Convention Wrap-up

It’s been a week since the Convention.  I’m pretty much caught up on all the work I put on hold in the week or two previous to it.  I guess it’s time for a wrap-up post.

After struggling with the floor plan we finally got everything to fit, on paper.  We went to the Silver Fox on Thursday before the show to mark the floor for the layouts and position a few tables.  The first thing I wanted to check was the number of tables the staff of the Silver Fox placed around the perimeter of the rink for vendors.  I was really surprised that they were able to fit two extra tables along the length of the room.  We soon discovered that my drawing was 20 feet too short.  We probably would not have had so much trouble getting things to fit on the paper plan if we had known.  Thankfully it wasn’t the other way and we discovered the room was 20 feet short!  Whew!

Narragansett Bay Railway and Navigation Co. - Rhode Island (Photo: Allan Bishop)

Thursday night was a relatively sleepless one wondering what problems Friday would bring.  I arrived at the Silver Fox before noon and there were already a few people waiting to set up.  The room slowly started to take shape and by 7:00 almost everyone was set up.  At 9:00 we closed the place down.  The room looked quite impressive, to say the lest.

We moved on to the Quality Inn where they had a spread of food and “drinks”  in their large courtyard area.  From the comments I’ve heard I’m pretty sure everyone had a great time, especially the folks that won gift certificates to local restaurants.

Friday night was another relatively sleepless one wondering if the public show would be successful.  Would there be enough interest?  After all the publicity (full front page article in the Journal Pioneer, PSA announcements, radio interview, and an on-location spot with the local CBC television weather guy) folks should certainly know about it.

During the show (photo: Jean Cormier)

It was hard to tell what the public attendance was like through the day on Saturday.  We’re used to the Truro and Moncton venues and what the crowds look like there, but this venue was bigger.  It didn’t look like there were many people around, especially in the morning.  The afternoon crowd was a little better.  Vendors gave mixed reports of how well the day was going.

Ron Day - Fast Tracks Clinic (photo: Derwin Cole)

The clinic rooms were a worry for me because they were only curtained off areas.  I hoped the noise from one room would not interfere with what was happening in the other room.  The rooms were a little noisy, but I think they worked okay.  I didn’t hear many complaints about them, anyway

We were a little rushed during the banquet.  The Silver Fox had a dance scheduled for 9:30 and I was hoping we’d be done by then.  We were done a little after 9:00, but like I said we felt rushed to finish things up.  Part of the problem was that we did such a good job of soliciting prizes that after the contest prizes were doled out we still had tons of stuff to give away.  I was drawing names for at least 30 minutes!  In the end almost everyone got something.

The Quality Inn was nice enough to provide us with a suite that we could use as a hospitality room so things moved there after the banquet.  Another late evening, but I slept a whole lot better than the previous two nights!  I knew there was nothing to worry about for Sunday.

Brian Chappell, Derwin Cole, and I opened our layout rooms for the tours on Sunday.  We all had lots of visitors.  About half the registered delegates participated in the tours.  The tours ended about 2:00 and I, for one, enjoyed a well deserved rest for the remainder of the day.

The final tally was 81 delegates, 105 for the banquet, and over 500 for the public show!  Those pretty much double my budgeted numbers!  The dollar figures aren’t final, but I know we’ll be making some sizable donations to our charities and perhaps even add something to the MFMR coffers to boot!

I want to thank everyone who participated for making Island Rails 2009 a grand success!  Without you it wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun!

See you at Tracks and Tides 2010 in Saint John (the next MFMR Convention) on May 20 – 23, 2010!

Scott

Narragansett Bay Railway and Navigation Co. – Rhode Island (Photo: Allan Bishop)

UMG setting up (photo: Allan Bishop)

Saint John N Scale (Photo: Derwin Cole)

EasterN BeNders (Photo: Derwin Cole)

Truro Club (Photo: Derwin Cole)

Saint John HO Scale (photo: Derwin Cole)

Moncton HO scale (photo: Derwin Cole)

UMG (photo: Derwin Cole)

Lots of final touchups! (photo: Dave McMahon)

During the show (photo: Jean Cormier)

What railroad scene on PEI would be complete without 1762? (Photo: Dave McMahon)

Narragansett Bay Railway & Navigation Co. (photo: Derwin Cole)

Narragansett Bay Railway & Navigation Co. (photo: Derwin Cole)

Huge sales? Don’s HO (photo: Derwin Cole)

Will Lawrence – Locomotive Maintenance (photo: Derwin Cole)

Ross Young – Bragdon Powders (photo Derwin Cole)

Ronald Grandmaison – Structures (photo: Derwin Cole)

James Whatley – CNR Van Details (photo: Derwin Cole)

Ron Day – Fast Tracks Clinic (photo: Derwin Cole)

Weekend Promotional Event

Model railroading is not a very public activity in Summerside.  Not many people are aware that there is an active model railroading community in the area.  So, in an effort to increase awareness of the hobby and get some free advertising for Island Rails, we approached one of the local malls about setting up a layout for the day.

