I hope at least some of you were able to attend. It was a whirlwind of a week. I was the local member more or less in charge of registration (the NMRA staff and regular annual volunteers do most of the registrar/registration pre-work), so if you were at the registration desk you very likely dealt with me or one of the volunteers who assisted. Quite an experience to hand the registration envelope to such individuals as Allen McClelland, Wayne Wesolowski (one of the finest scratchbuilders there is), Lee Riley of Bachmann, Russ Larson a former editor of MR, and other hobby luminaries, and get a chance to chat at least briefly with them.
We were busy stuffing registration packets on the Saturday before; chipping in to help, and more than pulling his weight, was Bob Keune. Never heard of him? He was introduced at the Saturday night banquet as the last surviving charter member of the NMRA. At the very least he is the last of the Milwaukee area charter members (the NMRA was formed in Milwaukee in 1935). Think about that for a moment. He was part of that initial group of modelers who had enough faith in the NMRA and the hobby to part with dues money - in the depths of the depression – to a brand new organization, and here he is a full 75 years later not only healthy enough to enjoy the convention, but dedicated enough to the hobby of model railroading to step up as a volunteer and offer much needed help as we assembled packets for the more than 1400 pre-registrants (final registration, including cancellations and registration at the door, should be around 1600), so that these people would enjoy their convention.
As with any event of this sort there are things that go wrong and some difficult folks to deal with but most are just great making the efforts all worth while. Great fellowship a
Thanks Dave for sharing your experience, since most of us here were not able to attend. I wish I could have attended, but I am planning on going next year.
Just wanted to say a big thank you on behalf of the Southern Wisconsin Sandhouse Crew. You guys threw one heck of a shindig. The show was well orginized and well staffed. We had a great time.
Is there site with large pictures and editorial on the convention. I would thing there would be a report on such event on a blog or something. I seems pretty quiet on this board for such a major event.
On behalf of North American Free-Mo and specifically the Southern Kansas Free-Mo group, thanks for the outstanding organization of the NTS event. We had a blast in a great event in a great city.
This was the first NMRA National I have attended without being “part of the show” in some form or another, so it was a different experience for me.
My bunch drove over from Michigan Saturday, with stops at the Laksehore Model RR Club in Calumet City, Illinois, Des Plaines Hobby, and at the Illinois Railway Museum.
We arrived in Milwaukee late Sunday morning and checked into the Hilton. It was the “official” hotel of the convention, though the Hyatt was also connected to the Convention Center at the diagonally-opposite corner. An exceptionally noisy air conditioner aside, the room was perfect, with less than five minutes’ walk to the Convention Center.
Check-in was quick and painless at the Convention. Anticipating that there was going to be a big demand for table space at the Silent Auction, I went back to the room and got the items I brought to sell. It was a good thing that I did-- the bid cards went quickly, with well over 1,800 items registered (I heard the number 2,100 mentioned, but I can’t confirm that). Otherwise, I spent most of the day talking with people I hadn’t seen for a while, and pre-registered for the 2012 Convention in Grand Rapids, Michigan. 'wrapped up the evening with the LDSIG Meet-n-Greet, where I had the distinction of being the first person to be able to say I’ve had a layout actually stolen (my modular club’s trailer, with its train show display layout was stolen last September).
I hadn’t signed up for any of the tours, planning instead to go to clinics most of the week, with the exception of trying to get in “standby” on a couple of operating sessions arranged by the OpSIG. I got into sessions on Monday and Tuesday evening. Both were worthwhile, but the Monday night session on Tim Hensch’s HO scale Norfolk & Whey was an exceptionally good experience. The operating scheme on his modern version of the N&W’s “Pokey” was well thought-out and very few glitches interfered with the ex
For those of you on Facebook, the folks organizing next year’s 2011 NMRA convention in Sacramento have a lot of coverage on this year’s convention in Milwaukee on their page: http://www.facebook.com/x2011west?ref=ts There are lots of posts showing layout tours including a preview tour of Andy Sperandeo’s in progress 1947 Santa Fe Cajon Pass layout, LDSIG videos and new stuff that was introduced at the NTS.