The annual Tidewater Big Train Operators (TBTO) Holiday train show is the largest and longest lasting display that our club sets up. We take over an entire gymnasium and the show runs for eight days.
Our layout for this year was the “mini-Christmas tree and small vignettes” layout. It is also one of the most complicated layouts we’ve done to date. We managed to squeeze over 150 feet of track into our allotted 8′ x 24′ space. The milk and cookies train, being pulled by our Troll engineered loco is running on a circle of track only 33 inches in diameter.
The “Stagecoach” train is modelled on actual passenger cars from the beginning of the steam train era as can be seen at the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. They ended up being very special to one visitor to the show. Our club schedules one day during the show when we open it up earlier in the day for folks with more limited mobility. In the evenings it can get very crowded and it is hard to move around due to the number of people. One of the gentlemen visiting this day was a retired Baltimore and Ohio railroad worker and he had been at the museum the day the original passenger car was brought in and put on display.
Dismal Creek Railroad 