Yesterday’s open house was a great success. I want to thank everyone who participated in the event.
We had about 50 BAGRS visitors and another 25 people who learned about the open house from newspaper or internet sources. I want to thank Trisha Lyn Fawver for getting out the word.
Many BAGRS members were impressed with the progress that we have made on the G&O and the quality of the water feature and children’s layout. One BAGRS member said that our water feature is the best that he has ever seen on any garden railroad. This says a lot because he has several wonderful water features on his garden railroad.
Pat LaTorres, Nancy Norris and Gary Whalen (from BAGRS) kept live steam trains running on the outside loop. We had a smaller electric powered train owned by John Bouey running on the inside loop throughout the show. Pat set up a haunted house surrounded by vampires on the G gauge display. The house made spooky sounds that thrilled our younger visitors.
The children’s layout had G and O gauge Thomas Train’s owned by Bill Alexander plus a circus train running during the entire show. The children’s layout was operated for most of the day by my good friend Jim Stephens. (Jim has helped with many G&O projects. He is especially talented at repairing broken G gauge engines.)
The Santa Fe San Francisco Chief was running on the main O gauge loop during most of the day.
Dominic Fawver, and Pat, Mark Johnson, and Maurice Stratton ran trains on the HO layout. Thanks guys.
John Bouey brought a lot of his personal G gauge trains and other items to sell. We also sold items that had been donated to the G&O and SLHRS. Vern Cumins sold more of his HO cars.
Our sale was a huge success. Thank you to everyone who donated and sold items. I especially want to recognize and thank John for running the sale and donating so many items to sell. We also took in a fair amount of donations.
We were blessed with wonderful weather and I think that everyone who participated had a fabulous time. We had one person fill out a membership application and I believe that two more people are thinking about joining SLHRS.
I am confident that this is the first of many great shows that will increase SLHRS’ visibility throughout the Bay Area.
Again, thank you to everyone who helped make this show so successful.
