Narrow Gauge Convention in Hickory NC: What happened?

Yves,

It's still going on until Saturday night. I am here in Hickory. The vendor hall is incredible (as always), clinics are great, and the modular railroads are wonderful, especially the On30 "Muskrat Ramble" from Australia [yep, they brought it all the way from Oz]. If you can get to Hickory, they have a daily entry fee of $35. I have been taking some pictures and hope to write an article for the magazine.

Jim

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I have been taking some pictures and hope to write an article for the magazine.

Now that sounds like one excellent plan, Jim!

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If you can get to Hickory, they have a daily entry fee of $35.

I e-mailed a number of folks on the convention website asking if they had a daily or general admission as I was going to be in Hickory this week or next. After never getting an answer back I picked next week as it fit the family schedule better. Oh well....they didn't need my $35 I recon.....

AMC,

Sorry you are not here (I am writing from the hotel across the parking lot from the convention hall), the convention has been very well run, I agree with everything Jim described above, plus for those of us not typically in this part of the country, the weather has been nice and the mountains up the road beautiful. (Also, you could have attended a very nice clinic on paper buildings, presented by none other than Jim.)

Bob

WOW !!!! Obviously it was a great convention from the amount of traffic on that thread.... It must have been overwhelming...

Yves

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WOW !!!! Obviously it was a great convention from the amount of traffic on that thread.... It must have been overwhelming...

I'll take Jim's word for how good a convention it was because he most certainly qualifies as an experienced, capable, and talented narrow gauge modeler. I look forward to a report and photos that I hopefully can publish in the magazine. If you weren't there, you're in no position to judge, and you certainly can't judge based solely on the number of posts in an online thread.

Allan,

I was sarcastic, of course. I did not attend the convention, although I drove by Hickory on that weekend (with my family who does not care much for On3) and was hoping to get more feedback and opinions and some pictures (one can always dream, right..?) of the event.

Obviously, besides Jim, not many members of this forum have been attending and it is a pity.

Yves

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Obviously, besides Jim, not many members of this forum have been attending and it is a pity.

Yes, that is true. But, in part at least, it may be because our little narrow gauge family here is, in fact, rather small. I know there are a variety of Yahoo Groups and other sites devoted to narrow gauge that are more populated and many folks tend to stick with what they know best and are most comfortable with.

And I guess the overall success of the event might be partially measured by how many, regardless of where they are from or whether or not they participate on line, actually ventured to Hickory. The key thing, though, is that those who attended, be it 20 or 2,000, had a meaningful and fun time.

Perhaps Jim or someone else will post more "after-action reports" here at some point. Sometimes life's other demands may have required more immediate attention.

I was enrolled and had three tables but it was just not good timing to go this year. I will be out in Seattle next year however!

http://erikclindgren.com

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Originally posted by AMCDave:

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If you can get to Hickory, they have a daily entry fee of $35.

I e-mailed a number of folks on the convention website asking if they had a daily or general admission as I was going to be in Hickory this week or next. After never getting an answer back I picked next week as it fit the family schedule better. Oh well....they didn't need my $35 I recon.....

I received the same lack of customer service. Three emails over the summer and none answered. I had a few friends go that said it was a nice event.

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I received the same lack of customer service. Three emails over the summer and none answered

Well....that's good in one way....I thought it was just me!!!!

But not very good in another....$70 lost from us two....how many other folks never got any reply??? Having run a national model convention I was happy to get a general admission of $5.....much less $70.....

The Model Railcast Show has a recap of the show. It was pretty good. You can download the podcast at:

http://www.modelrailcast.com/ShowNotes/Show149.asp

Phil

Railgrandson, Thanks for the link. Dave Emery's photos give a good feel for the displays at the convention.

I went to Hickory, although I prefer to be out west that time of year.  (I got there

later).  I enjoyed it...had not been to the area in years.  Explored Hickory (furniture

sales), the Southern RR Museum at Salisbury (second time, was there in winter once

researching my dad's locomotive), Tweetsie, Blowing Rock, a few covered bridges

and water mills in the area, she had some interesting tours including Biltmore at

Asheville, I bought a few items but I met a guy who had had access to fantastic

photos, never published, of the Gold Prince mill at Animas Forks (that was torn down and moved down to build the second mill at Eureka).  Views all around it!!  Much better than anything in the Sloan and Skowronski book (The Rainbow Route).The

Gold Prince is purported to have been the largest mill in Colorado and is on my "to

build" list.  Uh, WAS it the largest in Colorado?

What I MISSED in the Hickory area (well, western NC) was the Reed Gold Mine state

park...gold mining in NC before the gold rush.  Didn't hear of that until some time after I got home.

The Reed Mine is a NC Historic Site now.  It was the FIRST gold mine in North America.  The first nugget was 17 pounds found in 1780 something I think.  Prior to 1849 NC was the leading gold producing state. Charlotte had a US mint as a result.   I worked at the Reed doing archeology while it was being developed into a historic site in the mid 1970's.  There is an underground tour as well as a restored stamp mill brought from the Coggins mine located a few miles away.  It is worth a trip if you are in the area.

 

George Lasley

Story goes that while digging the foundation for the first NCNB tower (now BoA) they found old mining tunnels in downtown Charlotte. Been to Reed and number of times....lived within a few miles for years.

Sorry I missed Reed...., maybe I'll blunder back that way.  Gold mining is in strange places, as the saying goes, "gold is where you find it".  My brother and I made a trip west over ten years ago, and one of the places he wanted to hit was gold mining on an island in a lake in Minnesota. (not my first thought of where to look for gold, either)

He rented a catamaran and off we motored out onto, I think, looking at the map,

Rainy Lake, weaving among islands to this small one that was pockmarked by

prospect holes full of water.  I thought then and now that I wouldn't want to dig

down on a very small island, and then stope out to dump the lake in on me.  Ore was hauled by boat to a mill on shore.  Colorado mines and many other had water problems that forced their closing, had to dig drainage tunnels, and pump like crazy. Rainy Lake is on the Canadian border just east of International Falls, known for winter heat waves.  We had breakfast in a mom and pop restaurant right on the

tracks as trains rolled through...but don't remember the town.