President's Message

2/12/12 

Hello S Gaugers,

What an exciting month and a half we have had since Christmas. January and February have been some busy times for us in the year of 2012. First the Ophir Tintic & Western train show down at Thanksgiving Point, What a great show that was. A lot of work went into the yard. Eddie once again pulled out his tools and started to build, and build he did. Once there we fine-tuned the yard and it sure looked great and worked even better than last year. We had a great turnout all around the layout three sides and above on the stage. Fred had some nice accessories, so make sure you look at the website and check them out.

 The World’s Greatest Hobby on Tour was another great show and I for one am very happy we participated in this show, for many reasons. We had the biggest layout we ever had at a show. Eddie had the most fun he has ever had!! Well Eddie had a great time like he always does, you should have seen him playing with the kids (and that’s the kids of all ages) minds with his platform where the train would come shooting by and the people on the platform would disappear. Boy did they have a look of wonder on their face and Eddie a laugh in his heart. It’s always fun at our train shows to see the faces of young and old. Al brought a new M Mining scene that he has been working on. Great job Al. Len brought everything and a kitchen sink I believe. It felt like I did. We had a lot to cover this show, 30’ x 60’. We started setup on Thursday, continued Friday and were running trains Saturday and Sunday. Not to be left out Chris brought modules for the layout and then went and setup the NASG both that looked fantastic. With Reed’s help, he had 2 trains running Gilbert Accessories; Fred donated the use of some of his Steam Engines for display and Eddie his Diesels. Setting up and having two significant S Gauge displays was a tremendous challenge, but we accomplished it with the efforts and support of many club members.  If you missed the event you really missed a great train show and loads of fun.  There were even two major head-on train wrecks caused by children flipping switches on us that caused tremendous excitement for everyone present at the time.

 In a surprise turn of events, two women from the World’s Greatest Hobby On Tour folks walking around the show, said that this was the best s-gauge / Flyer layout they have ever seen and they go to shows all over the country.  They asked if we would be willing to take our club layout to Reno, Nevada in 2013. We were reluctant to make a commitment until it had been discussed by club members. What an honor, just for the asking and comment. 

 To top it off we were told that the attendance at this show was over 25,000 people. At one point in the show on Saturday Eddie counted over 200 people around our layout. The whole place was one packed with people. I hope all that attended enjoyed themselves, I know we sure could have used more help with a layout of this size. But even on our smaller ones the more the merrier, at times we were running two trains at a time when someone had to take a break.

 Thanks to all who support the club, without you there wouldn’t be one,

 Jim Buckley

Now that is a real good American Flyer smoke unit