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Exploring the National Convention

(The following is an excerpt from an article written by Jack Wall about experiences attending the national convention held in Portland Oregon in 1994. It provides a sample of a couples activities and experiences over the course of a week at a national convention.)

Exploring The NMRA's 1994 National Convention

by Jack Wall
8/25/94

When Doug Auburg and the gang from PNR invited us to come to Portland for the NMRA's fifty-ninth National Convention, my wife, Barbara, and I joined the Explorer's Club. We each parted with one hundred dollars far in advance of the convention, in order to help the convention committee get the front money they needed to start the convention. In return, we received a nice package of goodies worth one hundred and thirty dollars. It included full registration, an Explorer's Club golf shirt, a twenty-five dollar credit at the company store, and best of all priority consideration for all tours. That in itself made deal worthwhile, and anyone can get the same thing by just signing up early. This way to obtain convention front money was started in Valley Forge, and it caught on. Now Atlanta has their Generals, and Long Beach has Chieftains. It pays to sign-up early. Have you done it?

Little did we know what was ahead of us when Barbara and I planned the tours we wanted back in February. This spring, we found out that Barbara would need a complete knee replacement operation for her right knee. I claim that it was because she had spent so much time on her knees praying for me. We had to schedule the operation during my school's summer vacation, so that I would be home to help her. The first date available was July fifth, and that only gave her a little over five weeks before we would have to leave for the convention. Without even considering canceling the trip, Barb returned from the hospital and embarked on a program of exercises that would strengthen the leg and help her regain the use of it. She spent three to four hours a day following her therapist's directions, and walked up and down our street twice a day. She hung on to my arm and her cane, but she went a little farther each day.

Finally, the big day came, and we were off to Portland. We had decided to drive, so that we could stop whenever she needed to stretch her leg. We drove as far as Cottage Grove, Oregon, and Barb was a good sport when I settled her in front of the TV and went to visit the Village Depot train shop which was on the grounds of our Best Western Motel. That is as good as it gets, a good motel with a train shop on the property. I had a nice visit with Steve Bishop, and he recommended a wonderful restaurant called The Covered Bridge. Barb agreed that it lived up to all of the good things Steve said about it. We slept late the next morning and had a leisurely drive on into Portland.

We arrived in Portland the Friday before the convention started because I had to attend the Board of Trustee's meeting as the General Chairman of the NMRA's Membership/Promotion Department. We had a great room that overlooked the pool, the Columbia river, and the Burlington Northern tracks on the other side of the river. I didn't realize it at the time, but Portland turned out to be a great town for train watching. Every time you turned around, there was another train. With the Burlington Northern, Union Pacific, and the Southern Pacific railroads in town, there was never a shortage of action.

Sunday evening, Barbara decided that she wasn't up to the layout tour that was planned for the BOT, and instead, we had a lovely dinner with John and Toni Saxon, from Australia, at The Chart House Restaurant overlooking the Columbia River.

Monday morning, I toured the Portland Terminal Railroad's Lake Yard, and visited their mechanical interlocking tower at Union Station. This yard is the main interchange between the Burlington Northern, Union Pacific, and the Southern Pacific railroads. Also, the BN's intermodal loading and unloading takes place there, and it is the point of origin for cars built by Gunderson. The Portland Terminal Railroad also serves the Union station. There was a lot of activity to watch there, and everyone enjoyed the morning. On that tour, I met Peter and Yvette Atkinson from the Isle of Man, and Graham Morfoot from Spalding, England and gave them the address of The Train Shop in Santa Clara, California, which might be able to help them mail order things for their U.S. prototype railroads. Graham told me that Portland was his first national convention, and he said "I don't know why I haven't done it for the past five years. People are so friendly here."

When I returned to the hotel, I found that Barb had discovered a couch in the middle of the lobby that gave her leg just the right support. It became known as Barbara's couch, and her friends all stopped by to say hello. Regrettably, she decided that the tours would be too hard on her knee, and we turned in all of her ribbons and our dinner train tickets. While lounging on her couch, Barbara had made a date for us to have dinner with PCR trustee Bill Scott, Long Beach Convention Chairman Wil Seaver et al at the Crossing, a railroad theme restaurant across the river in Vancouver, Washington.

