Sorry for all of the mess up on Org. post, but it all stated out from e-mail I got from Russ M. and no way to reply to it… I think anyone if ask ahead are welcome to visit any layout, members or not. It’s our Hobby and like to show what we have done so, away if call ahead of time, most likely are welcome anywhere.
Glad I didn’t have to reset up for another show so soon. lol. And we did for a few hr. show our layout #86 on our day with BAGGS live on the internet.
Noel Wilson said:
I think anyone if ask ahead are welcome to visit any layout, members or not. It’s our Hobby and like to show what we have done so, away if call ahead of time, most likely are welcome anywhere.
Not sure your “members or not” welcome is unanimous with all members, Noel. I haven’t been a BAGRS member for about 15 years, but I visited three layouts, attended one swap meet, and had good fun at the convention anyway. I thought Russ Miller did an outstanding job of organizing this year’s convention and layout tours and I don’t think he was thanked enough for all of his efforts.
Noel Wilson said:
I think anyone if ask ahead are welcome to visit any layout, members or not. It’s our Hobby and like to show what we have done so, away if call ahead of time, most likely are welcome anywhere.
Not sure your “members or not” welcome is unanimous with all members, Noel. I haven’t been a BAGRS member for about 15 years, but I visited three layouts, attended one swap meet, and had good fun at the convention anyway. I thought Russ Miller did an outstanding job of organizing this year’s convention and layout tours and I don’t think he was thanked enough for all of his efforts.
Noel Wilson said:
I think anyone if ask ahead are welcome to visit any layout, members or not. It’s our Hobby and like to show what we have done so, away if call ahead of time, most likely are welcome anywhere.
Not sure your “members or not” welcome is unanimous with all members, Noel. I haven’t been a BAGRS member for about 15 years, but I visited three layouts, attended one swap meet, and had good fun at the convention anyway. I thought Russ Miller did an outstanding job of organizing this year’s convention and layout tours and I don’t think he was thanked enough for all of his efforts.
Noel Wilson said:
I think anyone if ask ahead are welcome to visit any layout, members or not. It’s our Hobby and like to show what we have done so, away if call ahead of time, most likely are welcome anywhere.
Not sure your “members or not” welcome is unanimous with all members, Noel. I haven’t been a BAGRS member for about 15 years, but I visited three layouts, attended one swap meet, and had good fun at the convention anyway. I thought Russ Miller did an outstanding job of organizing this year’s convention, layout tours, and other activities, and I don’t think he was thanked enough for all of his efforts. By the way, the 2016 BAGRS convention reefer looks great!
Sorry. I guess there’s an echo on this board. Russ Miller was acknowledged 4 times for his efforts!
Michael Kirrene said:
Sorry. I guess there’s an echo on this board. Russ Miller was acknowledged 4 times for his efforts!
Thank You Michael!
Russ Miller, NGRC Chairman (Retired!)
Greg Elmassian said:
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
Greg… I totally agree. I’m not a Facebook Member either and the pop up are annoying. I’ve had my 24 year old daughter running the Facebook page from the beginning. I was asked by numerous people, including vendors, exhibitors and attendees if we were going to have a Facebook page. Since I was trying to spread the word to as many people as possible as cheaply as possible I decided to set one up. To do that I asked one of my experts to help me…
We let the www.NGRC2016.org website go away as BAGRS did not want to be stuck with the monthly payments to Wild Apricot. It can be found on the Internet Archive and I made sure all of the pages were copied there before it was deleted…
Russ Miller
NGRC 2016 Chairman… Retired!
I haven’t been a BAGRS member for about 15 years, but I visited three layouts, attended one swap meet, and had good fun at the convention anyway. I thought Russ Miller did an outstanding job of organizing this year’s convention and layout tours and I don’t think he was thanked enough for all of his efforts.
Michael,
Why don’t you join BAGRS? It is only $35 per year… We just toured a bunch of layouts on Sunday. I Couldn’t hit them all because traffic was insane in the North Bay. If you join, that will help BAGRS break 300 member families!
Russ
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.
Dan,
Well I had a Great Time! Because I was busy running the convention I really didn’t have time to do much prep work. In fact, I attended the BBQ is Felton on Wednesday Evening, drove home and worked till midnight, got up at 6am and put trains out on the track for the first people who showed up just before 8am. We also ended up with around 400 people visiting. My wife had made 2 large trays of Tamale Pie and all the food was gone by the time the third bus arrived. Needless to say, I didn’t get any! I was spending way too much time talking and having fun to eat. My kids and their friends put the stuff away at 1pm as I took off to attend the the Ice Cream Social at Accucraft Trains. By the time I got there things were winding down and the Burger Truck and Ice Cream Truck gave us all free food because they had such a wonderful day. From there I drove down to the Convention Center and went into the Exhibit Hall about 10 minutes before we open the doors to the masses of attendees waiting outside. I made sure everyone was ready and we opened the floodgates. It was absolutely amazing! I think I finally went to sleep in the hotel at about midnight… Up at 6am to start all over again…
Russ Miller
Russ, I want to reinforce that I think you did a great job promoting and making it a success.
Funny thing about the web site, there are companies that will give you a discount on a site if you are a non-profit. My site of 750 pages costs me $100 a year.
Sometimes there are alternatives that can be found with a little more looking.
Again, congrats on a job well done.
Greg
Russ, I’m glad you invited the Del Oro Pacific club to the convention. Their layout was really the highlight for the wife and me, and I enjoyed talking to the guys who run it. Good people. Will definitely have to rejoin BAGRS so I can be in tune with what’s going on in the neighborhood. Looking forward to the next swap meet!
Russ,
Thank you for all your hard work in making a successful convention. We were amazed that people came from such great distances, Germany to Australia, to attend the convention.
Greg Elmassian said:
Russ, I want to reinforce that I think you did a great job promoting and making it a success.
Funny thing about the web site, there are companies that will give you a discount on a site if you are a non-profit. My site of 750 pages costs me $100 a year.
Sometimes there are alternatives that can be found with a little more looking.
Again, congrats on a job well done.
Greg
The NGRC2016 Website lives! It is still available online through Wild Apricot: https://nationalgardenrailwayconvention2016.wildapricot.org
Our Facebook Page is still having items added to it. We received a really nice write up by Gary Woolard in the December 2016 issue of Steam in the Garden magazine.
Russ
An East Coast reply:
Mr. Miller
I personally appreciate the work you do to promote the hobby! I only follow what I see here at LSC and GR magazine.
As for the rest I don’t know. I don’t really surf any other large scale modeling train porn on the internet. I don’t do social networking either like facebook. However the word is out there and traveled 3,000 miles to me so it must be working!
Thanks for your work !
Russ doesn’t just promote Large Scale trains and host great train conventions, he’s an all around good guy. Which reminds me - I gotta renew my BAGRS membership…
By the way, you don’t have to be a social networker or contribute anything to Facebook. You can just get away with reading it.