An Alternate History

12volt Layouts

Chuck and Conan started showing LEGO Trains in the mid 1980's.  They would build large rectangular layouts, with track laying on tables.  Many of the trains and buildings were built from sets, later they started adding more scratch-built creations.

First 9volt Layout

The first layout using the 9 volt system is refered to as the 'Island' layout.  A single loop of track, with one small siding.  Here we see Conan's white trestle bridge, which has been reproduced on our current layout.  This layout also shows more verticality - building UP instead of just OUT.  This is where Conan perfected the "tower and grid" system that we use on all our layouts, to allow us to build height quickly, and without much weight.

Second 9volt Layout

This was our first modular layout, designed for travel, with quick set-up and tear-down.  Each section is built on six of the big grey baseplates, so they're each around 30 inches by 45 inches.  Our mainline track height is 30 bricks above the baseplates.  We put around 2500 man-hours into this layout, and a trailer breakdown on the way to its very first show basically destroyed the layout.  After much discussion we decided it wasn't worth repairing, that we would be better off just scrapping it and starting over.  Thus, our third layout was born!

Third 9volt Layout

This was one of the most storied layouts we built. LEGO helped us to get it out to California to show it off for KidInvention. It was the layout we took to the NRMA show. It eventually grew to 16 sections and completely filled the horse trailer we used to move it around. In the fall of 2000 we decided to destroy it to begin work on the 4th layout. Most of the pictures currently on the site are of the third layout.

Fourth 9volt Layout

This will be our first layout built for 8wide trains. It is under construction now.

Origin of the Name

The orginal name was Greater Minnesota Lego Train Club. At the time there was only one other formalized train club, the PNLTC. We had been displaying the layout for a few years at this point.

Orginally all of the members lived in Minneapolis. The bricks are here, the layout was here, heck most of us were unaware of lugnet at this time. But with the awareness came a Mr. John Neal (J2). Shortly after we meet Brian Williams and Larry P. Okay, now we need a name. John Gerlach (J1) registers gmltc.org with the intent of it meaning Greater Minnesota Lego Train Club. We realized that was not inclusive enough for some of the members (Brain, Larry, and later Paul Foster) who traveled to Minneapolis to help with shows and building. J2 suggested Upper Midwest Lego Train Club. He even made some T-Shirts with that on them. Problem: We had already registered the gmltc.org and it seemed a waste to dump it. So I (John Kelly III or J3) suggested "Greater Midwest" to keep the domain name.

Now that more groups have formed in the various areas, we asked to have our map influence reduced as it seems silly to have club members in locations where they would never be able to come over and build. That we hoped would also promote more local groups forming, maybe centered on Chicago or Detroit.

That being said, now we've all got mindshare, shirts, logos, etc. So I don't see us changing it back to Minnesota anytime soon.