Helpful Hint - Guest Book for Your Model Railroad Layout

Copyright 2020 Nicholas Kalis

Helpful Hint

Refillable Guest Book Green with Gold Leaf
Hallmark
RA8783

What the heck is a guest book doing in a model railroading blog? Well, it is a nice adjunct to hosting open houses for your layout.

As Layout Tour Chairman for my NMRA division, I sometimes tell prospective hosts "no open house, no layout". What do I mean by that? For some - myself included - we have trouble making progress on our layouts. By this phrase I am selling a prospective host on the benefit of committing to an open house. An open house by its nature carries a deadline - visitors will be at your home on a specific date to see your layout. You must make progress - you have three avenues to make that progress: what I call "elbow grease" - your own efforts ; buying yourself out of an obstacle - either something off the shelf or a professional assistant; and lastly, the help of friends. More than likely, you will employ some combination of those three to get to the finish line - and an open house is a sort of "finish line".

So do yourself a favor - commit to an open house and buy yourself a guest book so you can have a record of who attended your open houses (they can be for your division; your region; or the national NMRA convention - if is being held nearby; or for the Railroad Prototype Modelers group; or some other group).

Your guest book can also record visitors who have come to see your layout apart of an organized event.

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