Drive in theater help

I've seen portable players with the screen sticking up from a slot in the tablework, but they look too small. Try Wikipedia for real sites and seeing how many square feet of screen they advertised back in the day.

Realistically, the most glaring part of such a display is the smallness of the parking lot: NOBODY runs a theatre with only a dozen or so cars, but can you justify the real amount of space needed?

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Help with Drive-In Theater scene | O Gauge Railroading On Line Forum (ogaugerr.com)

Years ago I helped a friend build one on his layout. We used a small TV connected to a DVD player; the TV was backed up against & buried in a hill on the corner of his layout so only the screen showed; the speakers were made from some scale parking meters; and he even had a couple (possibly from Arttista) in a coupling position in one of the cars! As has been suggested for realism you will need a  lot of real estate for a large number of cars.

@Matt Bollinger posted:

I have been wanting to have a drive in theatre on my layout but I’ve been having trouble thinking about how it should be done.

Matt,

Old drive-In screens were in the neighborhood of 50 to 100 foot wide and roughly 25 to 50 foot tall.  Just food for thought, why not cut out a piece of cardboard 1 foot wide (48 scale feet) and 6 inches tall and see how that looks on your layout.  It will at least give you some reference as to what size screen you want vs. what size can fit on your layout.

bd

Mark the approach I was going to use on a layout that did not make fruition was to use a DVD player picked up at Radio Shack for use in a car for kids in the back seat.  the units mounted on the back of the front seat headrest. There are two pieces to this setup.  One is just a display screen the other a player/controls and a screen.

Was going to mount the individual screen up on a elevated areas with a parking lot easily seen.  The DVD player with screen and controls would be mount at an accessible place under to layout.

The movies played would vary to the area of trains running.

Some of the DVD's I have are,"American Graffiti",Creature from the Black Lagoon","The Day the Earth Stood Still", "Forbidden Planet", etc.

Ron