This was my first time at the Columbia Gorge Model Railroad Club Show. When I got there, I was quite surprised, it was absolutely packed. It was actually difficult to move around because there were so many people there, half of them under the age of 10 and not surprisingly, most of them were boys. Why do girls not enjoy tiny trains? They even had a scavenger hunt to find a multitude of “out of place” items, such as dinosaurs, a Tardis, a hippo, and others. There were 2 different parts of the room. One modeled the Columbia River Gorge area (Oregon side), and the other the Crooked River Gorge area (which they cited as Bend, OR, but is in fact about 40min. North of Bend on Hwy 97).
Everything for the show was HO scale so it wasn’t super tiny. It was fun practicing exposure for “daylight”, and “night” where they would turn the lights up and down. I took the monopod. With all the people there, it was a good choice. With out it, I don’t think I would’ve gotten any of the shots as lighting just wasn’t very good. With a little experimentation, I even got a shot of the drive thru playing Wizard of Oz (an actual LCD playing the movie, not just a static picture).
