I think those bus drivers ought to get something like combat pay when
they get off into residential areas. Of course you were there at
Arden's when the bus had trouble getting into his location in a rural area.
Back during our own Astro Rail National, most of the city had high water
during a minor hurricane. My first tour bus (containing John Bortz &
Howie among many others) unloaded people in 5" of water. My wife was
dressed in high water boots directing the bus driver and the brave and
wet riders into the house. Inside, I was hoping for smooth operations
for my first extended tour.
Electricity was out for an entire day as Jack Troxells was making the
final preps to his layout, Rusty Paulus also had higher water than I
did. My second groupings of tours was probably a Thursday night after
things started to dry out--can you say high humidity. We started about
7 pm and had about 6 bus loads. It was very steamy and many had
outlasted their Right Guard. Toward the end of the night, Ed Loizeaux,
Billy Wade and Jettie made their appearance. I recall, Billy and Danny
Click helping me to run the layout that night. I ran the dispatchers
board and each ran a cab.
The next couple of days we all gathered for the trainshow to run our
modules for two days. It was the first time those were run also. John,
Howie, his son, and Gayle were soon lending a hand in clearing recently
applied ballast from frogs and crossings. We finished up at Troxell's
with a BBQ where even Overland's Tom Marsh made his appearance.
So things started pretty rough but we finished up just fine and very
tired. Thanks for bringing back those memories Bob.
Bob Werre
PhotoTraxx
Yes, Bill, we had a good tour. We had a bus of 40 by the house. I'm
still not sure how the bus driver got that big thing turned around.
Most of our guests had never seen scale S before and were impressed
with both the car/loco offerings and the size. We did have two S
scalers in the group as well. Hopefully all left thinking about
converting. ;-) I sent them on to Pete's and the Des Plaines booth for
more S.
Bob Hogan
