NER Albany Convention Update Day #2

Friday morning. Breakfast is included in the room price which is better than trying to head out and find a suitable breakfast place on your own. Met lots of other NJ and Philly Division guys here - more of us than the "locals" so far! Things starting at a laid back pace. Registration just getting set up but there are some clinics in progress. Most people here seem to be heading out to the afternoon operating sessions, and most of them seem to have also participated in last nights Op Sessions. That is an activity at Regional Conventions that has really become quite popular.

Looking forward to seeing some good clinics and layouts today. I also am fine tuning my own presentation today between conversations with others. Jim Dalberg has asked that I present my clinic at the Philly RPM Meet next March, so it is good to know that I will get some "mileage" out of what I have put together.

First clinic I am attending is Weathering with Mike Rose. Mike covered topics that have been featured in RMC over the past few years. These include the Dullcote and alcohol fading and using oil paints to do rust and letter streaking effects. It is really great to see these processes in action and be able to ask questions. The effects from start to finish are quite dramatic. Also good to see demonstrated is the ability to reverse many of these effects if you make a mistake. To me this is the essence of a convention, getting really great hands-on information that I can take home and use on my layout.

Headed over to the hospitality room. Of interest is a great display for next year's NER Fall Convention in Syracuse. Go to empirejunction.org for more info. Also on display are DVDs on building stuctures and weathering including one by Mike Rose on the same presentation he just gave. Needless to say, I decided to pick one up! Here is the producer of the tapes, Scott Mason.

A great clinic was followed up by a great layout. Andy Clermont's Rutland is really nice. He has steam in northern New York circa 1950. I really liked the scenery he has in place and trains really looked good running through those areas. I look forward to seeing the layout again, I'm sure in a magazine at some point.





Next up was time to give my clinic, an overview of Northern New England RRs and how I adapted that into my layout. It went well, although it went a little longer than I expected. But I did get a second request to give it again, this time at the Hartford National in 2009, So I guess people enjoyed it!

With not too much time left, I decided to head out for some more layouts. I went north to Lou Sassi's with the plan to make my way back south and see some more layouts on the way to the hotel. Lou's layout always looks great and it was good to see lots of detailing ideas up close so I can take ideas back to my layout.





Leaving Lou's the rain really started to fall and quickly became a torrential downpour. So I decided to skip more layouts considering how wet I would get trying to go from my car to the house. It took me about twice as long to get back to the hotel. With it nearing 10 pm I decided to get to the bar as soon as possible to get some food and drink before "last call" like the previous night. I just made the food cut-off! At the bar was fellow NJ Division members, so we discussed the days activities and upcoming NJ Division events. As people emptied out over the next hour, an early "last call" came again. Probably OK though as the Port of Albany tour leaves early tomorrow.