Today I changed my shirt.

Okay, after you get done with the "ewwww"s, I'll have it known that I did have two of those orange PDX 2015 staff shirts. And I wore them both.

Hey ya'll - as you hear about new products at the National Train Show, post 'em up here for me to go hunt down for photos and more information.

I've already got Athearn's new GP39-2 in my sights: http://www.athearn.com/Search/Default.aspx?SearchTerm=ATHG+GP39-2&CatID=...

And  I also hope to see you there!

Today was one of those days when you begin wondering why you woke up.... especially since I had only gone to bed about 5 1/2 to 6hrs earlier.

Got the clinic office opened up and had a bit of a crowd descend on it. One negative side effect of being open a lot earlier and later than any of the other offices is that people decide you are an appropriate person to complain to, even if what they are complaining about (Layout tours in this case) is nowhere within your area of responsibility.

I don't think I got more than two feet inside the Celebration Room today. They were doing judging, which makes photography problematical, and I didn't see anything particularly new. Sorry if I missed anyone's submissions - I haven't uploaded the photos of everything there (sometimes my photos just weren't good enough, which means pretty bad), and if I tried, I wouldn't get any sleep. And I do need my sleep.

Day 3... I've rediscovered that nobody comes to a convention in order to get enough sleep.

Silent Auction is fully up and running after a rough (computer generated) start. Lots of items there, and happily it appears that most of my items now have bids on them. I've got a few out as well... the question being, will I make more than I spend?

Day 2 started early for me - I was down at 6:00am to finish off those last 3 Win10 upgrades. We ran into a few technical issues, such as the aforementioned PowerPoint size issue (PowerPoint Mobile also appreciates an Internet connection....). There was also one clinician that had a laptop where he had to pop the back cover and reseat the hard drive before it would boot...

But the Contest Room opened today, so I've been wandering over there every so often:

Welcome to my blog of the 2015 NMRA National Convention, the "Portland Daylight Express"

Sunday is actually Day 2 for me, as I am the Clinic AV volunteer for the convention, and we spent yesterday setting up computers and projectors for the clinics. The Pacific Northwest Region graciously gave us a budget to buy new computers, so we have six nice lightweight HP "Stream Notebooks" - admittedly not powerhouses, but capable of running PowerPoint and Adobe Reader, which is all they should be used for. 

Charlie Comstock hosted a rare Saturday daytime op session on the BC&SJ yesterday, and I got to be the Redland Yardmaster for both tricks. I only took one photo (Charlie took a lot more), and that with my smartphone:

Due to scheduling (I have entirely too much of one), I haven't been back to operate on Charlie Comstock's Bear Creek & South Jackson in about a year. He's been running some form of Timetable and Train Order operations now for about two years, and I think I've made it to three op sessions in that time. It's interesting seeing how the TT&TO progresses as the layout gets ever larger and closer to completion. 

As you duck under the rails crossing the entrance, all the new construction hits you in the face:

The MRH Facebook Page now has more than 25,000 people liking it - that's pretty spectacular:

The MRH Facebook page, along with links to posts here on this website, also shares product announcements from various manufacturers on Facebook