History Fridays: 1987 Railroad Hobby Show

The club's HO layout at the 1987 Railroad Hobby Show.

As many who have been following the blog know, my connection to the Railroad Hobby Show has been as an exhibitor with the Mohegan Pequot Model Railroad Club.  In just over a year, we will be celebrating our 30th anniversary at this event.  So, as a lead up to the 2017 show, for the next year during History Fridays I will take a look back at all of the different modular layouts we have displayed each year at the show.  Amazingly, no two years have been the same and we have always had new modules at the show.

The club was first invited to the Railroad Hobby Show in 1987.  At the time, the club only had an HO scale modular railroad - as the other scales were still a few years away.  The club setup a 16'x24' layout which included a variety of scenes from a big city to scenic countryside.  The layout also included the club's first staging yard iteration - a U-shaped version with a total of ten staging tracks.

A number of the modules appearing at the show would make return trips to Springfield for many years - like Bert's Yard and the Country Running modules.  However, information on a few have been lost to time - meaning they probably only made this one trip to the show.

The club was fortunate that one of our charter members, the late Jan Luth, was wise enough to take about a dozen photos of this show - including of the club's layout - so we have a record of what happened during our first visit to Springfield.