MAKING CONNECTIONS. The Gauge O Guild's annual exhibition sometimes coincides with Labor Day weekend, making a weekend trip with the balance of the Monday to recover possible. This year qualified as sometimes.

It's easy enough to get to the exhibition from DeKalb: drive to O'Hare, catch the 5.40 American Airlines to Manchester, ride the rails to Telford. Ticketing still involves -- despite fragmentation, privatization, and the failure of some operating companies -- one coupon honored by any of the connecting operators. When I purchased tickets, I received a suggested itinerary based on the next available train: Get on the Crewe train for Crewe ... at Crewe, Get on the Birmingham N St train for Wolverhampton. The itinerary did not name the carriers. A timetable I created for myself online shews that the Crewe train is Northern Rail, the Birmingham N St. train is Virgin Trains, and the Holyhead train setting down at Telford is Arriva Trains Wales. (Two puddlejumpers spliced by a latter-day Aerotrain.) Presumably the carriers have ways of dividing the revenue. It's very easy for the traveler, much more convenient than attempting to travel from, say, Elburn to Ravinia Park on Metra, or Orland Park to Wisconsin Dells using Metra and Amtrak. I've suggested (see "The Case for a Rail Pass") that the passenger train operators in the U.S. work on improving interline ticketing, and the train rides give me occasion to repeat my call.

The exhibition included traders with intriguing items to buy, some of which came back with me. This item, on the swap meet (called Bring and Buy there) table, did not.


It is not a Boston and Maine scrimshaw car from the mid-nineteenth century.

An island country is not conducive to building basements, which leads to smaller portable layouts, some configured for disassembly and transport. One featured the helper grades of Dainton Bank near Plymouth.


Westminster Hall brings passengers uphill. I didn't work out which direction was up to London. This train is about to enter the tunnel. On the other side of the tunnel is a small freight yard. The gathering offered ample time to swap stories with people from all over the world.

Birmingham New Street figured in a few news stories that weekend, of which more, perhaps, later this week.