Texas City Model Train Festival, November 9 - 10, 2013

This is the first time we were invited to participate in this annual event. It is held at the Texas City Museum. We were actually set up at the Showboat Pavilion directly across the street from the museum. The museum has dedicated space upstairs for the Galveston County Model Railroad Club, who have two layouts in N-scale (one is modular), an HO-scale layout, a Lionel O-scale layout, and some G-scale loops.

In the Showboat Pavilion we shared space with the Houston Area G Gaugers (a great bunch of people). They took up about two-thirds of the floor space, while we took up the remainder. The Pavilion is a theater, as in a building with a stage. It has large industrial garage doors, so it was easy to move modules in and out of the building. We had parking space right behind the building, so unloading and loading was relatively easy. The weather was perfect with temperatures in the 70s and mostly sunny.

I thought, for a change, it might be nice to see a "behind-the-scenes" view. This is Peter and Ria's truck loaded with the six modules that make up the double-track wye. The two outer sections make up the straight part of the wye. The three rectangularly-shaped modules make up the third leg of the wye. The odd ball out is the third section of the wye; it is always a challenge to hold in place.

We were a bit short in our set-up crew, but we managed nevertheless. This was the entire crew. Not in the photo was Rusty and Sandi's grandson and myself, Peter. A number of our modules were stored at the museum after last month's Galveston show. A generous crew of the Galveston County Model Railroad Club helped us move them to the Pavilion. Don brought his two modules that go opposite the wye. The layout measured 18 feet wide, by 34 feet long.

Don is busy with the last task of the day, installing rail pieces that span the module borders, an always tedious and time-consuming project. We arrived at 3pm, and by 4pm all of the modules were on the floor in the building. It took us about two hours to set them all up the way you see them here. Another hour or so was spent by the five of us to install those rail pieces.

While Rusty is engrossed in fitting rail joiners, their grandson smiles in contentment watching his grandmother fluff up the trees after planting them on the layout.

Ria, too, is consumed by getting those darned small rail joiners to actually slide onto the rail. This process was aggravated by the fact that we were tired, it was late, and we were all hungry. We finally called it quits at 7pm, and hoped that the two hours we had tomorrow morning would be sufficient to complete the whole layout's set-up.

This is the same area as what was shown in the previous photo. Saturday morning came way too soon. Those of us who were there on Friday evening were still very tired from lack of sleep. We started off by getting the electrical system working. After an initial scare of a whole-layout short immediately upon boot-up, we found that by simply disconnecting one of the bus wires under the layout, the short magically went away. Everything worked fine the entire weekend.

Steve is dealing with a minor derailment of his freight train. Jerry and Sandi are in the background.

Peter's American Models FA-2 A-B-A consist ran the entire day on battery power. It was still going strong after six hours. The show was open to the public from 10am to 4pm. Saturday morning we started off with a good-sized group of attendees. It died down a bit during lunch time, partly to blame for a delicious Greek mobile vendor right outside the door. Many of our club members were disappointed to find that he didn't return on Sunday!

One thing that S-scale has an abundance of is scale vehicles. The long stretch of road on our wye modules makes a great place to showcase them. Peter's NW2 (also under battery power) mostly stood guard at the wye (it is used as back-up power should the FA-2 run out of juice; it was not needed this weekend). New at this show were the scratch-built trees on the wye. Steve is in the background, controlling his passenger train.

This is a nice shot of our wye.

Something that is always a good attraction and often gets a laugh, is our two-story outhouse built by Ria. For this show, Ria built it on top of a base that holds three AA batteries, which, in turn, power the LED hanging in the upper stall.

The "farm module" has several structures. The front two are built by Ria, and the back two are by Rusty. The lunch stand is a kit by Bar Mills.

Ron was able to bring Jack (photo: right) for the day. Jack appeared to enjoy himself, tinkering with various things around the layout. Rusty is on the left-hand side of the photo.

Ria and Don were taking a much-deserved break during one of the slower times at the show.

Virginia and Jerry (in the background) were able to attend both days. Jerry was adding some of his projects to the layout.

Jerry brought a nice collection of his work. This photo shows his talent for aging cars, details, and loads, in this impromptu "junk yard" scene.

Another one of Jerry's projects is to populate his bulkhead flat car. All the trunks you see in this photo were hand-cut by Jerry and painstakingly installed. He has three of these bulkhead flat cars.

Don is admiring his passenger train (actually, we were experiencing consistent uncoupling at that spot on the layout and we were trying to figure out why). The gas station in the foreground is another one of Jerry's projects.

Jerry talking with one of the visitors.

Santa Fe #83 posing for the camera.

A fine motley crew this is! From left to right, Don, Asher, Rusty, and Peter.

Don is having a blast man-handling his passenger train.

Peter (left) and Jerry (right) pose for the camera, while Don continues to run his passenger train in the background.

A nice shot of our signaling bridge.

Don's Pacific is flying by.

Don's S-Helper Service F unit is waiting for the main to clear to pull its freight train to its destinations.