Hello! anybody out there from BAGRS? It’s been almost a month since the NGRSC and me and Noel Wilson (SVGRS) Sacramento Garden Railway Society are the only two people to post our experience and photos about the open houses. There must be a few more members with open house experiences and photos of interest. After all it was a National event, no, an international event from as far away as Australia to Germany. I frankly am disappointed not more are interested in sharing their experience. I can’t believe Noel and I are the only ones that have something to share. Rant over…
Dan D. Yes… I was wondering also where are the photos of the tours. Guess they all got burned out or ??? We sure seen a bunch from back east events. Also just a Rant and over, now running out of popcorn… lol.
Dan -
A report is a reasonable request - otherwise those that promoted and gave it their time wonder significance.
In short, was the Bay Area event seen as well attended? Having 60 homes available was a credit to the hobby and the group’s ability to keep the interest going. Any new members sign up to have an open house as result of visual inspiration?
The large scale hobby apparently is void of new product promotions as evidenced by the Multi-Scale show, that was the Big Train Show here in So Calif., brought little or no information on the status of the manufacturers and any new products of interest.
Here, in the LA area, the open house days of 3 and 4 homes open in an area on a weekend has virtually disappeared. Cause? My guess is its an older group with a hobby in its 10th- 15th year that needs outdoor maintenance and repair before it can be shown. Plus, any travel to see open houses is a traffic challenge in this wide-spread basin. So an open house well-attended is one not seen before or is extensive in size and construction.
Your thoughts?
Wendell Hanks said:
Dan -
A report is a reasonable request - otherwise those that promoted and gave it their time wonder significance.
In short, was the Bay Area event seen as well attended? Having 60 homes available was a credit to the hobby and the group’s ability to keep the interest going.
Your thoughts?
…
We have to agree on how much time is involved in setting up and hosting a open house. yes… being in to the hobby 10 to 15 yrs can get tiresome to set up and a lot of work. So getting photos is hard for the owner to do, but guest is what we rely on to show other to keep the hobby going. We know the open houses on the Baggrs tours had to have a lot of work in to them and sure love to see what they did to get more ideas.
Wendell Hanks said: ’
Dan -
A report is a reasonable request - otherwise those that promoted and gave it their time wonder significance.
In short, was the Bay Area event seen as well attended? Having 60 homes available was a credit to the hobby and the group’s ability to keep the interest going.
Wendell,
1200 people attended the convention with 114 houses open from July 2nd to the 13th. We had 400 visit our layout and heard of similar attendance at others layouts. see my post about our experience. http://www.largescalecentral.com/forums/topic/25743/our-ngrc-2016-open-house-7-7-2016 . I don’t know if the convention generated any new younger signups for BAGRS. All hobbies seem to be in jeopardy.
Thanks Noel for your comment.
This is like pulling teeth, but did find this on u-tube.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOPzgHOx_WGqxjFB1hbp6BrblF9JaSI_C
Great detective work Noel!
You guys haven’t been paying attention to the NGRC 2016 Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/NGRC2016
1200 people in attendance is correct and it the largest registration for an NGRC in many years! Our Public Day on Saturday was the largest turnout that anyone could remember. Both Marc Horovitz and Ron Gibson were thrilled at the turnout and asked me how we pulled it off. I told them lots of hard work and a lot of very creative advertising. Every vendor who decided to show up to the Exhibit Hall reported outstanding sales with many making more dollars than they ever have at any train show, anywhere! I was genually upset that a lot of vendors chose to not attend the 2016 NGRC, most of them of the East Coast variety, including some manufactures but it was their loss as everyone there had a great time.
Now I was running the show so I didn’t get to visit any of the layouts during the convention. I made the pre-convention tours on Saturday only and by the time the post convention tours started I was too tired to attend. Most of those layouts that were open for the pre-convention tours will be open this Sunday for the BAGRS tours. If you have your convention book, layouts 5,6,7 and 9,10,11 & 13 will be open starting at 9am for layout #5. We are opening up this tour to non BAGRS members who attended the convention but were not able to visit these outstanding layouts because they were open the weekend before the official convention started.
The general consensus from attendees, public visitors, exhibitors, industry insiders and presenters was that this was the Best Convention Ever! That was our goal from the start and I think we pulled it off!
Russ Miller
NGRC 2016 Chairman (Retired!)
What’s Facebook?(http://largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-undecided.gif)
*** Do not reply to this message ***
Hello Noel Wilson,
Russell Miller has posted a reply to the topic “Callin All BAGRS members (Bay Area Garden Railway Society)” :
"
You guys haven’t been paying attention to the NGRC 2016 Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/NGRC2016
1200 people in attendance is correct and it the largest registration for an NGRC in many years! Our Public Day on Saturday was the largest turnout that anyone could remember. Both Marc Horovitz and Ron Gibson were thrilled at the turnout and asked me how we pulled it off. I told them lots of hard work and a lot of very creative advertising. Every vendor who decided to show up to the Exhibit Hall reported outstanding sales with many making more dollars than they ever have at any train show, anywhere! I was genually upset that a lot of vendors chose to not attend the 2016 NGRC, most of them of the East Coast variety, including some manufactures but it was their loss as everyone there had a great time.
Now I was running the show so I didn’t get to visit any of the layouts during the convention. I made the pre-convention tours on Saturday only and by the time the post convention tours started I was too tired to attend. Most of those layouts that were open for the pre-convention tours will be open this Sunday for the BAGRS tours. If you have your convention book, layouts 5,6,7 and 9,10,11 & 13 will be open starting at 9am for layout #5. We are opening up this tour to non BAGRS members who attended the convention but were not able to visit these outstanding layouts because they were open the weekend before the official convention started.
