The 2016 National Narrow Gauge Convention, Part I

This year's National Narrow Gauge Convention was held from Wednesday, September 7 through Saturday, November 10 in Augusta, Maine.  For me, the convention began a few days early with a visit from Ross Ames and his wife.  Ross is a fellow narrow gauge modeler from the Portland area of Oregon, who was on his way to the national convention, and stopped in to see my East Broad Top and the Colorado based model railroad of my good friend Dave Trimble.  Here is a photo of the three of us at Dave' s layout a few minutes away from my home on Cape Cod.  Ross is the tall guy on the left!  Dave is on the right.

Ross took advantage of his visit to show off his beautiful kit bashed brass 4-4-0 locomotive.  He finished it just before leaving for the national convention, where he planned to enter it in the model contest.  The HOn3 model is powered with a TCS WOW sound decoder, and has an operating bell powered by a tiny motor in the cab.  The swinging bell is synchronized with the sound, making for an incredibly realistic operation.  Here is the Neskowin on a tour of the East Broad Top.

On Tuesday, September 6, I headed north to the national convention, stopping along the way to view a couple of outstanding model railroads.  Just outside of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, I dropped in to see Dave Kotsonis' Greenland Valley, based on the Boston and Maine in the late 1940's and early 1950's.  Dave has had photos of his layout published in Model Railroader, and you can see why from a few of the photos I took.

Continuing north I traveled to Portland, Maine, for a visit to the Moose River Valley O scale railroad and model train store of Norm Pullen.  Built in 1/48 scale, this incredible layout occupies a 50 x 22 foot room for the main line, with two level staging in another room.  Over 300 feet of track depict the Maine Central and the Boston and Maine.  The railroad also includes a section of dual gauge O/On30 track serving a small narrow gauge branch.  The size and detail are staggering.

After leaving the Moose River Valley I drove on to Augusta, where the 2016 National Narrow Gauge Convention was being held.  The convention was held in the Maine Convention Center, an enormous facility with a huge central hall filled with tables for vendors and and organizations.  Two floors of smaller rooms were available for modular layouts, clinics and the convention model and photo contest.

Like conventions past, this year's gathering was scheduled with clinics, shopping, contests and more than a dozen modular layouts operating in the morning and evening, leaving the afternoons free for sight seeing, visiting home layouts, or touring some of Maine's various 2 foot gauge railroads and other attractions.   Options included bus tours of the Sandy River and Rangely Lakes and the Wiscasset, Waterville and Farmington railroads.  Or participants could drive themselves to walking tours of the former Monson and Kennebec Central railways,  In my next post I will focus on my experience riding the WW&F, and my exploration of the Monson and Kennebec Central railways.