GMLTC.ORG

Night Trains goes Saturday nights until February 24th, so four more weeks (as I type this.)

Several weeks ago our new friend Chris stopped by the museum and was taking pictures. He showed me a couple, they were much better than the ones I take, so I asked if he would mind sharing a few with us. He said “Sure! Just tag me when you post them.”

So, Thank You @cdangproduction! 

https://www.facebook.com/cdangproduction

https://www.instagram.com/cdangproduction

Here are a few pictures we really liked:

Holiday Train on the big O Scale layout. Chris has much better panning technique than I do.

I’d call this a “calendar shot”!

Looking up river towards downtown Minneapolis on the big O Scale layout. Almost every thing in this picture is hand-made from scratch.

He didn’t forget about us LEGO^® builders, he got some nice shots of our layout as well:

Inside the new roundhouse. Lights by BrickStuff, and I still need to hide a few wires.

MicroScale ice castle.

Alpine village and mountain.

Our ‘downtown’, featuring the Fantastic Four building.

Our brightly lit Christmas tree. Since this was taken, we’ve added a train that goes around the tree, controlled by a button that kids can press.

Thanks again, Chris! 

As we head into the winter months and holiday season, it means it’s time for Night Trains at the Twin City Model Railroad Museum. Come in the evenings as we dim the main lights and light up all the displays! Advance tickets are available online.

Come see how the GMLTC train layout is growing, and see some of our seasonal displays before the snow melts off the layout! Our Thanksgiving Parade has returned for a few weeks, and KISS Saves Santa is back for the holidays. And there’s a whole lot more going on to be explored.

The museum also has some new and growing layouts that are worth a look. Nearly every train scale that exists is represented!

You might notice we no longer have a Twitter account, nor do we have a widget importing the Twitter feed of our recent tweets showing here on our website.

There are two main reasons:

1. Our Twittermaster (Michael Z.) was hit very hard by COVID in early 2020 and has been unable to participate so much in person with the club the past few years. This also means he hasn’t been able to tweet out club news as effectively. Long COVID is a horrible thing.
2. Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and subsequent destruction of any of its usefulness have made the social media site increasingly unsafe to use. The widget that allowed us to show our Twitter feed here broke months ago when Musk severed access to a number of APIs. Musk has also increasingly made the site a safe haven for harassers, abusers, and bigots, at the expense of the many good people that had developed meaningful, lasting social connections on the site. In some cases, he is actively endangering people. The new Twitter (or “X” as he has unfortunately rebranded it) Terms of Service that are being implemented next week are the final straw – extremely onerous and far too nosey about people’s personal business. As such, Michael has chosen to deactivate ALL Twitter accounts he was managing, including the club Twitter account (and accounts belonging two of his fleece puppets).

With some new members involved, the club is still actively building and engaging with fans at the Twin City Model Railroad Museum (tcmrm.org). There is currently an expansion of the layout underway there. Please find us there and see how the train layout grows!

And we’ll try to be better about posting news updates here.

We may also resurface on other social media sites in the future. Stay tuned.

Oh, it felt so good to be back together with a few thousand other LEGO fans!

We displayed our latest project, our first “5x” train layout. Everything built out of regular bricks, except up-sized to be five times bigger than the original models. We had lots of people stop and give us wonderful comments.

More pictures!

Each flower is about 5 inches tall. The tree is around 20 inches tall.

The original set was released in 1976. A simple crossing, with a sentry house and one of the original LEGO minfigures – before they had arms or faces. The pumper car we added, with Engineer Max and Engineer Maxine.

The original size, with our 5x version behind it.

The 5x pump car runs, but I need to upload the video to YouTube and link it from there: https://youtu.be/-Vmrd3ScImY

If you want to build your own 5x flowers, here are the directions:

So things have changed a bit since our last post…

Things have changed a LOT.

