Russ Segner

The 4th Division was well represented with several of our members presenting clinics. The Annual PNR membership meeting was very well attended and many of our members plan to attend next year’s PNR convention at Salmon Arm.

The following are just some of the comments of our local membership who attended:

Kurt Laidlaw:
This was my first national, and I went with a plan in mind to participate in as many clinics as I could. I did just that and had a fantastic time. The highlight of the week for me was the “Modeling with the Masters” program. I participated in two sessions and came away with insights and skills I didn’t have before.

I met a lot of new people from within the 4D and around the world. Everybody was friendly and willing to share experiences.

I can’t speak to the size of the National Train Show relative to others, but I did note there were several nationally well-known companies that were not there. That is probably a good thing or I would have spent even more money than I did. It was great to see so many youngsters there on Saturday. There were some nice layouts in all sizes. From a personal perspective, I was most impressed with the Free Mo (N scale) layout.

There were a great number of ideas that I could incorporate into my own layout. Overall, we thought the convention was great! We had a really great time.

Alan Murray:
I was able to visit the Hull-Oaks Mill. Tours like this may not be open to visitors much longer due to potential safety issues. It was a great opportunity and I was happy to have snagged a ticket. The box lunches for this tour did not arrive either. On the humorous note, the only tour accident that Hull-Oaks has had was a woman falling in the office and breaking her arm.

The Port of Vancouver tour proved to be pretty interesting from an engineering point of view. I happened to volunteer at the model contest room bag check just before the awards ceremony, so I had a front row seat for this event. As usual, the quality of the work was outstanding.

Al Lowe (paraphrased by Russ):
I was impressed with the quality of the clinics. I was especially impressed with one of the tours – a prototype tour with a tour guide who was an expert on the bridges of Portland. I also thought the HO and O modular groups represented 4D well at the National Train Show.

Al Carter:
I only went on one tour (layout) and it was good, although it was obvious that no one scouted the route with respect to a 53 passenger bus – our driver had to perform some pretty intricate back and forth maneuvers to get to Charlie Comstock’s layout. And they forgot the box lunches. But still a good tour.

The majority of the rest of my time was spent in clinics. I thought they were well organized – the A/V equipment worked as intended and clinicians were interesting and good presenters. Interestingly, only one clinic I attended, out of about 20, had handouts. Most clinicians referred the audience to websites or blogs for comprehensive notes.

I also thought the silent auction was well run. It seemed to me that the National Train Show didn’t have as many vendors as we did in Seattle in 2004. But it was spacious and well laid out. Riding to the event was, ahh … interesting.

Alex Brikoff and Tina:
Here are some of things that stood out for us at the convention:

Registration was well organized at the hotel, it was broken up into alphabetic sections which made for short lines. The lines also moved quickly which was good.

We liked how the clinic rooms, “Celebration” room, SIG rooms and so on were all grouped together in one area of the hotel so that you didn’t have to run from one end to the other end of the hotel.

The accessibility of the layouts on the layout tours was well documented. I like to think that some of my unfailing and tenacious prodding of those guys down there during the layout tour planning phase was responsible for that. I was a bit disappointed that not many of the other prototype and general tours had any mention of accessibility. I would like this be mentioned to someone that can put it in ”Lessons Learned” for future conventions. I personally feel strongly that this issue needs to be addressed over and over again until it becomes an integrated part of convention planning at all levels: Divisional, Regional and National.

I am so glad that the planning committee finally figured out that “Self-Guided” layout tours were a good thing! I hope that the acceptance of “Self-Guided” tours at all conventions, especially the Nationals, will continue to grow and be accepted as an option to the large, crowded bus tours. We went on nearly all the Self-Guided tours and really enjoyed them because it was possible to take in the layouts at a more relaxed pace and we were able to talk to the layout owner more in-depth.

This is the first time that Tina participated in the Non-Rail activities and clinics. At first she thought that Non-Rail was geared towards a more senior audience but she was pleasantly surprised and really enjoyed herself and plans to do more Non-Rail activities at future conventions.

The banquet was great! The food was very good and generous servings. One thing that could be improved on in future banquets, and especially when they’re held in a large venue such as this one, is that it is often difficult to see the speakers from the back (which is where we were seated). A solution that I’ve seen at other large banquets is to use a video camera to project an image of the speaker onto a screen behind the speaker’s location.

Our next National will probably be Kansas City in 2018. I will definitely take better care to pace myself so I don’t run myself down and get sick like I did in Portland. That was the only really bad experience I had at the convention.

Bill Messecar, MMR:
I attended for the entire week of the convention and this was my sixth national. The clinics were very well done with some minor technical difficulties with projectors/presenters. No handouts which I missed. Many included good sources but no easy way to obtain the online information. The hotel was excellent in providing free parking. I took the LdSig Wednesday layout self guided tour and it was excellent with online maps for guidance. The layouts were open for long hours. I enjoyed the National Train Show even though it has gotten a bit smaller over the years.