General impressions of Milwaukee's Trainfest 2009

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
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Those of us in Milwaukee look forward to Trainfest almost like a holiday – with the same feeling of exhaustion afterwards. Some random impressions (I am sure MR will be noting the new products announced). I suspect the attendance might be a hair smaller than last year, so perhaps 20,000, but still, very well attended. It actually helps if the weather is unpleasant without being positively foul.

I volunteer each year at the registration for layouts/dealers on Friday and this year handed out program booklets at the door Saturday and for a bit on Sunday; I put in about 7 1/2 to 8 hours worth of volunteer time. Let’s just say, you meet all types … There is a large crew of really hard working, unpaid volunteers.

John Tews, the director, has been at this several years and has most of it down to a routine but each year there seems to be new challenges and new issues, but I can see there is a real effort to address the problems of the year before. This year for example it seemed the state fair park staff did not handle the parking situation as smoothly as they could have; that is out of our hands but I am pretty sure they will “hear” about the issues. Many aspects of Trainfest are really out of our hands; Trainfest is just a renter of the facility and since it is government, … well … .

Trainfest is the main funding vehicle for our NMRA division, and thanks to Trainfest we meet each month in a spacious hotel conference room, with tiered seating and projection capability, with rooms for contests, swap meet, free video/DVD borrowing library, coffee, etc. Our meets are all free and totally open to the public yet cost quite a bit so the money from Trainfest benefits all local model railroaders and many railfans who are not modelers.

The main thing about Trainfest is operating layouts. It is not a swap meet

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I was there working in the NFR NMRA booth. We build models and people just stop by and talk. It is very popular in southern Ontario where we are from. This was the second year and it must have been okay , we are invited back next year. We had two local modellers join us a man and wife team. All had a great time.

Dave

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My wife and I travelled from Tacoma, WA my Amtral both ways to the show. Spent several days touring Milwaukee before the show. Went to Walthers train shop, several mansion tours, walked around the ritzy home areas, and generally had a good time. Stayed away from brewery and Harley tours; did the Jelly Belly tour.

This was my first time at the show, and I thought it was very well laid out, and very well handled. Hearing about 20,000 attendees made me nervous, but I had no difficulty seeing what I wanted more or less when I wanted to.

On Saturday, a friend went with me who is only marginally interested in model trains, but he seemed quite taken with the G-scale trains. He had no idea there were trains meant for running outside in the garden.

On Sunday, my wife went with me to look a layouts, and we had a good time getting ideas for my layout.

As to deals, I bought two Tsunami Diesel Atlas light board decoders for $80 less $5 cash rebate on both. Badger was selling what looks to be a pretty good double-action internal mix top feed airbrush - called a Patriot Model 105 - for $60, including a Modelflex paint set and a very nice undecorated Athearn 60’ box car to practice on. I felt pretty good with those prices.

Tony’s Train Exchange was selling the same decoder for a little more than the list price of $99. Another vendor was selling Intermountain semi-scale 33" wheelsets for $8 each, normally $10. All in all, pretty good.

In the past, I’ve been involved with trying to set up and run similar train shows for the 4th Division PNR. All of them lost money, or almost broke even. I learned from Trainfest that we needed to charge the full boat admission both days for adults, and not to give discounts to NMRA members. In our case, we didn’t charge for parking and should have. The venue we chose was about as expensive as it gets in this area.

I am no longer

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Dave,

I agree with your observation, but I’d like to offer my perspective as well. As a young kid I loved trains and they were always my greatest interest. Once I got into middle school in like 2000 my interest really became dormant. I was still interested but I couldn’t model much on my own, and it was difficult to get to the train shop to pick up supplies because my parents couldn’t always drive me. Trains pretty much remained eclipsed by video games and tabletop war games. By the time I’d graduated high school, trains were growing back into the big picture.

I’ve been in college for two years now, and I’m as interested in trains as ever. As luck would have it I go to school on the east coast and my layout is on the west coast at home, so trains dont come with me to school at all. I feel like a lot of younger people kind of phase out trains for a little while only to have them grow back into the big picture after a few years.

-Cahrn

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TRAINFEST 2009, ’s Largest Operating Model

Railroad Show, achieves another record success.

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