Monday afternoon, I hung around the convention. I first checked out the silent auction. There were many nice things there, but I resisted making a bid. Then after visiting briefly with Dr. Chait, the National Contest Chairman and friend from past conventions, I made a leisurely tour through the contest room. I don't know why I do that! I am always so dissatisfied with my own modeling skills after I see all of the glorious models in that room. I, like everyone else, stared at the tall steel bridge under construction and the gold dredge, and was amazed at the detail in each. I wondered how the judges could ever choose between them. Somehow they did, and the dredge scored 124 points and took best in show, but the bridge and a number of other models including Jim Tangney's Chicago, Aurora, & De Kalb interurban car came within just a few points. While those two large entries got a lot of attention, there were tables full of other models to drool over. Speaking of Mr. Tangney, who else would find a construction railroad being used to work on the Acropolis in Greece and build a model of it in one tenth HO scale. Jim says that the scale was determined by the toothpicks that he used for the columns. That model took a third place, but Jim's interurban car took a first. Not to be out done, Olive Tangney took a second and third with her needlework. Many modelers took home awards for their work, and those who didn't need not be ashamed of their efforts. In my mind , they were all winners. Next, I stopped in at the Company Store to do my convention shopping, and what a store it was. I can't remember a Company Store that had as much to choose from. I bought a lot of goodies to help me remember my trip to Portland.

Tuesday morning saw me off on the Portland Bridge tour, and what a tour that was. It was lead by Sharon Wood, author of The Portland Bridge Book. We got a close up look at some of Portland's unique bridges, and Portland has a lot of bridges. Being located along the Willamette and the Columbia rivers, Portland needs a lot of bridges, and they are of many different designs. We stood under a beautiful suspension bridge, and its design reminded us of cathedrals as it soared over our heads. The man who designed it intended to give just that impression. We toured the city as we drove over a number of the bridges or detoured to get a better view of different bridges and their unique construction. We got a chance to walk across the Steel Bridge, one of the cities oldest. It has two decks with trains using the lower deck, and autos, light rail and pedestrians sharing the upper deck. It is a lift bridge with both decks going up. The supports for the lower deck telescope into the upper deck. It was a very interesting design, and we got as terrific view of the city from out on the bridge. We were even lucky enough to see trains cross a couple of bridges.

Tuesday afternoon, it was back to work for the NMRA with a series of meetings, In the first, Job Luning Prak explained to NMRA President Elect Bob Charles and I how he would conduct the market survey that he has volunteered to do for the NMRA. In the second, all of the people involved in planning the promotion of the NMRA's Sixtieth Anniversary met to coordinate the plans. You will hear more about that meeting in the months to come.

Job Luning Prak had decided that we could get valuable information for his market survey by having people fill out short three minute surveys on the tour buses. So I ventured out on tours with my box containing fifty copies each of five surveys. I later found that it worked even better to get into a clinic room fifteen minutes before a clinic. All together, Job and I collected five hundred surveys, and we want to thank all of you who took the time to fill one out. They will be most helpful to Job when he starts to put together the final survey.

Wednesday morning, I was off to tour the Portland Union Station. Barb had looked forward to that tour because she had enjoyed the station tour in Denver so much. I felt sorry for her as she settled on her couch. I really missed her on this tour. I had a very informative tour and learned all about what the redevelopment agency had done with the station. They have refurbished the beautiful old brick building inside and out. On the second floor, they stripped off all of the old paint to reveal the beautiful original woodwork. Amtrak and a restaurant now share the first floor and the redevelopment agency has turned the two upper floors into very nice offices. An office at Union Station is considered to be a very good address. While the rest of the tour visited the interlocking tower, which I had visited on Monday, I hung around the station, had a cup of coffee, and caught a long Southern Pacific freight coming through the station with a pair of their shiny new locomotives on the point. I was even on the sunny side of the train with my camera. To make up for missing the station tour, I took Barb to lunch at a wonderful restaurant, Hidden House, in Vancouver, and then for a tour of Fort Vancouver, a Hudson Bay Company fort. She was able to do that at her own pace, and skipped the parts that required too much walking.

Thursday, Alisa, Diane, Stephanie and Robin, the ladies from our Headquarters' Office in Chattanooga, met me at ten in the morning, and we went to the Expo Center to set up the NMRA's booth and get ready for the Train Show. Barb and I finally made it to the local sea food restaurant just before it closed. Part of the deal that I made with Barbara years ago is that we would look for good restaurants every evening we were at a convention, and we have found some great ones over the years. This year we regretted that our friends Pete and Lynda Moffett weren't in Portland to help us look, but a son in collage digs into travel money. There is always next year!

Friday started with me treating the ladies from Chattanooga to a breakfast/brunch because I knew that we would have little time for lunch when the Train Show opened to convention attendees at twelve, and the show would be open until nine that night. The local chain restaurant was not geared up to handle a convention crowd, or any crowd for that matter and delayed us until we were late for the opening of the Train Show. By the time we got there, Connie from the Kalmbach Memorial Library, had left her booth next to ours and signed up a life member. Thanks Connie!

