LD/Ops SIG meet 2016 - the day

It has become a tradition for me to go to the Bay Area Layout Design / Operations SIG meet the last weekend of January. This is the sixth year I'm going to this meet. Familiar faces abound and it was nice to catch up.

This year, the event was at the California State Railroad museum in Sacramento. The fee for the meet included entrance to the museum, so during a break I took a quick look around the first floor and was surprised to find a demonstrator unit of a Siemens Velaro High Speed train on display.

Nice idea, but couldn't they have chosen a less nasty color?

SP 4294 is usually photographed from the other end ...

Admittedly, when I read through the program yesterday, I was bit skeptical. However, the presenters pleasantly surprised with excellent talks and presentations. I learned a lot about trains on R Street in Sacramento, how to fill in missing knowledge and context for a layout from Internet photo research and Google Maps, and heard a very entertaining talk about applied TT&TO at an operations session at the La Mesa club in San Diego.

The presentations were followed by the resolution of the Operations Challenge, which yielded lots of discussion and continued straight into the Panel Discussion. After the official program wrapped up, I had dinner at Fanny Ann's in Old Town with a small group of fellow model railroaders, before we headed out to the layout tours.

Hilarious Restroom Doors at Fanny Ann's