RMLI Historic Lionel Visitor's Center Layout Winter Update

Anthony it sure looks great! 

Anthony,

Your post is a year out of date!

Anthony, is this the layout that was at the "new" factory and built as a Christmas layout? Don

He meant 2012.  This is the Lionel showroom layout from the Lionel Visitor's Center in Chesterfield, MI... now in Riverhead, LI.  Best (and cheapest!) Tourist destination in town!

Jon 

Anthony:

I remember you from our time over on Railfan.net (Indian Valley RR). I saw a post on another forum mentioning truck work on the worlds fair train, as a park train enthusiast and Chance CP Huntington enthusiast/operator, could you go into more detail? Photos? 

Many thanks!  

Matt P. 

Thanks Jon, do you happen to know what happened to the Christmas layout? I filmed Richard Kughn running that layout sometime in the 80's I think. He loved it. It was new then. Still have the tape. Don

Nice job, Anthony!

The only thing that I find disappointing in this post is the name of a Lionel Accessory that is censored.  

Good Morning Gentlemen,

Indeed, I did mean 2012. I have not gotten that concept quite yet, and won't probably until June. Alas, our Grand Opening last year is still very vivid in my memory as well. Thank you all very much for your support and positive comments on the museum! In my 6 year tenure working with the museum, this is one of the most productive winters to date. As Aide de Camp I am extremely proud of our efforts, and large core of volunteers.

Don,  (scalerail)

This is the layout that was built around 1990 at the Lionel factories in ChesterfieldMichigan, depicting the original 1950's showroom layout in New York City. This layout was built by volunteers at Lionel and was as far as I know open year round for tours at Lionel by appointment only. I have seen photos of it all decked out for Christmas, so I would imagine that was a big event. This year we may do something similar at the RMLI, the second weekend this December (2012 :-) when Santa Clause himself will visit the museum.

Jon, (KOOLjock1)

Indeed, thank you very much. For $7.00 for adults and $4.00 for kids 5-12 you do get a lot compared to the local aquarium and water park. That price also includes admission to both our museums, which I think is an even better deal.

Matt, (SJC)

Nice to hear from you, long time no talk! Currently the museum has been working on rebuilding the two trucks from the fifth car of the World's Fair Train set, as part of an eventual goal to have all of the trucks rebuilt on the train set. For years the volunteers would strip parts off the cars, leaving the last two trucks from our "parts car" bare to the bone. This past fall committee members ordered new parts from a company that reproduces the train parts to complete the first truck. On this truck all the parts are brand new and are almost ready to go. The second truck from Coach 5 will be rebuilt in the coming weeks, with parts for that truck ordered and on there way The main objective is to have a set of emergency trucks incase one of our other cars needs to be fixed, the car can stay in service. Next winter another pair of trucks will be pulled and worked on. Plans are also in the works of restoring a fourth car into service on the train set. I’ll pull some pixs for you later in the day, when I am at my personal computer where facebook is not blocked.

Gandalf97,

Thank you! I was thinking the same thing, did not expect that

 Again, thank you all so much for your support.

Anthony

Oh, I almost forgot. We are also right now in the process of replacing all of the activation switches for the accessories with heavy duty ones. They will also now be on the side of the layout, rather then on top which just gave the temptation of touching things to little fingers that much greater

Hi Matt,

These blog articles give some info on the worl'd fair train:

http://rmlinews.blogspot.com/2...fying-simulator.html

http://rmlinews.blogspot.com/2...springs-eternal.html