Train Festival 2009: Update

[annarbor1948]

Worked the show on Friday and have to say thanks to SRI and the City of Owosso for a fine job. Great show

[Raildudes dad]

Worked the show on Friday and have to say thanks to SRI and the City of Owosso for a fine job. Great show

I took the opportunity when I met Mike Bagwell, the manager of the GLC, to thank him for allowing the excursions. It would have just been a museum display without the excursions with the steamers.

[BL2-1843]

Welllll, we were there, too, but did any of you say Hi to us? NOOoooooo...

Didnt realize we all needed railroadfan. com name badges. Hello my name is "Foamer".

That would have been a good idea though to have some type of tag with the Railroad Fan dot com banner on it like is seen at the top of each section of Threads with your name below it. I would have worn one. Someone from here should have had a booth selling T-shirts of the same. Would have bought one of those too.

[PAT.C]

T-SHIRTS ARE IN THE WORKS.

THE BEER DRINKING RAILROADFANS [AND SOME WHO DON'T DRINK BEER] HAD NO TROUBLE GETTING TOGETHER AT JUMBOS.

GLAD TO HAVE MET GOV. CRAPPO---WE WILL BE MEETING AGAIN !!!!!!!!!!

[SW]

Went this morning with PlymouthStationGuy. Caught 765 at Mason Rd. just before 10 am. Saw Garry K and JangaJonga at the festival. Fine display of equipment of all scales and ages. A lot of people, but not wall-to-wall. Rain held off too, at least while we were there.

[PAT.C]

--SW SAID ...Fine display of equipment of all scales and ages. A lot of people,

I WOULD REPHRASE IT------ FINE DISPLAY OE PEOPLE OF ALL SCALES AND AGES.

[Larry G]

Thanks to all who made Trainfestival 2009 a great success. I was able to come two days and will NEVER forget this one!!!

1225 and company have come along way from the static display at Spartan Stadium at Michigan State!!! As an original member of the MSU Railroad Club in the late sixties who helped open her up for the first time and started the process of restoration, it is a sweet memory to see the progression during a lifetime.

I still think of all the pails of rust I helped collect and haul out of the tender so many years ago...It's enough to 'baffle' the casual observer!!!

Keep up the good work!!

Larry G

[mikekmac]

Oh, and I also appreciated the visit by 4449's contemporary, the B-25 Mitchell Yankee Warrior based at Willow Run. Did it show up any day besides Saturday?

[signmasters]

I would like to Thank the state trooper who found us sitting at the wrong crossing out side of town and took the time to stop and tell us to follow him into town if we wanted to catch the steam engine and took us across two other sets of tracks one with people that were waiting for a train that would never come and got us to the right crossing in time to get in the photo line and get our final photos of the day of the 4449. After reading Official Chase Vehicle on my truck he might be still laughing. Yes you could say poor planning by me.

[leo28150]

The B-25 and the B-17 both 'visited' the SRI grounds today; that -25 sounded awesome when it first passed over after takeoff....

Are both of these aircraft at Yankee Air Museum??

[~Z~]

Very much enjoyed the weekend. Arrived Friday night for a night at GLC392's, saturday my brother(Tarsakh) got into town and we watched 765 take off at Bennett Field. Hung out on the SRI ground on and off Saturday, watching some 110 runs and got some "chips place" pizza in westtown. Ran across quite a few saturday(inekp, pat c, JT, conrailjon, glc392, DR, jukeman, garry k, gov crappo, big frank, sd70accsxt700, mr tops, greg peet, gregg pullano, JUST AARON(welcome!), sd40-2, sd40-2's dad... probably other too)

went to four different bars with four different coverbands sat night..all got worse and worse as we went fun though

Sunday, chased 765 to alma criss-crossing with matt/bob/james. Ran into gregg, mike d shep, and Jeff L at Alma. The photo runbys were great to watch, caught one last time south of Ithaca, and off towards home I went. Stopped through Greenville and followed the ROW for MMRR to Lowell. Had a great time, and thanks again for everyone who was around that made the weekend quite enjoyable

I had business cards that made their way into some people's hands.. you'll learn our faces if you show up at our at least two yearly meets...that's how I got to know what people looked like
Also, post your mug on this thread if you haven't yet: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=726&p=88463&hilit=s ... ace#p88464

[mikerm19]

I'll post some pics in a bit, but man that was AWESOME. I was good, I only spent $40 there at Trainfest, and $10 for lunch at that burger joint down the street. I ran into a couple C&M volunteers but nobody else.

