This year it was organised by Seaboard Southern, the group I belong to, and held in the Carrington Hotel, an excellent venue located close to the town centre and railway station.
There were a variety of clinics and traders, as well as a selection of superb layouts. These views of the main exhibition hall in the downstairs ballroom show how many different groups were attending:
There was some excellent modelling on display including:
Snake River Bend N-Trak modular club layout.
Don MacDougall's excellent Norton & Northern S-Scale switching layout.
Wolf Creek HO Scale
Hoxie Harbour HO Scale
Poole N Trak - N Scale Modular Layout
RS Tower HO Modular
Bearwood HO Modular
Thorn Tree Flats - HO Scale
On the Saturday there was a very popular bring-and-buy section, which proved a goldmine of cheap 'project' locomotives and cars. I picked up a couple of very keenly priced engines to add to my ever-growing backlog of projects.
The bustling bring-and-buy secondhand area.
The annual raffle competition was held on the Saturday evening, with a selection of fantastic prizes including a brand-new Genesis U50 locomotive. I was lucky enough to have one of the early tickets and I picked up a Genesis SD45-2 in Bicentennial livery.
The raffle Prizes:
The Athearn SD45-2 I won in the raffle:
I also entered my Norfolk Southern patched GP38-2 in the modelling competition and I was very pleasantly surprised when I was awarded first place in the diesel category. The time spent working on the engine paid off, and I am definitely going to work on an entry for next year.
Here is my locomotive on the judging table:
And here are some of the other entries in the various categories:
So all in all it was a very enjoyable convention, I met many friendly and welcoming members of the NMRA community and of course I was especially pleased to win both a prize for my modelling and a prize in the raffle.
I'm already looking forward to next year!
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