Okay, let's start with the photos that were inappropriate last night (because Athearn hadn't actually shown this stuff publically yet), but are fine now that the show is well and underway. I apologize for the poor photos - these are from a cell phone.

Incidentally, other than the green locomotive, we borrowed the other four temporarily and gave them the "Click 'n Spin" photo treatment. It may be sometime next week before they are up.

...and now, the news...

Athearn is showing pre-production prototype shells and chassis for completely new tooling Genesis GP9 models, including sound. Two of the versions shown include an SP light kit, with one of those being a commuter/passenger rail configuration where the air tanks are moved to the top of the long hood in a "torpedo" configuration to make room for the water tanks for the steam boiler.

Standard configuration with MU hoses and air hoses - the "giveaway" that this will be a Genesis level locomotive:

Straight up GP9 from the side:

SP lighting kit verison - with a different air filter:

SP Nose:

SP "Torpedo" nose view:

Here are all four of them together....wait a minute - what's that in the back?

Say hello to the locomotive that fully challenged the Alco C855 for the title of "Ugliest Locomotive Owned by the Union Pacific" - the GE U50:

Designed to fit over the current UP Turbine Chassis (and indeed, the original U50s incorporated the running gear from the turbines), the U50 had a nose only a mother or someone from Erie, PA could love:

And a last side view:

Larger photos are on my photo server at: http://www.shultzinfosystems.com/gallery159/view_album.php?set_albumName=NTS2010&page=18

Okay, onto the real Friday...

I woke up this morning and took a look out the hotel window and saw this down at the Amtrak/Greyhound station:

See that orange and purple in the middle, hooked to an Amfleet? That's Milwaukee Road Hiawatha Superdome #53, and coupled to it under the bridge is the Skytop Observation Car "Cedar Rapids." And today I was going to get to go into them not once, but twice....

The first time was for a business meeting with Walthers marketing - you might have noticed that they showed up on the MRH Sponsoring Advertisers list a couple of months ago - their first ad will be in the next issue. While we were in the Skytop....:

...with Michael Stevens, head of marketing for proprietary products (Walthers, LifeLike, Trainline, Proto, etc...) I was talking to Zach Thompson, who was the Group Product manager for LifeLike/Proto products. I was able to ask him one of the questions that the N Scaler's on the AtlasRR forums regarding Walther's support in continuing the N Scale lines that Life Like had just started prior to being bought out: "What can we expect in N Scale out of Walthers/LifeLike in the future, and if you are not planning on supporting it, are you open to selling the existing tooling?" His answer was that they indeed intended to support it, although he admitted that they had been trying to figure out it's proper place in the scheme of things (I'm paraphrasing heavily here). He did allow me to state that there will be two new N Scale locomotives released prior to the end of the year (please don't ask me what they are, I did promise not to say), and that the most reliable way to ensure more N Scale products from Walthers/LifeLike was to buy the current ones and demonstrate a market. I asked what it would take to convince Walthers/LifeLike to start creating "Name Trains" in N Scale the same as the ones in HO and again his response was simply to buy their current passenger car products. Some gentle lobbying included with those purchases couldn't hurt either.... but it boils down to tomorrows releases will be based on what sells today.

After that I interviewed Stacy Walthers Naffah (the first fourth generation Walthers to work there in a management position) out in front of the Superdome car. Hopefully we'll have that interview up next week - here is a still photo of us back at the convention:

Okay, most of the rest of the afternoon was spent running around the show looking for new and pre-release models to perform "Click n Spin" photography on - these included both the Athearn and Bachmann GP9s, the Athearn U50, Bar Mills "American Seltzer," the Bachman Birney Safety Car, RS3, and an On30 4-6-0 (IIRC), an AtlasO SW9 in Milwaukee Road, the new 4-bay coal hopper from Tangent, and I'm thinking probably a few other things. Near the end of the day we recruited one of our S Scale readers at the convention  to find something appropriate in that scale to photograph tomorrow and we'll get something in N Scale from Craig Martyn at BLMA as well. Then we'll have to hunt down somehing in Z Scale to get the whole set!

And then it was back down to the Hiawatha cars for a reception that Stacy had invited us to - once upon a time I was the only Army Sergeant E5 at a reception held on a military base in Germany. The next higher rank was my Air Force supervisor, an E7 Master Sergeant. Everyone else at the reception was a Colonel (O6), or a General (O7,O8) or their civilan equivalents. I didn't feel quite as out of place at this reception as I did that time, but there was a definite feeling of the surreal, of "don't they know I'm just a model railroader with a half-finished layout from Oregon?" in the air - as we walked to and into the car we ran into Tony Koester (NMRA Director, Model Railroader Columnist), and Andy Sperandeo (MR Senior Editor), and then into Didrik Voss (NMRA Standards and Conformance Director) here seen talking to Joe Fugate:

Other attendees included Steven Priest (editor of the NMRA Magazine (fmly Scale Rails), assorted Walthers family members, including Phil and Carole Walthers, various vendors and hobby shop owners, many of the Kalmbach staff, and friends of the Walthers family, including John Mellowes, owner of Charter Wire as well as the owner of an outstanding looking private passenger train painted in 20th Century Ltd colors (http://trainweb.org/passengercars/Indices/PV3.htm - scroll down to CMMW - Charter Wire). I'm told he's also quite the model railroader as well. It was a very eclectic mix.

View of the inside of the Superdome:

If more of America could experience this type of rail travel, I think we'd have a resurgence in passenger rail in the United States...

While I don't think there was an official guest of honor, I think this gentleman may have become one:

The gentleman with Carole Walthers and Stacy Naffah is Bob Keune, one of the original 1935 Charter Members of the NMRA along with William K. Walthers and Al Kalmbach. His Lifetime membership card notes that fact:

While his lifetime membership card # may be 292, it was generally agreed that his original membership number was probably in the low single digits. It was an honor just to hear him talking about the early days and why the NMRA was started.

We actually had to leave the party early, since we were expected at the Layout Design Special Interest Group (LD-SIG) banquet that night. This year it was held at Maders, a nearby German restaurant in Milwaukee, which meant that after being separated from German food since 1995 I was able to eat Sauerbraten, spatzle, German potato salad, and Hungarian Goulash to my heart's content... by the end of it both my heart and stomach were nicely contented. Byron Henderson,  the new editor of the Layout Design Journal and a contributor to MRH, delivered the keynote, which was centered around, of all things, Clint Eastwood films. You had to be there.

As a final bit of news, this morning the NMRA unveiled a new logo, denoting the fact that from now on the emphasis was going to be on the "NMRA.org" as a worldwide brand, instead of as the National Model Railroad Association. Included in this was the renaming of the NMRA members magazine from Scale Rails to simply NMRA Magazine. It was explained that this was similar to how the American Association for Retired People figured out that since everyone knew it as AARP anyway, that's the brand they should work to increase, including renaming Modern Maturity as AARP Magazine. Only time will tell if they're right. Below is a photo of the new logo, which does already have an uncomplimentary nickname - but I'll leave it up to you to find out what it is elsewhere. This is a family forum after all.