A Day At The Train Show

After our breakfast at The Cracker Barrel and buying a few gifts in the gift shop, we headed across the river to the Big E for the Amherst Railway Society's Railroad Hobby Show. 

This is an awesome annual event. Not only are there eight acres jam-packed with train stuff, train vendors, and more than 50 operating layouts but it is a very worthwhile benefit fundraiser. The proceeds of this show go toward a children's hospital, railroad museums, and historical railroads in the form of grants. This year, a little over 23,000 people wandered around the 350,000 square feet of show over the course of the weekend. 

My weekend was cut very short due to spinal pain. Subsequently, Sheila and I only spent two hours at the show each day. My spinal pain was brutal and the only relief was to get back to the hotel and get off my feet. On the positive side, this allowed me to take in a college basketball game I would have otherwise missed! We really missed quite a bit at the show though. 

Below, is a very large N scale layout. Sheila is checking out a model of an Air Force museum display on this nicely detailed layout...

Below, Sheila is asking the newest member of our train show group how he is enjoying the show...

Maggie the Clown had some assistance this year in the form of two other clowns... one clown was making balloon animals while the other was painting children's faces...

I really liked the scenery on this particular N scale layout... it was highly detailed and the trees were spectacular...

The four foot long module shown in the next three photos is at the show every year and it is one of my all time favorites. There are so many details in this small module that I see more every time I view it!

This last photo shows a model train that actually runs on steam. I think this model is in the scale of 1" = 1 foot.  I love watching these live steam locomotives run!

The show was only a few days ago and I'm already looking forward to next year's show! As always, we had an awesome time!