Another season of trains has come and gone at the historic Redford Theatre in Detroit. Our February 9th and 10th shows were the final public viewings of the layout for 2018. It operated for a wedding rental the following Saturday and was dismantled that Sunday.
We think this was probably the best layout we've constructed thus-far and had very few reliability issues. We received some generous donations of Village items and trains (to be utilized next year after some work is done) and expanded the layout by six feet. Donations also included some cash to put towards new equipment for the layout, this includes some extra money we gained from the collection jar during our evening train gathering with train club members and other friends. I'm hoping to purchase another Williams locomotive for next year with those funds. Thanks to all who contributed through donations and positive comments on the forum, we certainly appreciate it, as do our many annual visitors. Last year we had over 16,000 visitors through the theater while the layout was up, we attained a runners up position for the MTH Blue Comet Award. We should have a tally of our visitor count for this year soon. This has turned into a big community effort in terms of assistance with acquiring supplies to build the layout. Our visitors love checking out all the new additions and changes every year which makes building this display very worth the crazy amount of time and work we put into it.
Here are some photos taken the Sunday after the final public show by my dad during a final photo session before the layout came down...
I decided to pull my car closer to the layout to make loading my train collection a bit easier.... it made for a fun photo opportunity. 
