on another thread on this otherwise peaceful website, I’d though I’d bring spread a little balm on the belligerent blisters that tend to spoil what can often be interesting reading by telling you about my day out last wednesday.
My pal Broos and I, both ex-service - him USAF and me British Army - spend a few days every year at local schools and scout-meets, showing off and running our big trains. Since we invariably get to use school classroom or library facilities, we have a lot of ready-made baseboards by way of desks, and we use them to form the basis of as large a layout as we can manage, usually with three loops - one MTS for all the LGB stuff we both still have - and two analogue for the other stuff, of which we have much setting up a smaller loop on the carpetted floor.
Last wednesday was the turn of the elementary school up on the nearby Alconbury base, where Broos served out around ten years of his time in the USAF. The location has the added benefit of an Anthony’s Pizza… 
We took over the library, and spent a coupla’hours setting up before the tide of youngsters at around 1.30.
This year, because we had to finish by 4 o/c, we only took a few locos and cars - ones that were more suitable for the ages of the studes.
Broos bought his digital Sumpter Valley Mallet, a ladybug egg-liner, a Bachmann 38-ton Shay with Phoenix sound and an LGB ‘Otto’ and a goodly selection of cars.
I brought along one of my BNSF Dash 9 with the new QSI sound system and remote QSI Train Engineer sound trigger unit, and a Bachmann Climax with LGB basic sound - and fifteen log cars, and of course, my big Crest power unit and hand-held TE.
As ever, the opening of the show was heralded by much tooting and bells as the various sound-equipped models got going and for around the next three hours it was sheer hand-on trains crowding, mostly by youngsters, but often by adults as well, many of whom had never seen BIG trains before, in spite of all our efforts over on your side of the pond. One guy from Elliott WA, father of a VERY well-behaved and polite young man, just sat right down on the floor by a bend in the track and watched intently for about half an hour, taking control every now and then as a youngster allowed him to, and finally pronounced himself totally hooked on the Bachmann F scale stuff.
The afternoon was a total success, thanks to the staff of Alconbury elementary school, my old pal Broos, getting over the effects of a near-fatal stroke that took him away from H0 and into G scale, and, of course, all the youngsters and the real satisfaction and sense of achievement they brought to both of us.
Who says that hard work can’t be fun as well?
…and guess what?
Tomorrow we’re doing it all over again in Sawtry. 
tac
