Alvin Museum Model Train Show, November 17 - January 7, 2016/17

This was an unusual event for the Houston S Gaugers. Basically the people of the Alvin Museum in Alvin, Texas wanted to have a special show for a couple of months around the Christmas season of 2016, featuring model trains. They came in contact with Rusty, and worked out a plan. Every week from Thursday through Saturday, from November through the first week in January, Rusty came to the museum to run trains on the HSG layout. As you can see from this photo, there wasn't much space, so a small set-up was put together.

Rusty, Steve, and Bob did the set-up and tear-down. However, in between it was really a one-man show. Rusty would run trains from 11am to 3pm on those days, oftentimes ably assisted by grandson Asher Larkin Murray, running trains and functioning as the hobby's ambassador to visiting children. Alvin had a special weekend in December where there were more activities in town, and the museum was also open on that weekend's Sunday. However, the weather was atrocious that weekend. Despite that, Rusty reported a good turnout on that weekend.

For most days, there were only a handful of people showing up, but the museum did have some special tours coming through (Cub Scouts, Senior Living, Home Tour, etc.). All-in-all over 500 paid visitors came to see the layout (ours was the only one they had space for), and the museum reported that this was there largest attendance ever. As seen in this photo, where we normally put the freight yard, the layout featured Bob's grain elevator, which in S-scale is quite eye-catching.

On the other side a shorter version of the passenger yard was used. Again, thank you Rusty for putting in those hours!