This looks like a great event to go to if you are in the Oregon area. What a great place to take your children and see the model trains and o scale trains in action.
It is also great for anyone just starting in the railroading hobby as you can see the trains and ask the experts before you spend any of your cash on model trains.
BEND, Ore. -- They're usually used around Christmas trees, or set up in your child's bedroom, but one group of Central Oregon adults is turning the hobby of model trains into a huge passion.
Saturday and Sunday brought the 16th annual Eastern Cascades Model Railroad Club open house.
With conductor hats ready, operators ran a complete model train layout -- with regional operators running the local communities.
Visitors could also ride an outdoor railroad and view a scale layout all day long.
For many of the club's members, this passion for trains started when they were children.
"Everybody is amazed at the amount of work and detail that we've put into this," said Bruce Blanford, president of the Eastern Cascades Model Railroad Club. "It's just ongoing, and everybody works on it, a little bit at a time. And we've been working on this layout since 1989 -- we are always adding something to it."
The Eastern Cascades Railroad Club is HO scale, or half of O scale, and has approximately 1,900 feet of track.
The outdoors branch of the club, the Central Oregon Area Live Steamers, has built a 1 1/2-inch scale railroad, now with one quarter-mile of track on five forested acres.
Organizers say the annual open houses attract more and more people each year.
