Today I helped out in the San Leandro Historical Railway Society booth at the Girl Scout’s 100th anniversary celebration at the Alameda Country Fairgrounds. We also had a booth for Operation Lifesaver.
Girl Scouts you ask? We often forget that girls can also have an interest in trains (though not quite as much as boys for sure). There was a fairly steady stream of traffic through the booth and hopefully it will help drive more people in for our open house coming up June 2nd and 3rd.
Overall I thought the event was successful for SLHRS. The most rewarding part was running a small O scale layout and having people walk by and go “oooh trains!!!” There were even two little boys who spent quite a bit of time watching the trains with their dads while their sisters and moms went on to other booths.
Overall it was a lot of fun, and hopefully will pay off with the public exposure, and even more important that the information we gave out through Operation Lifesaver will have an effect and help prevent people from being injured or killed by trains.

I took quite a few pictures while I was at Traintown in Jamestown, CA.

Here is another view of the roundhouse and turntable, showing two of their diesel switchers.

A view of the other end of the turntable, unfortunately the weather conditions were very bright.

Another view of the turntable.

Model A railcar used for VIP’s and rail inspection.

Small diesel tractor used for shifting locomotives around the roundhouse.

Here was an interesting tool that was in the shop attached to the roundhouse.  It is used to heat up the metal tire for a locomotive so it would fit onto the wheel.  After it cooled it would be held tight as the metal contracted.

I took quite a few pictures while I was at Traintown in Jamestown, CA.

Here is a picture of the motor for the turntable at their roundhouse.

In the background you can see one of the diesel switchers.

 Here is one of the track inspection cars, is moved by pulling the handle back and forth like the children’s car.

 The cylinders on one of the three truck Shays.

 Closeup of the linkage between the trucks on a Shay.

 The gears on a Shay, notice the amount of grease.

 Inspection pit inside the roundhouse.

About two weeks ago the National Train Show was in Sacramento.  My wife and I wandered through the entire convention center and saw many interesting new products and some incredible modular layouts.  If it is in your area next year it will definitely be worth the trip.

Here is a picture of all of my purchases at the show, the ornament and the magnetic pickup tool are my wife’s.

One of the products I will point out is the Siflor grass tufts.  These are small tufts of grass that are self adhesive, a very cool idea.

The two bags on the left are Woodland Scenics starter kits, Learn to Create Water and Create Detail.  Each bag contain a wide variety of Woodland Scenics products to complete a small scene.  These little kits are an excellent idea to learn how to use basic scenic techniques.  They were very reasonably priced for the amount of materials contained in each kit.  The scenery manual is just that, and covers a wide range of scenery techniques – a very good value.

In the center of the picture is a cool airbrush cleaning station.  It gives you a place to spray cleaning solution through an airbrush without the overspray and fumes (it has a small filter).

All in all our trip to Sacramento was a lot of fun.

This weekend we have our open house down at the San Leandro Historical Railway Society. I should be running trains for most of the day on both Saturday and Sunday, including a D&RGW passenger train pulled by a Shay locomotive (at the blistering top speed of 14 mph). I also have two mixed freights, the same train with either my F7 A and B locomotives or with my 4-8-2 Mountain, which I will be running at some point.

Join us for a lot of trains running and a chance to help preserve this piece of the history of San Leandro, CA.
http://www.slhrs.org