NMRA members attending the convention had the Train Show to themselves from noon until four when the public was allowed in. This gave them a chance to see the show without the crowds of people that come in when the show opens to the general public. The show is a wonderful way to show the general public what model railroading is all about, and to show model railroaders who are not members what the NMRA is all about.

It was hot Friday, and the two fans that I had bought were much appreciated by those people who worked the booth. The list of volunteer recruiters who helped supplement the office staff at the membership booth is too long to list here, but I want to thank them all. I especially want to thank a member from Fort Lauderdale, nicknamed Fuzzy, for assembling the two new fans with only a pocketknife to work with. He did it without reading the instructions.

When the show closed at nine, Barb and I set out to find an outstanding restaurant, who's name I could not remember, following Executive Vice President Bill Hammer's directions. After several wrong turns, I finally found the right road, but chickened out after driving for what seemed like miles along a road that got darker and darker. We turned around and went to a place between the Expo Center and the Portland Stockyard. As you would expect in a place called the Red Steer, we had the best steak of the trip. What we did not expect in a place with country music blaring from the other room was to find a dining room with walls covered with a fantastically beautiful butterfly collection.

I spent Saturday working at the membership booth at the Train Show, and Barb spent the day on her couch because she had been unable to find a comfortable way to sit at the Train Show the day before. At the show, I had time to slip away from the booth and wander around and look at all of the goodies on display and/or for sale. I was amazed at all of digital command control equipment that was there. The new NMRA standards seem to have had an impact. I was delighted to finally buy the newer narrow model of Centerline Products HO Rail Cleaner. I have been very impressed with the track cleaning job my first one did, but I have a couple of tunnel portals that were not built to NMRA Clearance Standards so the first one, through no fault of its own, hit them every time it went by. Now I can have clean track with out the bumping. Our Train Show is the largest in the country, and there is so much to see there. The very newest and the very best are always on display there, and with that many dealers in one location, you are bound to find a lot of things that you must have. I never have enough time to enjoy all of the modules that are set up and operating. There is so much to look at that you could do it full time during the show, but I had to keep going back to the membership booth.

Saturday was Barbara's birthday, and we decided to skip the traditional Banquet and go instead to Salty's, the restaurant we didn't find the night before because it was just a little farther down that dark road. It was a birthday dinner that Barb will remember for years to come.

Sunday saw me back at the train show from ten to six, and Barb back on her couch. When the show closed, we still had to take down the booth and pack everything to be shipped back to Chattanooga. We finally said good-bye to the ladies from Chattanooga, and went out for a quiet dinner.

Monday morning we hit the road for home. The 1994 National Convention was history. We had fond memories of time spent with friends like Steve and Noleen Park from Leeds, England, Bob and Sherri Dye who both work for the NMRA, and Wilda and James Sutliffe and James's guide dog, Odie, who were all enjoying another convention in spite of James's vision problem. It was great to see Stan Schmidt and his lovely wife again. We met them in Valley Forge, and discovered that she had gone to school in my home town. That makes her one of the few people who have ever heard of Rickreall, Oregon. We also had fond memories of the new people we had a chance to meet, like Bob Colley of Seattle, who has taken over as the PNR's office manager replacing Gail Norton, who held the post for many years. I am sorry that Bob and I didn't have longer to talk, but I am sure that we will stay in touch. It was nice to finally meet Jeff Childs, who is working hard to get the NMRA going in Anchorage, Alaska and Phil Chase who is working hard to keep the Hawaiian Division of the PCR going. Speaking of Hawaiians, I also had the pleasure to briefly meet Judy Mallchok of Kamaele who is taking care of membership and the achievement program in the Islands. It was a great meeting Capt. Albert Nelson, who has retired from commanding a thousand foot long ore carrier on the great lakes and has started working for Rick Shoup as the Boy Scout Coordinator. It was fun signing up John Szot, who was as enthusiastic about his NMRA membership as he was about the Prazi world class precision bench top metalworking equipment that he distributes.

Did I get to go on all of the tours I would have liked to go on? No! Did I get to any of the great clinics that were offered? No! Did I put in a lot of volunteer hours in Portland working for the NMRA? You bet! Are there a lot of others who do the same? You bet! Did Barb and I have fun visiting with friends from all over? You bet! Did we eat in some fine restaurants? You bet! Was it a GREAT convention? You bet! Do all of the people who worked on it deserve a big thank you? You bet! Are Barb and I registered for Atlanta in 1995? You bet, and we hope to see you there!

PS. We are also registered for Long Beach in 1996. Will we see you there? We hope so!