I have resolved that because there are so many disparate interests, there is no single answer to this question. Each of us has to decide the projects we want to pursue and occasionally we can find someone who is willing to collaborate. To me this was most evident at the Greenberg Train Show in Monroeville this past fall when several people brought their own stand alone displays.
That’s fair. I still say there’s room for having a couple foundational builds (i.e. – Town&Train, which we already have, and in reconfigurable/modular form; Space, which we have a good start on between Dan, Walter, Rich, and Evan, but is less than cohesive at the moment; or whatever else we want – Castle?! Pirates?! SPACE PIRATES!!!) and then, over time, expanding upon the foundations. We’ve already proven that we can do that by reusing elements of the Town&Train display (particularly the Santa HQ and Elf Factory, as well as the Modulars and our custom modular/MILS buildings) while changing things up and adding new elements to keep it fresh (Greenberg 2013 > Santa Trolley 2013 > Greenberg 2014 > Santa Trolley 2014.) I think the Space boys have had some preliminary planning meetings to work on similar modular/expandable plans, which is great. But I don’t believe we can or should try to wrangle our 30ish active members and force everyone to build just one thing – last thing we want is a schism like our friends to the East experienced.
I, for one, would in theory claim to be primarily interested in Spacey builds and artsy stuff like the Harry Potter mosaic (with Pirate & Castle being close behind), but am always willing to jump in on a different collab (be it Town&Train or a one-off like the DIG, Great Wall, Fizz Boom Read, etc.) There’s plenty of momentum in our LUG and plenty of room for people to pursue individual builds in whatever area they please, but also plenty of incentive to join forces on collaborative builds – we should continue to encourage the collabs, and strive for repeatability and expandability, without quenching or stifling the individual efforts!