All Aboard!

This past Saturday was a good day for me to enjoy some of the festivities of Waupaca’s annual Strawberry Fest. As part of this event there was a modeler’s scale railroad show, which featured many vendors selling supplies but more impressive, the huge displays built and maintained by some of the city and county clubs throughout Wisconsin. Now I am not a fan of model railroads; have never really thought about the hobby all that much but will confess to being totally impressed on a surprising scale looking at what these folks had built.

It started with a Lego land of a large city and then I moved along to one of our region, done with the local line’s landmarks, like crossings, bridges, and the main yard at Stevens Point. This display even chronicled the train wreck near Sheridan in 1988. While the police car sat askew of the highway with its lights flashing, there was smoldered train car remains scattered all over.

Here’s a video of the train leaving Stevens Point:

What is simply amazing is the amount of detail packed into these dioramas. Most feature lots of animation, best shown by videos. The smallest details show up if one looks closely enough—animals in the barnyard with its rusty old barn roof, the change of seasons evidenced by the autumn trees, townspeople playing in or mowing their backyards, work crews.

The drive-in movie patrons were able to watch “Unstoppable” (on an IPad), the runaway train movie starring Denzel Washington while next door another crowd watched race cars!

Fantastic fun and the kids thought it all kid heaven!

Waupaca was packed since there was a small carnival going on for the kids, a couple of bands playing in our century old town square gazebo; over 100 street vendors and a huge food tent serving up strawberry desserts. I heard the announcer saying they had started the morning off with over 4000 strawberry shortcake portions and were down to only ten left as I left the festival about 2:30. I was able to marvel at the many vendors who were creating really interesting handmade items at some very reasonable pricing. Just a small town summer celebration in the Midwest...in what is our new hometown.