lone Ranger setting that are a big hit with the wee ones. As others here are doing, we also run a mix of semi-prototypical trains with passenger and freight as well as fantasy sets at our open houses. The room is 50' x 30' with wall to wall trains!
Buffalos' Creek Vacations. Clyde, NC. Smokey Mountain Model RR Club
It really depends on the crowd and the day.
This is N&W country and the guys love to run N&W steam: J's, Class A's and Y6b's.
People generally love it, but then a kid once came up and asked me, "when are were going to see some cool diesels?"
Generally, in Central VA military trains are well received.
I will run unit trains like the Tropicana, which comes through town a few days a week and people will recognize......
My Giraffe Train is usally a big hit with the kids.
The people love Christmas trains at Christmas.....and, we get lots of requsts for Thomas.
At York, where PostWar means something, I'll run a complete PostWar set and have the catalog nearby.
So there you have it......it's all over the place......and, you can't predict......
Peter
If I've learned anything... the train people want to see, is the one thats still sitting on the table in the middle. "When is that train going to run?"
Our club runs seven different layouts and gauges. Adult and kid stuff. It seems all are pleased.
I give plastic train whistles to the kids and they are really pleased. Not our ears though.
My club has a 4,000 sq. ft. inside HO display and a G gauge and O gauge garden railroad.
It is my experience that it really doesn't matter what is running at a general public train show. Just run a lot of trains. The public doesn't know one train from the next and could care less if it is prototypical or not. It is helpful if you can hand a kid a remote controller and let them blow the whistle, etc.
If you have a bus load of NMRA members coming to your show, however, you better be running prototypical trains unless you want to hear some distressing comments. NH Joe
we need to keep the kids happy and interested, so they want to get involved in the hobby.
My boys and my niece like playing with anything fantasy, lighted, and they love all the missile cars, and platforms.
My club runs anything and everything, from prototypical freight and passenger consists to non-prototypical mixes of eras of freight to fantasy stuff (Polar Express, Lionel Phantom, Coors Light Silver Bullet Train, etc.) to Postwar Lionel to modern tinplate. And we have a wide mix of people who like these things on a case-by-case basis. We get requests, and we try to honor the requests where possible. 
Often times the setting or time of the setup influences us as to what we run. We tend towards the prototypical consists and mixed-era freight with a little fantasy or whimsy mixed in when at train shows, and a little more fantasy and PW/toy/tinplate at holiday shows and setups for non-train-people setups. We also like lots of humor and like to show how much fun we have with this hobby.
Andy
Thank you all for your replies. It seems like most of the clubs run a mix to appeal to any visitor demographic. If there's something for everyone we'll get a good response.
I have always found that lights, sounds and motion (Lemax and Department 56) tend to draw people into the scenery aspect of our club displays more so than realistic scenery. As far as trains, novelty trains tend to draw more interest than the typical train that they can see at the nearest railroad crossing. The Lifesaver train, M&M train, Girls train, Polar Express, Thomas, and, of course, the John Deere train are crowd pleasers. Older trains with a story behind them tend to be a nice way to converse with people. In fact, any train with a story tends to draw people in to conversation.
The children really love seeing Thomas and the Polar Express.
Neal Jeter
They love everything we have And we have a little of everything for everyone
Considering that my trademark is gi-raffe trains of up to ten gi-raffe cars, well...
It's one reason that I rarely operate, say, Pennsy passenger consists at shows for the public. They're handsome, but not necessarily wham-bam amazing.
Mitch
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