This has got to be the coolest I've been to. Not much in terms of buying/selling model trains, but they have a self-guided model layout tour of the greater Austin area. Not only that, they have Union Pacific GP60 #1988 on display on some small siding in town. I was surprised how similiar the cabview is to TA's SD40-2 cab. The only real difference was the cab color. Another cool thing about it was that it has the "lightning stripe" scheme of the UP.Anyways, about the self-guided layout tour, the only good layouts opened too late, at around 4 PM... so my dad and I were forced to go to the amateur layouts. Some were pretty good, others were bad... One was called the "Cat Mountain & Santa Fe Railroad" in HO scale... which was very good. The only prob it didn't have any terrain scenery, just buildings and yards for switching... Six people worked the layout each with their own loco (most of them being SF Yellow/Black CF7s). This layout has been shown in six different issues of Model Railroader! What was really cool was there was no duplicate railroad car anywhere in the layout and each was marked with it's own card. This layout was one of those complex prototypical layouts, so it would take me hours to explain what they were doing.The best however was this guy's layout waaay out in the country. It was well worth the 30 miles out of the way... he let his visitors do some switching manuevers with his DCC system. I was lucky enough to do it, and had a lot of fun, 45 minutes went by in seemingly 45 seconds! Unfortunately, we didn't have enough time to see all of the good layouts, because of the three hours time it takes to get back to Abilene.One interesting thing about Austin is the MoPac expressway... at first I wondered way it was named after the Missouri Pacific's "nickname"... until I saw a UP main line go right down the center of the freeway! It was interesting to see a Pacer StackTrain being pulled by a two early model UP EMDs (a GP and an SD) as you're going down the freeway.As you can see, a very exciting Saturday for me! ------------------------------------------------------------I'll never let go of the railroad that inspired me to be involved with trains, the Union Pacific!
John Ekhoff
14 yr. old Train Sim Reskinner from Abilene, Texas.A member of the Yonder Locomotive Works.
AOL IM - FlightSimPilot02
E-mail - FlightSimPilot02@aol.com
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