Chesapeake & Appalachian Railway

The Washington, Virginia & Maryland Garden Railway Society (wvmgrs.org) is one of the oldest and largest garden railway clubs in the country. Membership ranks well over 100. Members meet monthly at members houses which are typically outdoors from April until November. During meetings we get together to eat, run trains, have a program/demonstration on a garden railroading topic, discuss upcoming club displays and club business. We also have modeling contests open to the members. 2008 will bring a new club activity with monthly Modeler’s Workshops where members can meet informally and work more “hands on” on a variety of topics like scratch building structures, airbrushing, and installing sound cards.
One of the biggest activities in the club are the garden railway displays we do. We set up temporary displays that last from one day to six weeks at civic festivals, train shows, and holiday displays. Our year end holiday display is always our biggest and best and this year (2007) will be our third year at the conservatories of Brookside Botanical Gardens (Brookside Holiday Display) in conjunction with their “Garden of Lights” (Garden of Lights). In previous years the club has done a holiday display at the National Botanic Garden.

Here are a few pics from the 2006 display at Brookside Gardens -

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These are pics of a recent display at the Fall Maryland Home & Garden Show -

-Brian

My club (wvmgrs.org) and the folks at Brookside Gardens hosted special guests this Monday. NBC4’s (Washington, DC) Barbara Harrison stopped by with Joshua, this week’s “Wednesday’s Child". “Wednesday’s Child” is a long running feature on NBC4 with Ms. Harrison. It highlights a child who is available for adoption. Ms. Harrison and Joshua toured the conservatory and spent some time watching and even running one of the trains (I brought a battery/RC train with me). The club presented Joshua and Ms. Harrison WVMGRS hats as gifts.
The “Wednesday’s Child” segment can be on the NBC4 website here - Wednesday’s Child video. I make a cameo appearance behind Ms.Harrison at one point.
The WVMGRS holiday train display will be running until January 6th.

Here are a few pics of the display -

-Brian

Late last Fall, I was asked TJS Events if I would be interested in setting a garden railway display at the upcoming Washington, DC Home & Garden Show after they had seen the club display at the Maryland Fall H&G Show. During a moment of insanity, I said “Yes".
The display design would focus more on plants and scenery than running many trains at once. The track would be in a two foot high raised bed. The track plan fairly simple with a single large loop with a passing siding.

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This was my third time attending ECLSTS and it was the best so far. Less shopping then previous years but lots more fraternizing with old and new friends. It was also my first time up as president of the WVMGRS and decided to go up for three days. I headed up Thursday morning with new member, Mike Colella, tagging along. Mike is a professional photographer, garden railroad newbie, and also has a bit of the gift of gab . It made the 80 minute trip up to York go rather quickly. We got up to the fairgrounds, er, York Expo Center around 10:30 am. Construction of the club’s display was progressing slowly…. . There were major delays due to the construction of the not greatly conceived stream for the rail ferry. To back track a bit, I had originally signed up to be the event coordinator for the ECLSTS display. After chatting with another club member about some of his ideas for the display, I decided to bring him on as co-coordinator, thinking he would be helpful. Little did I know he would proceed to take over, making decisions without discussing them with me and refusing to make changes to the track plan I asked for. Well this stopped being fun and if your hobby can’t be fun, why bother? So, because of that and my need to focus on my upcoming display at the DC Home&Garden Show (DC H&G Show display), I decided to step away from that insanity and play a back seat role just helping with the display and focusing on fun and the model contest. I just chalked it up to lessons learned . We left the display construction around 4:30 with it mostly done (amazingly ) and went to check into the Holiday Inn Express (a decent hotel with a decent free breakfast). I wanted to wash up and rest for the big LSOL dinner at Hoss’s. I did not know what to expect of this event but it turned out to be pretty fun and we (club members) wound up having our own long table though I could have used a couple of brewskis (no booze at Hoss’s). Maybe I’ll have to check out the shindig at Hooters next year.

For pics of the WVMGRS display, check out Mike C.’s pics here - display pics

Friday at the show I spent most of the day socializing. I had made up buttons to hand out to club members and friends, old and new. They turned out to be a big hit -

I also chatted with some of the other modeler’s in the contest who were mostly a bunch of great guys. I wound up entering three entries -

my boxcab (Boxcab diesel) in the kitbashed self propelled category (locos, trolleys, rail trucks, etc.),

my 7/8’s scale rail truck (7/8’s Rail Truck) in the scratch built self propelled category and,

my new Silver Spring Station (Silver Spring Station) in scratch built structures.

Friday night I attended Larry Otis’s pizza party at the hotel and spent a bit of time chatting with the boyz from the shore (Paul Bottino and Cap’n Bob Johnson).

Saturday was more socializing and I attended two seminars. The first was on battery / RC systems given by my buddy Don Sweet (RCS of New England). The second was a two hour workshop given by the “jigstone lady", intended as a introduction to jigstone building systems. The class was fun as we put together a small shack. Roofing and painting was completed at home and its now a fishing shack by my little layout pond -

When I got out of the seminar, I found the results of the model contest and was rather pleased. My boxcab took first in the hotly contested kitbash contest (there were about 8 to 10 entries). My SS station took second and 7/8’s rail truck also picked up a second place ribbon.

The end of the show came about in two hours and display breakdown took about three. I managed to make it home by 9 pm.

Can’t wait to do it again next year!

-Brian

The first National Train Day was celebrated Saturday, May 10th, 2008 comemerating the completion of the transcontinental railroad and we were there! but first, let me back up about five weeks….
The club (wvmgrs.org) officers were contacted, April 1st, by Arnold Worldwide, Amtrak’s ad agency. Normally a club display has months of planning and participation is usually voted on by the membership. Not having time to put this through the normal process, I grabbed the bull by the horns and plowed ahead. Most of the board was excited by the prospect of participating in this event so it was an easy sell.

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