Man, all of that was crazy, everything about it was crazy.

[CAT345C]

Lets see I still managed a trip to Marquette, saw some U30s on a train and drove down today to catch 765 arriving in owosso, seems like I did pretty good for one weekend. (by the way its 9 hours from Big Bay to SRI)

[jwilliam33]

Ditto on all the thanks to SRI and the sponsors for a great event. I hope the fundraising was sufficient to get 1225 back going again for many years in the future and judging from the attendance, it should be. The layout and variety of attractions were great and it was set up in a friendly, easy to enjoy format. Having not been around a lot of steam power before, I can see how addicting it could be being around such a machine.

The only disappointing part of the whole event was catching 765 coming back into town on Saturday night and witnessing generally idiotic behavior by many fans at the crossing. Nothing like sitting and having to explain to my 3.5 year old why 50 year old men and others aren't smart enough to follow the rules when he, at his young age, knows its wrong to park and walk in the middle of the road and to trespass on railroad tracks. After watching the majority of the fans on site completely ignoring common sense and breaking the law(including two 50 year old men fighting over their spot!), I was completely ashamed to be called a railfan. These folks will surely eventually make it so that we're not able to enjoy such activities in the future. In the meantime, I'll try to use such situations to teach my boys the right way to behave.

[redside20]

or seeing two grown men fighting at the runby in Ithaca, standing on the ballast next to the railhead in front of the whole photo line will earn you four letter words from your fellow photographers and excursion officials. However it was another photographers comment towards that other railfan that really got my blood boiling. the comment of "i paid way too much money for this train ride and for you to be in the way". come on now for people like myself who wanted to ride on the excursion and countless others who also wanted to be on the train. the comment that man made was inexcusible. bottom line, act your age, not your shoesize. amazing how people get infantile and act ravenous when it comes to an event like this.

[J T]

or seeing two grown men fighting at the runby in Ithaca, standing on the ballast next to the railhead in front of the whole photo line will earn you four letter words from your fellow photographers and excursion officials. However it was another photographers comment towards that other railfan that really got my blood boiling. the comment of "i paid way too much money for this train ride and for you to be in the way". come on now for people like myself who wanted to ride on the excursion and countless others who also wanted to be on the train. the comment that man made was inexcusible. bottom line, act your age, not your shoesize. amazing how people get infantile and act ravenous when it comes to an event like this.

I completely understand, Luke. We had a bitter and selfish old railfan in Ashley intentionally walk into the shot because he was there "two hours earlier!" Yeah, he was there...standing in the middle of the street holding his pefect wedgie shot (that he started with across the street, but as the train came he kept firing off shots and walked right into view intentionally to piss us off). I'll post his picture when I get a chance. I'm still diappointed about his selfish behavior and I let him know.

[tarsakh]

This is Zack's (railroadfan) brother, had a good time seeing a bunch of you this weekend, many for my first time. Was nice to get back to our old home town of owosso. I couldn't believe how many people were there, way more than the 30,000 estimates I was hearing for the entire thing, sounded more like 30,000+ for fri/sat alone.

lol, I joined this board 1 month after my brother did, he has as of this posting, 5276 posts, I have 9. haha.

[INE-KP]

A special thanks to PAT C for being my Pilot on Friday and making the Weekend worth it. It wouldn't have been the same without your help. Thank you soooooo much!

[Garry K]

I had a blast on Saturday & Sunday. Spent four hours each day running HO trains with Rails on Wheels, but got to do quite a bit of foaming otherwise. I loved when at 6pm on Sunday ALL of the steamers blew their whistles simultaneously for about a minute! That was GREAT!

And it seemed that most of the foamers were pretty well behaved. I did talk with young guy, though. I was lining up a picture of the folks working with the Leviathan. had my camera to my forehead, and then this 20-something guy steps right in front of me with his video camera. So then I quickly stepped in front of him to block his view, and said over my shoulder to him to not step in front of people who are composing pictures!

My legs are sore, got blisters on my feet, believe I got most of the soot and cinders washed out of my hair, and am hoping they do that again next year!

Garry K

[jwilliam33]

Garry,
We really enjoyed the ROW exhibit and the rest of the models as well. Actually, it was tough getting our boys out of the Model RR tent so that dad could enjoy the full scale trains!!