I survived..... the first weekend of the 2010 Magic of Model Trains at McWane Sceince Center in Birmingham.
Saturday was chaos!
I went to Sam's to buy a ping pong table to use as a base for a new "Thomas the Tank Engine" layout of pint size operators. A stop at Home Depot for more building materials, then on to McWane.
We had to set up a display case in the hallway with a variety of engines and cars for the visitors. I contibuted a tank engine pulling the old ConCor "LIMA" passenger and box cars in the red and black color scheme. We tried to make it a colorful display of engines and different types of cars.
It only took us two hours to put the folding ping pong table together. It went faster after we found the instructions! We decided to delat the rest of the construction until next week and put the figure-8 track together.
The maiden run was made by a 3 year old cutie who could barely wait until the power pack was hooked up. Yes, she taught us that THOMAS will roll after one round of the track at wide-open speed. We will have to install a governer on the throttle.
Sunday afternoon, I was back for a stint in overalls and work shirt answering all kinds of train questions. We had to deal with the 7 year-old, self-proclaimed NUMBER 1 THOMAS fan. He was pretty good about sharing the throttle with others.
We had several mothers help their child run the train, blow the horn and stop the train at the station so passengers could get off. One son had to show his mother 3 times where to stop the engine to let the passengers off at the platform. She finally got it right and said she wanted to practice again Christmas morning with her son. He agreed she could help him again with his own set!
BTW, Rex, my condolences to your local college football team. I would have preferred they lose their second game, at home to AUBURN.