Dennis LaGrua posted:Form a pure analytical point of view, there are probably 100's of thousands of O gauge enthusiasts in the USA. Only a small percentage of these hobbyists are TCA members. A push to raise the attendance at York can help keep the meet prosperous but I believe that more needs to be done to get non-members and the general public to attend. The solution might be to transform part of the event into a family event. That would mean a train ride or rides for the kids, maybe Lionel/MTH/Williams/Atlas balloons, cotton candy and candy corn that are available at most carnivals. Also how about having ED York at the fairground in conjunction with a fall carnival/festival/market that would set up in the old race track area? Not saying that the ED should run a carnival just do a joint event. It might draw thousands more and there would be some spillover into the train meet. This would be a radical change but the ED needs solutions. The ED has done a great job with the York event but it looks like changing demographics and following the status quo may not support the expense of maintaining it.
I fail to see how comparing the total number of enthusiasts in the whole country (even if that maybe is an accurate number) corresponds to how many new people may attend York. For die-hard hobbyists, obviously some make the trip from very far. I'm guessing we will be lucky to see anything outside of maybe 2 or 3 states away (ones within a few hours drive) as new casual attendees.
I hardly see a family from Texas (random far away place - nothing specific in my mind about Texas) saying, "Gee lets pack up the car and drive over 1000 miles over a few days for a weeks vacation to visit that train meet in York, Pennsylvania, after all, they just added a carnival to it, so that makes it more attractive to me!".
Do they have carnival rides at Cal-Stewart or the other meets tossed about in comparison regularly? If not, I guess those organizations better look into this too, before the EDTCA takes your advice and beats them to the punch! 
-Dave