We thought we would be able to find a space in the mall common area where we could set up a small layout early in the morning and operate it for most of the day.  However, the mall manager offered us a vacant store where we could set it up and leave it set up for a few days!  What could be better than that!

So, this past Thurday evening we loaded up two trucks with our UMG modules and gear and set up our “small” layout.  It wasn’t so small and we pretty much filled the 14′ x 44′ store, but it was small by UMG setup standards (where we sometimes have to squeeze a layout into 30′ x 40′ spaces )

We were open to the public on Friday evening from 6 – 9 and pretty much all day Saturday from 10am to 6pm.  I couldn’t believe that there were people waiting at the door on Friday evening when we arrived!  There seemed to be a steady stream of visitors all evening.  The three hours went by so fast!

Saturday morning wasn’t much different with people waiting for us to open up.  There always seemed to be a few people looking at the layout and chatting until about 4:30.  The whole mall seemed like a ghost town.  A trip outside showed us why.  It was almost a double digit (temperature) day with nice warm sunshine.  Who’d want to shop on the first REAL day of spring!

With all the chatting I only managed to get a few pictures…

We used the new UMG Operator Cards for the first time.  These are the size of business cards and have the group’s name (UMG) and web address on one side and we “certify” new operators on the other side.  There is a post about these cards on the UMG web site.  Derwin is signing up a new operator, but the deal isn’t done until hands shake!

Some kids were very nervous about running a train while some couldn’t wait to get their hands on the throttle.  However, as nervous or excited as they were it seemed the younger they were the slower they went.  The older kids wanted to make the trains go FAST!  So fast in fact that we weren’t sure the rail stops at the ends of the earth would stop them!  But the little guys, and girls!, just wanted to see the train move and were hesitant to make them go too fast.  We didn’t sign up many adults as UMG engineers.  They seemed happy to just talk and watch.

Although we were not swamped with people, we did have a steady stream of  folks stopping by.  There always seemed to be 2 or 3 groups wandering through.  Here Brian is explaining something about model railroading.  Or is he explaining why we call orselves the Half Nuts Model Railroaders?

On the subject of “Lost & Found”… What, we weren’t talking about lost and found?  Oh well then… Ahem. On the subject of “Lost and Found” we had this interesting item dropped off to us by a passerby.  As soon as Derwin saw it he thought he had a new throttle!  We tried telling him it wouldn’t work and wasn’t a real telephone throttle, but he still tried to run trains with it.

I mentioned it got quiet later in the day on Saturday.  Well, it was really quiet from about 4:30 until we packed up at 6:00.  Then it got really noisy as the deconstruction began.  I took the opportunity  to take a picture of the whole set up before it was gone.  Here Brian and Curtis wander around hoping someone drops by.

We had lots of advertising for Island Rails posted and gave out lots of flyers for people to take home.  If the promotion was any indication the public portion of the Convention will be a success!

That’s it for now!

Scott

Video Projector & Laptop

we have one of each already, but we will need two for the clinic rooms.  If anyone has either and is willing to lend it to us for the day I’d really appreciate it.

Thanks!

Scott

Walking or Driving?

We have had a few questions about the distance from the Quality Inn to the Silver Fox.  I was downtown the other day and decided to see just how far it was.  The drive in moderate traffic took about 2 minutes.  The overall distance was about 1.3 km.  So it is not inconceivable that someone might decide to walk from the hotel to the Convention if the weather is nice.  Oh how I hope the weather is nice!

Scott

Planning underway!

It took us a while to get started, but we now have tasks assigned and are underway with planning Island Rails 2009.

Please check this site often as we will be posting items periodically to keep everyone up to date on our progress.  If you use an RSS Reader you can subscribe to our feed.  If you don’t use one I suggest Google Reader as an easy to use feed reader.

Scott