Hawkeye’s Squawkbox

Mission: Product Demonstration at IPMS-Lakes Region Scale Modelers

Location: Crystal Lake, IL

Distance: 170 miles (340 miles round trip)

Challenge: Make the day as enjoyable as possible.

Being up for the challenge, and having already accepted the request to be a guest speaker at the IPMS-LRSM meeting (to present a product demonstration) I started thinking how to best facilitate this. Given the distance, just buzzing on down to attend the meeting was hard to justify in this time of surging gas prices, so one has to think this through.

BINGO! Why not make a whole day out of it? Near Crystal Lake, Illinois there is a small town called Union, which is the home of the Illinois Rail Museum.

Now my dad has always been a railroad fan, in fact he grew up around trains. A fellow IPMS-Steve Wittman and IPMS-RI Bong member Al Jones is also a huge railroad fan (and model railroader). Throw in yet another modeler who has an interest in railroad, David Sakrison plus myself and we have the makings for a day of fun and business rolled into one trip.

My dad met me and we left my house about 8:00 in the morning. We traveled down the road about thirty minutes, rendezvousing to pick up David at a restaurant parking lot in Fond Du Lac(saves us a long circuitous route). Then onward further south to Milwaukee to pick up Al. From there a nice ride to Union. Though it was the Friday before the long Memorial Day holiday weekend, we didn’t see as many vacationers traveling as we had expected, probably because of the high costs of gasoline. The weather was perfect! It was cloudy with some sun and the temperatures were moderate…perfect!

Upon passing the last town before Union, David mentions something about lunch. Being optimistic (and having my fingers crossed) I’m thinking there must be a small cafe in Union. Well I was right, there is a fine eatery there I only wish I remembered the name of it. The food was excellent and the staff was very nice. After a “light” lunch…we were going to eat light because we were meeting the guys from IPMS-LRSM for dinner in just a few hours…we patted our full tummies and headed to the Illinois Railroad Museum which is just a few blocks away.

The museum was “Open” but not totally open. The inside exhibits (barns) were closed with a couple of exceptions. But admission was FREE! We ventured around the vast grounds taking in the sights. We even found a couple of the indoor exhibit buildings opened and we toured them. In one, one of the members was restoring a trolley and he gave us a tour inside. NEAT!

After a couple hours of walking and poking around the IRM, we took a break in the shade at the main station resting our tired legs sitting on a couple of benches. We had time to kill, had all of the IRM exhibits been open we would have little time to spare between it and meeting up with the LRSM guys for dinner. But since we had the time we headed over to Crystal Lake and camped out at a bookstore near the restaurant we were going to be meeting at.

Heading over to the restaurant to meet the guys for some good conversation and a meal we made our way over to the meeting location. There we met more of the clubs membership and I did my demo. Some great questions were asked and as usual I too gleaned tidbits if info from my fellow modelers.

Since the journey home was long, we bugged out shortly after the demo was completed. We had a pleasant though long ride home. We reversed our course dropping off Al first, then David. My dad and I made it back to Neenah shortly after midnight. It had been a long day, though tired I enjoyed all of it.

I’d like to extend my appreciation to the guys at IPMS-LRSM for their kind hospitality. Hope to see you all again soon! Happy Modeling!

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