Page 7 - NMRA Roundhouse September-October 2019
P. 7
ROM SALT LAKE CITY
over on Cunard from New York to Southampton...! We are also looking into how we might escort convention- eers into London from Heathrow as many will be coming to the UK or even Europe for the first time. It’s early days but not too early to start planning some aspects of the Convention.
The SLC Convention was full of all
the usual things you might expect at a National Convention: excellent clinics by expert speakers; outstanding layouts by brilliant modellers and railroad oper- ators; a Train Show crammed with so many goodies, both inspiring layouts, new products from manufacturers and “stuff” on the trade stands.With the pound at $1.20 or thereabouts any chance to buy at a discount, without sales tax and no
importation costs, it is an opportunity not to be missed. I didn’t.....
The only disappointment for me at the Train Show were the layouts: there are never any that are like ours in the UK – small(ish) that fit inside a UK home – it is all large modular set-ups to Free-Mo and FreeMoN standards and similar. Two layouts however were exemplary; an HO rendition of The Oakland Mole, CA and, in N, Binney Junction a real location just north of Sacramento where the former WP and SP tracks cross and connect.
Travel in and around Salt Lake City was also very easy with a UTA Pass that gave travel on buses, street trams and the Front Runner commuter service between Provo in the South and Ogden
HO The Oakland Mole, CA photo by Mike Arnold
N scale Binney Junction photo by Mike Arnold
in the North.The latter provided a great day’s rail riding on former DRGW tracks to the Utah State Railroad Museum at Ogden and south to Provo to complete a round trip taking in Roper and North Yards in SLC.
All in all a good Convention, well planned around the need to have a pres- ence at the 2022 table and giving two clinics on what to expect in 2022 from British Railways, prototype and model. Fun? Yes, it was.
Mike Arnold
Union Pacific meets Ogden-bound UTA Roadrunner at North Yard, Salt Lake City photo by Mike Arnold
September/October 2019 - ROUNDHOUSE 7