Where is the ground in Chicago?

[Steve Williams]

I don't necessarily hold with the philosophy that you often see in UK layouts in particular, where a guy puts pine trees on his layout and says it's Alaska one month, and then changes the pine trees to palm trees and says it's Florida a month later.

That is such a sweeping, inaccurate assessment, it barely warrants a response. However, I'll force myself. Having attended more exhibitions than I can recall over more years than I care to, I would be hard pushed to think of a layout that has swopped identities in such a simplistic manner. It most certainly is not a UK trait. With regard to the layout to which you are clearly referring, I would urge readers to visit the RMWeb threads of the two layouts in question. Your assertion that its location was changed simply by swopping trees is just a 'straw man' argument. Yes, the trees were changed. So were the buildings, so was much of the ground foliage. All earth ground cover and ballasted areas were re-painted, plus other changes. I know this because, as the Welsh comedian Max Boyce would say, 'I was there'.