Last December I had an iPad on a museum-grade stand with the Lionel Bluetooth App for the kids to run the Polar Express train on the show layout's lower level. Another track had conventional control of a Beep train.
I observed two classes of young engineers - a) button smashers where any control had to be exercised (and abused) without any regard to the effect it caused, and b) kids who experimented and observed the control effect. The second group also explored all of the sub-screens of the app, messed with sound volumes, and occasionally disconnected the Bluetooth link. Some of them became adept running the layout and got to use our CAB2s for the upper level.
If Lionel upgrades their Bluetooth App, a provision to lock the configuration screens to prevent novice engineers from messing up the configuration, it would be a nice improvement for public hands-on layouts. The app was intuitive to most of the kids. Much better than conventional control where the fwd-neutral-rev logic is not intuitive.
For some reason, the young engineers ran the trains in reverse most of the time. Always stopped the trains on the backside of the layout instead of at the stations. Can't fix that. Derailments were rare even though trains and scenery were within reach. I had to restore 1:43 diecast cars and trucks to proper positions every day before showtime but had nothing disappear.
The Gatemen on the layout survived but I had a transformer for each trimmed to the minimum voltage to make them operate. Again, the button smashers liked to press the activation button constantly.
The Bluetooth app and LionChief locos were a huge win for our visitors.
