17 - 18 March 2001

Eight members of NVNTRAK attended the Boy Scout show with a layout on Saturday and with helpers on Saturday and Sunday...  This was a nice show because a lot of spectators - families with kids, mainly, and boy scouts were exposed to NVNTRAK and, more importantly, we were in the cafeteria where there was food!  The show actually had layouts from several local (and not-so-local) train clubs running both Saturday and Sunday in a variety of scales.  The cafeteria, unfortunately, was closed on Sunday, so our layout only operated Saturday.  However, in addition to the layouts, there was a second part to the train show that ran from 12:30 pm until 4 pm daily and this was the Boy Scout Railroading Merit Badge program.  In it, more than 100 Boy Scouts got this merit badge over the course of the weekend and we helped, both by giving ongoing Operation Lifesaver instruction (thanks, as ever, to Dave Freshwater) and by Matt Guey-Lee, Noll Horan (on Saturday), and John Cook (on Sunday) instructing Boy Scouts in assembling HO scale buildings, kindly donated by Bachmann.  We all had a good time (see Noll's editorial about kids today in this month's Call Board!) and did good work...

Next year we're promised layout space for the whole weekend, which will be March 16 and 17, 2002, so plan now to attend!  

Click on the thumbnail pictures to see full-sized versions.