ur report actually begins a day earlier. Our club has recently dipped our rail joiners into T-Trak. It’s very easy and popular (and a hell of a lot simpler than them wooden Trojan horses we built in our N-Trak days). So the evening pre-show, Shannon and Zeus (two n-trak knuckleheads) were out at the fairgrounds setting up. It went together pretty easy (even though there was a case of elevated curves being installed backwards, turning them into escape-velocity curves). But the new layout was pretty much up and running in time for the show.

That being said, the show went down without a hitch. Jeff did the pull to get the trailer out there, my full crew was in place at door-open, and we rolled everything in. For this show, our nemesis club wasn’t there, meaning nobody was poaching our floorspace – we had plenty of elbow room for our layout and sales table.

I’ll admit I’ve harbored some minor fears that T-Trak might divide the club, that the easy-to-assemble boys might just hang out and watch us struggle with the sectional. But no, as soon as we had the first module aligned, they were over to help us. With this massive crew in place, the layout went up in one hour and five minutes, one of our fastest times (and no, Steve, we just had a lot of people who knew what they were doing). In fact, the only failure of following simple instructions was the cranky doughnut lady who couldn’t follow a simple six-plain, six-blueberry, six-glazed and six-chocolate order. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she’d been at Protorails. I dispatched people like her.

We were also running dispatching, OSing trains out and placing them on the tag-tray to ensure capacity was kept manageable. While we had a lot of people desirous to run, the T-Trak shortline helped bleed off some of the pressure. We kept the numbers down to eight or so (just kissing the red zone) for most of the two days. At this point, I don’t know if times need to be really written down – if you think about it, keeping the tags in order of departure keeps the trains in a chronological order – as it takes about thirty minutes to put six-to-eight trains out behind whoever went first, by the time capacity is a problem the tag at the head end of the list is the candidate for “arrival” (though I’ll admit, as the primary dispatcher, eliminating actual recorded times opens my position up to the possibility of auxiliary compensation (i.e. bribery)).

Saw some of our old favorites – former officers Frank and Mike came by and were very complementary about our layout. Matthew, of course, the living one-record gramophone of questioning, was there. Gretchen came by and gave me some of Sparky’s old black shirts (which I passed out to club members). Ben Rudy came by with his tiny tank engine, and I gave him his gray shirt. Hate to admit it but a couple of people showed up and said “Hey, Robert, long time no see!” to which I said “Hey… good to see you too” (whoever you are).

I’ll admit that a highlight of the show was the coffee wagon. That got me through my bookkeeping days.

Some of the interesting things of note (and forgive me if I missed you – it was crazy-busy the entire time):

• I got to run my infamous TOFC train that is from an era gone by. Been meaning to run it at the club but this would have to do.
• Kaden got his last hurrah with his army train (which spends more time “at base” then on the railroad. I hope he’s not planning to store it in the racks while he’s away).
• Matthew impressed me with the pulling power of his J4, picking up every hopper on the layout. Unfortunately the Folkston siding had problems which I didn’t learn about until late day two. Went he went in there, the track was not leveled perfectly, causing cars to derail. Worse, the additional drag of the even-tighter radius tipped his traction from able to unable, and in the effort to get them back out of the siding, he spun his traction tire off (one of the biggest problems with steam). Hated to see it. Hopefully he can get it back together – that’s not something you want to screw with at the show.
• We had one kid who barnacled the layout, running with everyone and having a great time. Repeatedly, he rated us as “EPIC!”. I really felt bad when he came running up at 2:50 for a final lap or two and we looked from from striking our circus tent. “Sorry, kid. Come back in three months”. Alas. An eternity for a child.
• Mark really shot some impressive video with his camera car – we really need to make a demo loop of that and maybe give it to Colonial to run for us. Given his origins with grainy images and run times shorter than most commercial breaks, it’s really a crowd pleaser. And when not in use, we should keep running train cams from rail viewing sites. Once Folkston gets its cameras sorted, that would be really cool to show the crowds.
• And then there was Zach, who violated every rule he’s placed on the layout (I’m smiling as I type this, Zach). Long train, out for more than 30 minutes, impeding track speeds. But hey, it’s late in the show and why the f**k not? We’ve also run bullet trains at 150+ mph. It’s like a movie I love where a guy says, “Hey, things are different. It’s, waddya call it, after hours”. The thing was, Zach was running a train with a car count of between incredible and inconceivable. But people liked it, nobody complained and it worked out just fine.

Take-down was a breeze, and even with our quick-fold, T-Trak was done by the time we racked it up. Leonard did his usual pro-job in transport.

I’ll mention an inexact figure here – the sales table brought in (hearsay) something like just under $2000. Talk about a side hustle. So thanks to John and Chris for doing the front-office work to keep the club in clover.

Again, I hope I didn’t miss anyone in this blog. When you think about it, it’s quite amazing, all the stories and events and funny or sad things one witnesses while pacing the floor and watching the trains. I feel this way for some of our sessions – I know there are stories and occurrences I totally miss – I simply can’t be there for all of them. But for my own little train show viewpoint, it was a really fun weekend!

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