Big Texas Train Show, September 7-8, 2014
Click on the thumbnail image to see a much larger photo.
(photo courtesy of Peter Vanvliet)The Big Texas Train Show, organized by the Gulf Coast Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society, once again returns to Houston. They took a year off to move their museum equipment last year (and renamed themselves from the Houston Railroad Museum in the process). This photo was taken after we had most of the layout setup already. It took nine of us about 6 hours to get the whole layout ready. You can see Don getting his sales table ready on the right.
(photo courtesy of Peter Vanvliet)Taken from the opposite corner (from the previous photo), this photo shows Ria doing some scenery touch-up work. The gap in the skirting was our entrance door into the layout area. We had all 30 of our modules set up for an area of 60' by 22'. We had a prime spot, as the audience came in via the red doors in the center of the photo (they saw the Austin tinplate O scale layout first and then ours).
(photo courtesy of Peter Vanvliet)Saturday morning came way too early. Most of us got there at about 7:30am to get ready for the doors to open at 10am. We still only had one train up and running by then. It takes a lot of effort to get this layout ready when we only have a skeleton crew on hand. However, the audience seemed to love the setup. Saturday had a tremendous turnout. Sunday's turnout was only slightly less. The announcer at the end of the show on Sunday mentioned that this was their most successful show. Vendors reported record sales, and we observed lots of people buying things, especially train sets.
(photo courtesy of Peter Vanvliet)Don decided to make a pro-active effort to try to recruit new members, encourage people to model in S-scale, or at the very least plant a seed or two for future S modelers.
(photo courtesy of Peter Vanvliet)He had a table with lots of NASG, S, S Scale SIG, and Houston S Gaugers hand-outs and business cards (not shown) available for the "S-curious".
(photo courtesy of Peter Vanvliet)Asher was doing a great job running PaPa's trains.
(photo courtesy of Peter Vanvliet)The George R. Brown convention center has viewing windows in the upper level. However, even at that height, it still wasn't enough to get a complete shot of our entire layout. This view shows the overall shape and the double-track wye on the left side of the layout. Bob and Ria are in the center of the layout taking a lunch break. While Steve (light-blue shirt outside the layout) and Rusty (standing, inside the layout) are running their trains.
(photo courtesy of Peter Vanvliet)This is part two of the photo showing the right-hand side of the layout.
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