Highball to Indy Report - Stan Jennings

There is always one special attraction unique to the convention city.  At Highball to Indy, the special attraction was the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  Stan and Janet were able to take this unique tour and thoroughly enjoyed it.  We made a lap around the speedway -- in a bus! The museum has about seventy of the three hundred historic automobiles from their collection on display, of course most are race cars.  All are superb; my favorite was a race car built in 1905 with an exposed crankshaft and camshaft -- typical for the era, so primitive to us.

Clinics -- Clinics are the main reason most of us attend conventions.  If you have a specific interest, there was probably one (or more) clinic for you. If you have general interests, all could have been of interest.  My favorites were two on narrow gauge diesels, both prototype and model, and Wayne Wesolowski's Lincoln car presentation. The very informative clinic, important for all modelers, was the clinic Dr. Richard Meetz presented  --  Eyesight, Aging and the Modeler.  The Northern Utah Division is working on a similar clinic, based on the information Dr. Meetz presented, for our regular October event. 

SIGs -- They had a whole, large room devoted to just Special Interest Groups.  It was right across the aisle from our 2019 Convention display so we know it was busy, very busy.

Layout Tours -- There was an abundance of layout tours, several each day.  Only Jack had a chance to do a couple of tours on Sunday

Operating Sessions -- Jack Chase was able to go on one Sunday, the only operating session any of us were able to attend.

Ladies Luncheon -- Janet attended the Ladies Luncheon.  It was held on the top floor of a thirty-six story building, she said looking out seemed like looking at a model railroad!  It was a super experience and she made many new friends that day.

Ladies Activities -- The 2019 Convention display was very close to the Ladies Lounge so we were able to note the traffic (lots!) and make some visits to the room to see what activities the ladies at the convention could participate.  Summing it up briefly, MANY!!  There were almost as many ladies activities as regular clinics.

Tours -- There were quite a few rail tours and non-rail tours; as noted earlier, the Indianapolis Speedway tour was the only one we could attend.  We wish we could have participated in more, there were so many very interesting tours available.  How they organized tour participants was efficient.  Tour participants all gathered in a room, then, when it was time, walked down to the hotel's main entrance to board their bus.

National Train Show manufacturers and dealers -- It was great interacting with the manufactures, I had interactions with most of the manufactures, the two most memorable were with Intermountain Railway and Kadee.  At Intermountain Railway I was able to meet Gene Fusco -- we have been working with him on the 2019 convention car, a UTOCO tank car -- and work out some details of our order.  At Kadee I had a very productive and interesting conversation about Kadee's Whisker coupler.  I know they are hard to manufacture and we had a great conversation about the process (one step he couldn't tell me).  It took three and a half years to develop the machine now used to assemble the whisker couplers -- well worth the investment!

National Train Show layouts -- There were some good layouts, some spectacular layouts and no poor layouts.  The one I found most impressive was a Z-scale layout.  A feature we have never seen on a layout before was a tornado, maybe because Utah does not have many tornadoes.  There were two different layouts featuring "operating" tornadoes. 

So, what did the Northern Utah Division learn?  There is too much to detail here, but some highlights -- there is tremendous interest in the 2019 Convention, the Golden Spike National Historic Site tours will have many participants, there is a surprisingly high interest in genealogy and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir rehearsals and there is a lot of interest in promoting young peoples participation in model railroading. The most common comment?  "I will be there if I am still alive."