And the famous "bus backup" during the 1990 Pittsburgh Convention. I wasn't in S then, but found out later that Pete Mihelich and some other S folks were on that layout tour bus. The tour bus ( a big tour type) pulled up to a famous HO modeler's house (Riley I think) on a narrow, hilly, one-way street sandwiched on both sides by parked cars. After the visit, the driver found out that the street was a dead end and had to carefully, painstakingly, back the big bus about 1/2 mile and all the time worrying about all those parked cars. The riders at the back of the bus, of course, help him successfully navigate that. But then, the bus was pulled over by a cop for driving the wrong way on a one-way drive in a park area. The driver was trying to make up lost time. He played dumb and the cop let him off. And lastly, we visited on layout - I think Larry Kline's O scale - which was in one of those old large Pittsburgh mansions that was three stories high. You guessed it - to see the layout we had to climb up to the third story attic.
And then there was the 2008 layout bus tour during the Lowell NASG convention that went from Lowell, Mass., into NH and then back to two layouts in Mass. After the second layout it was bathroom time for many - uhhhh - the bus toilet was full, so out of order, and those in the back had a pretty bad odor to deal with. We managed to get to the last layout in a pouring rain (you know what that does to the potty urge?). And no bathroom available. Since it was dark, I, and maybe others, wandered around a neighborhood until I found a secluded bunch of trees. There are some real lessons here for layout tour planners. Jeff Madden
