Back to TTOS Convention 2000, aboard the Queen Mary...
Yours truly (left) and Jim take a deep breath before dragging another helping of the C+D System into a freight elevator aboard the Queen Mary.
Getting to our venue on G deck, 20 feet below the waterline, was... um, interesting. We had to first load as much of the layout as we could handle per trip into a freight elevator, which changed its altitude by 4ft. We were not allowed to accompany our equipment on this epic vertical journey, but had to take a stairway to the deck where our stuff would settle.
Then, we had to drag the stuff across E deck to a teensy, tiny elevator barely large enough to get the corner sections into, which would drop us to G deck. This elevator was part of the ship's original facilities. Since it was prone to failure, we would scramble up the central staircases to return to the dock. No sense in stressing the balky antique "lift". (That's English talk for "elevator".)
The elevator worked ok for loading in, but a few days later, when it was time to load out there was some anxiety among the exhibitors about whether the thing would hold out for the duration. Dropping thousands of pounds of toy trains two decks was one thing. Lifting them all two decks was quite another. Sure enough, it quit. As we were pulling sections of the C+D apart, we heard one of the more laconic members of the club strolling about the deck, calling out, "Iceberg! Dead ahead!" He came up to us and reported, "Great news, folks. The elevator has broken down, and the maintenance people seem about as concerned as the captain of the Titanic."
We had to hoist the layout up two flights of stairs, a little at a time.
Jim's expression three days earlier seems to anticipate the ordeal...