It was President’s Day weekend and it was raining like crazy as one of the biggest storms of the winter came rolling through SoCal. So, we were a bit stir crazy and were looking for something to do. Thankfully, The World’s Greatest Hobby On Tour was in town at the Long Beach Convention Center and we are always on the look-out for the latest and greatest in people watching experiences. Plus, Noah likes trains so it was a no brainer.
We have had the pleasure of some great people watching lately, courtesy of the United States Postal Service and Disneyland; however, the train geeks brought people watching to a whole new level.
Unlike the people at Disneyland and the Post Office, the train geeks seem to have a purpose. They are not just weird for the sake of being weird. They are just really into their hobby and they are delighted to share it with you.
My big takeaway from the train show was that these people appear to spend most of their time working on the scenery that passes by their trains. The trains themselves are purchased and, if you lay down the track, run fairly easily. But, the scenery is a different story. (Check out the photo album that we have to see some of the more amazing scenery). They are amazingly detailed and elaborate, one of them was even a model of a burned-out forest, complete with firefighters, a helicopter and, yes, smoke. The other cool gadget was a little wireless remote camera attached to the train allowing the operator to see what the train sees.
Of course, the most interest thing to watch was the people who were displaying the trains. They were young and old and, for the most part, looked like their time spent working on trains did not allow for any sort of exercise. They all just sat there, running their trains, answering questions, working on more trains and drinking non-diet soda (it took us a while, but we did see at least one group of train geeks that were drinking diet, but it was the exception).
It appeared that half of the show was filled with local train clubs putting their prized possessions on display and the other half was filled with booths where carnies (I now understand where carnies make money in the off-season) tried to sell you train-related items.
Noah was in hog heaven as he wanted to go from one train display to another. He was fascinated by them and, while we encourage his interest, we are going to have to figure out what it takes to make sure that he does not become one of those train geeks or, for that matter, a train-related carnie.
After the train show, we decided to grab some dinner at one of the restaurants at The Pike at Rainbow Harbor, one of Long Beach’s newest shopping and entertainment areas. We have not spent much time at the Pike, so this was a good chance. Wendy was smart to suggest parking at The Aquarium of the Pacific which is right across the street, only a short walk away and half the price. So we walked back toward the car and decided to eat at Gladstone’s. They originally told us the wait was a half-hour and Ralph had to suspend his normal dislike of waits of more than 10 minutes. Noah ran around for a while and that was fine except that the wait turned out to be about an hour. The food was good (not worth an hour wait) and the restaurant has a chain feel (unlike the Malibu location), but we had a nice time. Noah crashed on the way home, probably dreaming about trains…