The Rip Track

It's November again, and in Wisconsin, that means it's time for Trainfest. This year, the show took place on November 10 and 11, and stayed open a little longer both days. It may have been the warmer weather or it may have been all the billboards that I saw around town and on the way to the show, but this year's attendance set a new Trainfest record with almost 21,000 tickets sold (and that's in addition to all of the vendors, exhibitors and volunteers who were working the show). I was there with the Capitol City "N"Gineers again this year and I found some time to wander around and get some photos and talk to the manufacturers. Today I'll show you some of the layouts and people that were there...

First of all, I have to apologize for not having the club names. I neglected to pick up a show program so I don't know who was where, but the photos are still fun to look at.

I started my layout photos with looking at the kids around our own layout. Sometimes you can get some really fantastic reactions from them when they first notice Thomas pulling a train past them. I didn't capture what I was looking for there, but my wife told me to turn around and look at this guy...

There seems to be a tradition forming of some exhibitors coming to the show in costume (like those three railroad priests that I showed from a year or two ago). This hobo was there both days, but I only saw the bull he's talking to in this image on Saturday.

Once I started wandering around, one of the first layouts I looked at was an HO scale layout that was set up for operations. The modules were built such that they could be arranged in different configurations, which meant that some interchanges led straight off the end of the benchwork. In most cases, the layout operators parked a train or made some other visual block so the train crews wouldn't run off the layout by mistake. This UP motorcar was one such view block; I didn't notice that the front truck was fully derailed until I looked at the image on my computer screen...

There were layouts there in all of the major modeling scales that are popular in the US, so I then looked at a couple G scale layouts. The G scalers always seem to find room for humorous scenes on their layouts, like the fate of this unfortunate lumberjack who didn't quite close the door all the way...

But, there were some G scale modelers who were quite serious in their model craftsmanship. On the same layout as the lumberjack shown above, there was a beautifully modeled Milwaukee Road Hiawatha train built to scale. The entire train was modeled from the E unit on the front to this model of Cedar Rapids on the rear. Because the cars were built to scale lengths, however, they had a little trouble negotiating the curve coming out of the yard onto a bridge and had to be tilted slightly to clear the bridge beam...

A little farther on and I stopped at another HO scale layout. I'm always looking for people in the model scenes that I photograph, and this layout had a few in prototypical poses. After recreating a shot that I did a couple years ago in a higher resolution and in RAW format (I still need to process the latest shot of that scene), I found this scene...

Well, I may not have gotten good shots of the kids around our layout, but found one when I viewed the 3-rail layout at the other end of the hall. I had to wait a while for the train to come around this huge layout again, but I think it was worth the wait...

On the way back to our layout, I stopped at another G scale layout where there were younger railroaders working hard on the line's doodlebug while a couple of older railroaders were hardly working at their checkers game.

Right next to that scene was the engine maintenance shed at Copper Junction, elevation 41 inches...

Finally, I got back to our Ntrak layout where one of our other members asked if I would take a few photos of his trains on the layout. After taking a few of his Amtrak train at one end, I shot his Christmas train going through the canyon module at the other end...

But, my favorite shot from the weekend was back at the first layout that I looked at where I saw the UP motorcar pictured above. The layout was lower than others in the hall, but I wonder how many people noticed this figure and child on the station platform waving to all the trains as they go by.