At The Train Show
Saturday morning, we went to breakfast at Cracker Barrel and then made our way over to the train show. Breakfast was delicious! If we had a Cracker Barrel nearby in Vermont, I'm sure I would gain twenty pounds due to all the 1950's-style breakfasts we would add to our life! Naturally, I had to order the sampler plate for breakfast so I could get a taste of everything again. It was delicious, as always... especially those fried apples!
We sneaked in to the show from the backside which allowed us to avoid virtually all of the traffic jams of cars trying to get into the show. We found this route from the backside of town by accident one year (the one time getting lost turned out to be a positive thing) and it turned out to be a very happy accident. So now, every year we sneak in from the back side and by-pass the long line of cars waiting to get into the Big E.
We typically arrive before the doors open but we planned it well this year so there was no waiting out in the frigid cold for doors to open! The doors opened as we were walking to our first building each day of the show.
As usual, there were dozens of operating layouts at this very expansive show (around 50, I believe)...
Below, Lukey is following around a Lionel train that he is controlling on a fairly large layout. All he wanted to do all weekend is search out layouts where he could drive trains... that was nice for him and we allowed him to do this all weekend but it kind of sucked for Papa after a while because Papa enjoys visiting all the vendors and the more interesting train layouts too. Lukey and Kenzie got to drive a lot of trains over the course of the weekend though!
Tiny the clown... sometimes on a unicycle... sometimes on a bicycle... but, this time, on stilts...
Lukey and Gee are involved in a scavenger hunt trying to find specific items on a tiny N scale layout. Lukey did a better job than I did in spotting all the items... some items were far too small for my tired old eyes!
Lukey was running a Lionel "Christmas Train" on this layout...
Kenzie was running her own train on a different track...
Kenzie tended to stay put in one spot most of the time while driving trains but Lukey followed his train around the layout...
In this photo, below, Lukey is helping Kenzie with the scavenger hunt on this small N scale layout. Lukey had already done the scavenger hunt previously but Kenzie had just found this nice little N scale layout. They had to find about a dozen things on this layout. Some of the things... like a dog and a cat... were difficult to see with my old eyes! They had fun trying to find everything though....
Lukey got to run a narrow gauge train from one end of a large layout to the far opposite end of the layout... point to point, through towns, villages, and small industrial areas...
On this particular narrow gauge O scale layout, Lukey controlled the train with a cellphone app. Personally, I hate these little touch screen cellphone apps because of fat fingers, tiny touch buttons, and overly sensitive touch screens which causes accidental button presses... but, Lukey had no problems with it... I'll stick to a dedicated train controller with physical buttons and a physical throttle...
Lukey, shooting a few photos with one of my cameras...
Now that the kids are reading on their own, this was one of the kids' favorite trains... Long Island Railroad Jones Beach passenger car in a large tinplate standard gauge. They have good taste... the three car set of Fire Island Beach, Jones Beach and Coney Island cars costs between $600 and $1000. The matching tinplate locomotive runs between $850 and $1000 by itself. The passenger cars have lighted and detailed interiors though so, for tinplate, they are quite nice!
Maggie the Clown and some of her constantly changing, highly-animated faces...
Lukey and Kenzie were on television at the train show!
Mackenzie taking the controls to a long freight train on one of the large HO scale layouts...
Do you think Lukey is happy that he was asked if he wanted to drive another train?
I'll close this blog entry with a photo of Mackenzie Dock... Kenzie had a big smile on her face when I pointed out this model on this layout. Now that Lukey and Kenzie can read, I didn't have to explain what we were looking at... I just needed to point and then the big smile formed...
As always, it was a great show. It was a very large show with a lot of people in attendance! We also noticed that a lot of people were buying a lot of stuff. There were people carrying shopping bags all over the place! The one complaint is that I didn't get to see nearly as much as I would have liked. Actually, the only time we were in the largest building (one of four buildings housing this huge show) was simply to pass through. We missed a lot of the show so I'm already looking forward to the next show!
We sneaked in to the show from the backside which allowed us to avoid virtually all of the traffic jams of cars trying to get into the show. We found this route from the backside of town by accident one year (the one time getting lost turned out to be a positive thing) and it turned out to be a very happy accident. So now, every year we sneak in from the back side and by-pass the long line of cars waiting to get into the Big E.
We typically arrive before the doors open but we planned it well this year so there was no waiting out in the frigid cold for doors to open! The doors opened as we were walking to our first building each day of the show.
As usual, there were dozens of operating layouts at this very expansive show (around 50, I believe)...
Below, Lukey is following around a Lionel train that he is controlling on a fairly large layout. All he wanted to do all weekend is search out layouts where he could drive trains... that was nice for him and we allowed him to do this all weekend but it kind of sucked for Papa after a while because Papa enjoys visiting all the vendors and the more interesting train layouts too. Lukey and Kenzie got to drive a lot of trains over the course of the weekend though!
Tiny the clown... sometimes on a unicycle... sometimes on a bicycle... but, this time, on stilts...
Lukey and Gee are involved in a scavenger hunt trying to find specific items on a tiny N scale layout. Lukey did a better job than I did in spotting all the items... some items were far too small for my tired old eyes!
Lukey was running a Lionel "Christmas Train" on this layout...
Kenzie was running her own train on a different track...
Kenzie tended to stay put in one spot most of the time while driving trains but Lukey followed his train around the layout...
In this photo, below, Lukey is helping Kenzie with the scavenger hunt on this small N scale layout. Lukey had already done the scavenger hunt previously but Kenzie had just found this nice little N scale layout. They had to find about a dozen things on this layout. Some of the things... like a dog and a cat... were difficult to see with my old eyes! They had fun trying to find everything though....
Lukey got to run a narrow gauge train from one end of a large layout to the far opposite end of the layout... point to point, through towns, villages, and small industrial areas...
On this particular narrow gauge O scale layout, Lukey controlled the train with a cellphone app. Personally, I hate these little touch screen cellphone apps because of fat fingers, tiny touch buttons, and overly sensitive touch screens which causes accidental button presses... but, Lukey had no problems with it... I'll stick to a dedicated train controller with physical buttons and a physical throttle...
Lukey, shooting a few photos with one of my cameras...
Now that the kids are reading on their own, this was one of the kids' favorite trains... Long Island Railroad Jones Beach passenger car in a large tinplate standard gauge. They have good taste... the three car set of Fire Island Beach, Jones Beach and Coney Island cars costs between $600 and $1000. The matching tinplate locomotive runs between $850 and $1000 by itself. The passenger cars have lighted and detailed interiors though so, for tinplate, they are quite nice!
Maggie the Clown and some of her constantly changing, highly-animated faces...
Lukey and Kenzie were on television at the train show!
Mackenzie taking the controls to a long freight train on one of the large HO scale layouts...
Do you think Lukey is happy that he was asked if he wanted to drive another train?
I'll close this blog entry with a photo of Mackenzie Dock... Kenzie had a big smile on her face when I pointed out this model on this layout. Now that Lukey and Kenzie can read, I didn't have to explain what we were looking at... I just needed to point and then the big smile formed...
As always, it was a great show. It was a very large show with a lot of people in attendance! We also noticed that a lot of people were buying a lot of stuff. There were people carrying shopping bags all over the place! The one complaint is that I didn't get to see nearly as much as I would have liked. Actually, the only time we were in the largest building (one of four buildings housing this huge show) was simply to pass through. We missed a lot of the show so I'm already looking forward to the next show!
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