What a day!

Well we did it!

We managed to go to the Granite City Train show, exhibit and return home all in the grip of a major winter storm.

We left home just before 7am, hoping that would give us plenty of time to get to the show and set up. We needn't have worried. It was still early in the storm and the wind was keeping the road clear of snow in the exposed areas. Though there were deep patches of snow where the road was sheltered by trees and buildings. We managed to make it to the exhibition hall in about 45 minutes only about 10 minutes longer than usual. Though when we got there I discovered that I had forgotten to bring the tripod that supports the fiddle yard. So I ended up building what can only be described as a Jenga tower of freight car boxes under the fiddle yard to give it some support. Apart from that, set up was a breeze and the layout operated very well indeed, which is the norm as regular readers of this blog will know.

Attendance at the show was lower than other years, not surprisingly, and a few other traders and exhibitors did not make the trip. But a lot of the regular usual faces were there and we got to meet and joke with several old friends again.

Another regular occurrence when attending this show is my appearance on AM 1240 W-JON, local radio, being interviewed by local personality Bob Hughes, talking about the layout I have bought along. I do my best to present a positive image of the hobby. I'm getting quite the veteran on local radio now!

With attendance being low due to the weather many exhibitors started to pack up early. An hour early though is way to early in my books and I kept on running trains until about 15 minutes before the close. Normally I would run right up to the end but as there was nary a soul about, it seemed an OK thing to do and we were out of the Hall heading for home 5 minutes after the doors had closed.

I'm glad I went, the show is always enjoyable and I send out a huge vote of thanks to Ed Olsen and all involved with the running of the show. Thanks for a great time and I'll see you all on April 30th 2011, and if you readers know what's good for you, you'll be there too.

With our farewells said we headed home. Once again the roads weren't too much trouble, (unlike those in we are hearing about in Southern Minnesota) and we got home in good time. Then began the hard work of digging our driveway clear of 6-8" of snow so that we could get the car into the garage.

Two days in Princeton

Another weekend, another train show.

The Rum River Model Railroad Club show in Princeton, MN this time. My home clubs show. It's very brave for a small club to put on a 2 day show but the Princeton club do very well and the show is well supported by the townsfolk.

There was a very varied selection of layouts in all scales. My favourite was a working display of vintage Lionel/Marx tinplate trains from the 1920's and 30's superb stuff that was well cared for and ran beautifully.

I was sited alongside an S scale American Flyer layout. Chock full of working accessories, like coal loaders, sawmills, level crossings, cattle docks. It was really amazing to watch them all and to think that these were all 50 or so years old. It's amazing what they created with electric motors, cams, pulleys and levers back then. I loved it.

Wingetts ran well on both days, though the Kadee couplers didn't work as well as they could, they still need some adjustment. Something to work on.

The atmosphere at this show is quite different to any other I've attended as an exhibitor. Everyone knows everyone and it really is a social gathering for the town. As a consequence operation was less strenuous than at other shows.

Being more relaxed allowed me to people watch while I was operating. I noticed that men just came up and watched the trains only some of them read the blurb accompanying the layout to explain the layouts operation. Whereas the vast majority of women read the blurb first and then watched the layout.

One thing I noticed with small children is that they were more interested in watching the trains when the cars on the layout were brightly coloured i.e Yellow CNW hoppers rather than brown SOO ones. The continual back and forth movement kept them quite occupied.

Once again all viewers were taken with the presentation of the layout, which begs the question.

"Why don't more exhibitors over here do it?"

Spare my blushes

The first embarrassingly positive write up about Wingetts recycling has appeared on the internet
http://look4trains.com/2010/11/when-they-say-worlds-greatest-hobby.html

Thanks Jim

WGH Show Day 2

Ah, the joys of owning a small layout. Inside 2 hours after the show closes we are home and the layout is unpacked out of the car and I can reflect on another day at the show.
Another interesting day. I awoke with a pounding headache. Not quite a migraine but awfully close. It took well into the afternoon for it to clear. I was thankful for my wifes help to take over some operating duties on the layout while I took it easy at times.
Then there was the issue of actually getting to the hall. No problem you'd think as we had a room in a hotel just across the road. Well just walking there was a problem. Freezing rain in the night had turned the roads and paths into a skating rink, it was a very hairy walk to the hall.
It was difficult to forget about the conditions even after the door opened because attendance was low. People certainly took their time getting in. I cant say i blame them the newspapers say there was some 300 accidents in the metro area.
So to the show, how did the layout perform? Just as well as the previous day. So I can't complain there. Over the two days I'm very very happy with the performance.
The reaction of the public was very much the same as yesterday too. Many were very taken with the presentation. The proscenium arch received countless favourable comments.
The real big surprise came around lunchtime. Two guys stood looking at the layout taking in the scene, passing comments and chuckling to each other. People can chuckle, I don't mind. Just don't make snide comments about the layout to my face. Then one of them spoke.
"You've got a couple of very special guests here today"
"Oh really" said I kind of expecting a joke of some sort.
"We used to be the owners/managers of Phillips recycling"
To say that I was flabbergasted would be a colossal understatement. They had been looking at the photographs I had on display and had been comparing them to the model. They were very positive in their appreciation of the model and I learned quite a bit more about the prototype location. For instance, when applying for planning permission from Saint Cloud city council to build a structure to house a new shredder, they built an N scale model of the premises to show the council so they could see how its construction would affect the surroundings. Needless to say the council appreciated being able to see the plan in 3D and rubber stamped the application in minutes.
I also learned about the marks painted on the ends of the wheel axles, White, Blue and apparently Orange. The colours, as I knew, signified different weights of wheel. White for 50lb wheels. Blue 75lb and Orange for 100 pounders. I remarked that I had never seen any Orange marked wheels before. That is because the 100lb wheels are wanted and can be sold on quickly. Once they get a wagonload of those 100lb wheels they are shipped out straight away. The other weights are not so popular and thus lie around the site for longer lengths of time. This was invaluable information and something that I hope to incorporate onto the layout at a later date.
Meeting these guys was very special and made me very proud of the layout indeed.
Really, you can't top that and the rest of the afternoon passed rather uneventfully by comparison.
However there is more. During one of my afternoon breaks I took a look around some of the traders looking for something to buy. You HAVE to buy something at a model railway exhibition don't you? Well I do...
I was very surprised to see the Atlas Trainman plus Genset switcher for sale. I'd been wanting one for quite some time and had been getting rather fed up with the delays to the delivery to the shops. It looked like a quite beautiful model in the photographs A truly modern up to date prototype, suitable for my modern up to date layouts. I had to have it. It was on sale too. So it was a done deal. I rushed it back to the layout to try it out. I was not disappointed. It looks great and ran as well as it looked. I think that after the layouts reception over the weekend it deserved a treat. Well that's my story and I'm sticking to it...

So all in all I couldn't have had a better weekend for the layout and it doesn't stop there as it is also appearing at the Rum River Model Railroad Club show at the historic Princeton Depot next weekend.

So to close I want to thank Randy Bachmann and his crew at the WGH organisation for putting on a great show and I hope to see them again in another 4 years or so.

But an even bigger thanks goes out to my wife for helping out allowing me to take breaks especially today when I had my pounding headache.

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...