We have just had 6 wonderful weeks in Nth America , Flew from Sydney Au to La to Detroit ending up at Ft Lauderdale in Florida. Boarded a cruise liner the next day to cruise from Ft Lauderdale to LA via Colombia, Panama Canal, Costa Rica , Nicaragua , Guatemala , Mexico to LA. Hired a car & down to San Diego for a couple of days to check out the museums on Balboa hill mainly to check out the San Diego model train museum . Nice size layout but it seemed to be a Spaghetti bowl of unconnected scenes with no flow when walking around viewing. There is no track plan available to purchase & only a blow up print from MR seen on 1 wall, just a bit disappointing in presentation if you are not familiar with the area modelled .

On to Vegas for a few stage shows & purchase of some fossil rocks along with a largish Tiger Rock from Western Australia which caught our eye. Beautiful colours when in the right light . Up thru Zion National park & over to Durango , We didn't have a ride as the winter timetable was still in operation so no trains to Silverton until mid May. Had a small detour to to the 4 corners site where Colorado , Arizona , New Mexico & Utah meet while we were travelling to Durango. Up over the Million Dollar Highway to Gnd Jct viewing the small RGS museum at Ridgeway while driving. Across to Caboose Hobbies in Denver [ No Marklin on show or for sale ] Found a very nice museum at Greeley , Very large layout which is fully visible from a mezzanine floor when you first enter , plenty of walk in access on the lower levels & heaps of general railway artifacts on the walls . While speaking to one of the club members I was offered a behind the scenes guided tour which I took up. Long Trains & a timetable to run to . Up to Cheyenne & a visit to the Union Station where on average about 100 train movements occur each day with all sorts of locomotive power & cargo visible.

Continuing North we visited the Crazy Horse Monument in Sth Dakatoa , Could easily spend a day or 2 in this area visiting Mt Rushmore, Yellowstone Nat Park, Crazy Horse & a few other things of intrest in the area .We were hit by a blizzard for the next 2 days but managed to work our way across to Seattle to visit the Boeing factory for the factory tour & ended up spending a heap at the Seattle aviation museum on various books mainly about the SR71 bomber for our son . These books are not available in Australia over the counter. Over $ 100 us for postage back to Aust just for them . Went to another Aviation museum at Mc Minnville where the Spruce Goose built by Howard Hughes is on display along with a SR71 on public display. All up we considered the aviation museums we visited were the highlights of the trip

Down thru Portland mainly on I 5 , bridges everywhere road & rail & a magnificent city to see. We drove I 5 all the way back to LA then back home to Sydney.

A bit disappointed with the lack of Marklin on sale in hobby shops on the west coast considering that I consulted the dealer list on "M"dealers list from Walthers , maybe a update of this list should be taken to prevent wasted time for visitors . I found a few "M" things at Allied Hobbies in LA but most seemed to be old models just taking up shelf space , had the feeling that if I had brought the lot they would have been grateful .

A very enjoyable holiday , we did 5000 miles in 3 weeks in a Nissan Sentra ? from Nationalwide rental in LA with no problems at all.



Regards,

Tom in Oz