Saturday, November 20, 2010

WGH show Day 1

What a day!
I'm knackered as we Brits like to say.
What a lot to remember I need to note it all down.
It all began when I opened my email at 8am and there was an email from fellow Rum River Model Railroader, Brian Snook he was having problems setting his layout up and could I spare some time to help him. I dashed over as soon as I could and helped as much as I could but I still had a few bits to do to set up Wingetts.
Then at 10am the doors opened and within minutes my first blog "follower" showed up Tracy McKibben.. Great to meet you Tracy I'm glad the layout lived up to your expectations. Next a group of ne'er do wells from the outstateminnesota rail fan group off Yahoo! appeared to show their support for me and the layout I expect pictures and comments to appear on some of their blogs soon.
People stopped and talked all the way through the day be they blog followers or just model railroaders. Some very knowledgeable about microlayouts and others who knew nothing were very excited about the concept of "small but perfectly formed" model railroads. Some people recognized the layouts presentation as something popularized by fellow Brit model railroader Iain C. Rice though luckily no-one confused me with him this time.
One person very interested in the layout was an editor of a certain well known model railroad magazine who suggested that I should submit something to his magazine perhaps for publication. Who knows? You'll have to keep watching this blog...
Someone else who turned up and was most impressed with the layout was Minnesota Viking legend and noted model railroad enthusiast Carl Eller. He certainly liked what he saw.
As for the operation of the layout itself. It had its ups and downs. The locomotives ran flawlessly, without any shadow of a doubt. Full marks to Athearn and Bachmann there. At the Start of the show the layout was nice and square and level and the couplers worked and cars
stayed where they were spotted. However clumsy viewers wether they be adults or children managed to knock things about a bit and by mid afternoon a slight grade had developed and cars started to move of their own volition on the middle road. My perfectly adjusted Kadee couplers became unadjusted after some time, so things aren't set up as well as I thought. But I really prefer operating couplers by hand anyway so that's not too much of a hardship. In the middle of the afternoon one of the turnouts developed a mysterious electrical problem that a bit of cleaning managed to clear up. But that's about it the rest of the way was fine.
I just hope everything will be as good tomorrow. But tomorrow as they say is another day...

2 comments:

  1. Ian,

    Thanks for the report! I hope to one day display my layout at a train show. Sounds like a lot of fun (and a lot of work too)! Looking forward to some show photos!

    Tom

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  2. Wow, I earned a mention by name! I almost feel famous now... :-)

    I'll bet attendance is a bit lower today, it's a slippery Sunday out there!

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