The general consensus from attendees, public visitors, exhibitors, industry insiders and presenters was that this was the Best Convention Ever! That was our goal from the start and I think we pulled it off!
Russ Miller
NGRC 2016 Chairman (Retired!)
"
…
Hey Russel Miller… Just got this E-mail this morning…Not sure what you are saying… Is this something we are suppose to do and set our layout back up for the bay area open house again? You listed our layouts on NBR 13.
And Facebook link you showed is show the 2017 conv stuff??
The e-mail we got with no replay to go to said this week end??
Maybe we read it wrong… Been wrong a few time here. lol.
OK, I’m not a stupid guy, and in fact have several engineering degrees and wrote software for a living.
I have a facebook login, but I don’t use it much, because it seems just a single stream of comments and no way to follow a specific topic.
So I just went to the facebook page… again just a single thread of comments… worthless to me unless I read each and every one… forget that.
So, I went to the photos…just a whole bunch of blocks with no organization or titles or comments… again in my opinion, a time waster unless I want to live on facebook.
Also, there is a big white box bullying me to log in to see the pictures, and after looking at a few it goes huge and blots out everything forcing me to once again dismiss it for a while.
So, I don’t like it and it’s not easy to use if you want to follow specific information.
Russ, I know you went to a lot of effort to make the convention succeed, and my hat is off to you, but I guess I will never enjoy it from afar.
To me, facebook would be great if I had nothing else to do is sit on it and had lots of time to waste.
I tried, and left, well, disgusted with fighting the interface. I won’t give up and perhaps I will have a facebook afficianato show me how to use it.
Greg
I encourage you to try again, Greg. The BAGRS pictures and video clips alone are worth the effort. I have just one Engineering degree and I have no trouble at all navigating around Facebook and using its functions. (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-smile.gif)
The interface sucks, no titles, and a ton of pictures not organized.
The bottom line, the time invested is not worth the result for me. Might be ok for others but my time is limited, and I want a better interface to look at things.
(This is also why train forums are better than FB for the same content)
Trying again will NOT change the poor interface. Facebook is a blog, not an organized presentation, that was the point, and I think you missed it, or perhaps do not accept it, or agree. Either way is fine.
Greg
No, I didn’t miss anything. Facebook has 757 million daily users (1.23 billion monthly users) on its social network, so somebody must not have issues with the interface. (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-wink.gif)
Agree with you, though, concerning the message board forum being the preferred format.
I guess you are just absolutely certain that your opinion is right for everyone.
FB has it’s place, my opinion is that it’s not good for the kind of train information, like documenting a convention and the individual layouts.
The interface on FB is fine for other things, clearly, there are a lot of users. I think you keep missing the SPECIFIC thing I am saying, in fact in all our other interactions on this forum.
I suggest you read what I write a bit more specifically, I am quite literal and detailed… I say I don’t like a particular thing about FB and then you tell me that a bunch of people like FB… there’s the example of you not reading what I am writing.
So, why don’t you just give up trying to convince me that FB is great, my message is to Mr. Miller, and I am just one “vote”. Nothing has really been directed at you, unless you start documenting conventions on FB and wonder why people are complaining. Then I will tell YOU I don’t like what you are doing.
Greg
I guess you are just absolutely certain that your opinion is right for everyone.
FB has it’s place, my opinion is that it’s not good for the kind of train information, like documenting a convention and the individual layouts.
Agree with you, though, concerning the message board forum being the preferred format.
So, if the two of agree, then what are Yunz arguing about??
It’s very clear to me now why Greg inserted that little ‘caveat’ at the bottom of his profile.
I’m 72 and consider myself that age “chronologically”. I’m definitely NOT 72 in the things I participate or enjoy. I have done FB a few times over the years to stay in contact with old friends, Army buds and I participate in many “Train related” Groups on FB. Quite a few members on THIS site and MLS are in there also. Maybe they don’t want it known…not real sure about that :). When I first started FB, I had no clue about the security settings or what problems you can have by “Friending” every individual you come in contact with. I learned that lesson quickly! Got off FB for a few years and my son and daughter asked me to change my security settings and to be a little more “cautious” of making some individuals “Friends” :). I did that and my Friends list is VERY short. FB has it’s place and it is definitely NOT for everyone. There is some crap on there…no doubt :(. AND I agree with Greg, it looks to me like way too many folks “waste” a lot of time on FB. Speaking of “wasting time” in the digital age, why don’t you guys “chill a little” and get back to doing “train stuff”, cuz that’s what I’m going to do after lunch…get back to working outside in 95 plus degree weather and continue my work on 1/8th locomotives and rolling stock! 
Just a suggestion…
BTW Russ, I just took a look at the Convention FB site and it’s great. great photos. Not a problem for me to “navigate” the site. Thanks for what you did!
I started this post with hope that BAGRS members would have a train related avenue to share their open house experience. Thanks to Noel Wilson for sharing his experiences. He’s with Sacramento Valley Garden Railway Society and there layouts were part of Convention. Not one other BAGRS member participated in this forum. I don’t like the facebook page any more than Greg does and the banner trying to make me join is even worse. Molly and I had a great time with our open house, it’s a shame LSC wasn’t used to spread the experiences of other open houses. Oh well.
Dan DeVoto said:
I started this post with hope that BAGRS members would have a train related avenue to share their open house experience. Thanks to Noel Wilson for sharing his experiences. He’s with Sacramento Valley Garden Railway Society and there layouts were part of Convention. Not one other BAGRS member participated in this forum. I don’t like the facebook page any more than Greg does and the banner trying to make me join is even worse. Molly and I had a great time with our open house, it’s a shame LSC wasn’t used to spread the experiences of other open houses. Oh well.
You’re a hop, skip, and a jump from where I live, but since I’m not a BAGRS member, I wasn’t invited. Would still like to see your layout someday.