Showtime: 2016 Railroad Hobby Show Recap

The layout setup and running during the 2016 Railroad Hobby Show.

Another Railroad Hobby Show is in the books!  Over 23,000 attendees, exhibitors, and vendors packed the Eastern States Exposition during the weekend of January 30-31, 2016, taking in the 350,000 square feet of railroading wonderment. This was probably the warmest year in the recent memory of the show with Sunday hitting a balmy 50 degrees. After last year's Saturday blizzard, this was a welcome change! 

The Tribute to Springfield layout was setup and operating inside the Young Building - next to the Mohegan Pequot Model Railroad Club's HO and G scale layouts.  For those of you following along with the blog, last week I left you with a bit of a cliff hanger - would the exterior of the Young Building model be finished in time for the show?  As you can see in the photos below (of if you were at the show) - yes I made it in time!  It was a long Monday night and Tuesday but I was able to finish painting the brick, added a few details, and even installed a few lights.

Trains running around lunch time Thursday.

While the show was open to the public on Saturday and Sunday, behind the scenes for myself and fellow club members, activity for the event starts Wednesday and lasts until late Sunday night.  This makes for a long couple of days, but it is always a lot of fun.  On Wednesday afternoon and evening, we packed up all the modules and trains into approximately 15 vehicles - including two large trailers and a UHaul truck.  It really does take about 5-6 hours to load everything to ensure a safe ride up to the Eastern States Exposition and to make sure we don't forget anything we need to keep the layout operating over the weekend!

We drove up to West Springfield, MA, on Thursday morning to unload before all the vendors are allowed in on Friday.  This gives us a chance to drive our vehicles into the building which makes unloading very easy. I worked on setting up the Tribute to Springfield first thing Thursday morning so I could spend Thursday afternoon and Friday helping with the HO layout. This year, the setup on the layouts went smoothly and we had a bit of play time on Friday afternoon.

Once the show opens, the best part of the weekend was having a chance to catch up with so many friends as well as meet lots of new people.  It was also great to meet a number of you who are following along with the blog.  I really enjoy hearing all of the stories people share with me about something the layout reminded them about.

Of course, there is always a chance for a little "business" at the show to work out future displays as well as new projects.  There are a number of future events for the layout which have been put in motion and I will hopefully be able to announce the details on the blog over the next couple of weeks.

Since I spent much of the weekend at the layout, I was only able to quickly breeze around the show and see what was new.  Fortunately, there were a lot of other people who covered the show with articles and blog posts around the web.  To get you started, check out Jeff Schultz's postings on the Model Railroad Hobbyist's website for coverage of Day 1 and Day 2 of the show.  In addition, I am starting to gather YouTube links on the 2016 Railroad Hobby Show playlist. You can peruse these links at your leisure and they will be updated over the next week or two as more people have a chance to post about the show.

Next year's show dates are January 28th and 29th, 2017.  Mark your calendars and make your reservations now!