Good to see you too Bill, as well as many other friends of the WW&F. The show went well even with the snow Saturday morning. That kept the crowds down a bit but Sunday afternoon made up for it. At one point we had a group of people waiting to put their kids in the railcar for photos. We figure that we had around 250 people try the seats over the 4 day period. Friday we were busy with vendors and exhibitors looking at the railcar and asking questions. Saturday brought more vendors as they had time to walk around that morning. On Sunday the place went nuts and we had at least 6 hours of constant visitors. Conversations ranged from narrow gauge railroad talk to Model T stories. The kids were a treat as some had big eyes as they climbed into the car. A couple of boys surprised us as they said things like "this looks like the combination of a car and a train" and "is that a Model T front end?"
As usual, the Big E was like old home week seeing friends from all over. The totals were off a little this year but there were 14,217 visitors and 3,800 exhibitors totaling 18,017 people. The normal is about 22,000.
The prep for this event started as we were loading the dairy car last year. The WW&F H&R dept. (Brendan and Mike) discussed what we could bring for 2015 and it was decided to exhibit the railcar. Much planning went into the project and it would not have happened without Mike Fox. Mike rented the large truck, drove it to MA and back plus devised a way to load and secure the car. The scene of Mike and his crew unloading the car on it's display track brought a good sized crowd to the Mallary Building. Mike along with other members greeted visitors and answered many questions about the car over 4 days. The questions included the never ending "where's the steering wheel?" to "how old is this?" Crew members included Dwight, Duncan M., John R., Rider and Bryce. Demonstrations of turning the car brought good sized crowds, especially on Sunday when the crowd completely surrounded the car. As the car was returned to it's original position we received a round of applause. Some of the crew, (Mike especially) had nearly 50 hours of work before, during and after the show. As we were loading RC4 back on the truck another conversation started ... you guessed it, what will we bring in 2016.
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