We’re all staying home, and staying apart, and wearing masks in public to protect each other.  The museum is still closed, but we’ve got a way you can check up on us:  We’re doing a ‘virtual open house’ this Saturday, April 25th.  1pm to 2:30pm Central time, we’ll be live on Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/events/651279429038990/

I think we’ll be able to take questions through the Facebook comments as well, so we hope to hear from you on Saturday.

The museum will also be shooting more video that day, we’ll send a link to that when it’s ready for viewing.

Are you watching LEGO Masters on FOX? We sure are, and we’re enjoying it very much. Will Arnett is a fun host and Jamie and Amy are tough but fair judges.  Building something amazing with a short time limit is really challenging, and all the teams have done really great builds so far.

Would we love to be on the show?  Of course!  But in the mean time, we’re hanging out at the Twin Cities Model Railroad Museum and building on the train layout and working on some new trains.

And, big news:  Saturday, April 4th is Smithsonian Museum Day at museums across the country.  You can sign up for FREE tickets at the Smithsonian Magazine website, including tickets to the TCMRM.  Last year we had a wonderfully crazy busy day at the museum, and we’re quite sure April 4th will be wonderfully crazy busy as well.

Come out and see us sometime!  We’d love to see you, and if you bring your LEGO train when a GMLTC club member is there we’ll let you run your train on our layout.

Has it really been almost a year since we last updated this website?  We tell people we’re lousy at promoting ourselves, I guess  that really is true…

But, even if we’re lousy at promoting, we’re great at building and displaying.  We’re still at the Twin City Model Railroad Museum, in a great spot right by the door as people enter – so they can’t miss us!  We constantly get great comments about the layout, and we love to talk to the guests and answer questions.  And we’re still willing to run your guest trains – if you bring your LEGO train when a GMLTC club member is there, we’ll pull our train off the tracks so you can run yours.

Come out and see us!  “Night Trains” is running for another month, through Saturday, February 29th.  Every Saturday night from 6pm to 9pm.

We’re approaching our first anniversary at the Twin City Model Railroad Museum and this has turned out to be a great partnership for us. We so very much appreciate them for taking a chance on us to host our train layout. We keep hearing from both TCMRM visitors and volunteers how happy they are to have us there. We really appreciate your support, both of our club and of the museum!

Layout #5 is growing. We’re finishing up the back side of the mountain and have something special we’re working on there in anticipation of the upcoming Lego Movie 2: The Second Part.

If you haven’t visited the museum, or you haven’t been there for awhile, please come out and see us. The museum is celebrating its 85th year (WOW!) this year. They’ll also be celebrating their third anniversary at the current location soon. Night Trains are still going on through the end of February, so this is your chance to see a whole bunch of train layouts at different scales, all lit up under moonlight conditions. (J-1 has been adding a lot of lights to our train layout over the past few months to help us fit right in!)

We still love guest trains! We’re trying to staff the layout during museum hours as many Saturdays and Sundays as we can, as well as some Fridays. So as long as one of us is on site, just ask!

We look forward to seeing you!

Greetings from the GMLTC!  It’s been a while since we posted, we’ve been busy building and working on our layout.

November 10th & 11th is Brick Fest Live at St. Paul RiverCenter.  Club members Jesse and Roger will have models on display, along with many other brick-related fun and games.

On the train layout front, now is a great time to visit the Twin Cities Model Railroad Museum!  November through February they’re running their very popular Night Trains, Saturday nights from 6pm – 9pm.  The room lights are turned off, blue lights simulate moonlight, and the layouts are lit.  Their famous O-Scale layout looks so nice with the lights down low.

We’ve been inspired to add more lights to our layout, too.

Museum hours:

Monday 10am to 3pm
Tuesday 10am to 3pm
Friday 10am to 3pm
Saturday 10am to 5pm, then Night Trains from 6pm to 9pm.  (Night Trains is a separate admission.)
Sunday 12pm to 5pm

We try to have GMLTC club members there on Saturdays & Sundays, and some Fridays.  Come out and visit us soon!