• A wonderful trip and I am really very glad we did it. I would recommend travel by train to anyone (maybe with a few caveats)!
• All Amtrak personal encountered were polite, pleasant and helpful. Some more than others but none were "bad". To single three out who were particularly helpful: Faith, the ticket agent in D.C. who handled our upgrade; Paula, the car attendant from D.C. to Chicago and Leo the car attendant from D.C. to Ft. Lauderdale.
• Overall, the food was really quite good on board!
  

These three days made up the entire trip back home to Ft. Lauderdale.

Checkout time from the hotel on Wednesday (day 7) was at noon and we waited until the last minute! A cab ride to Union Station followed where we found the Metropolitan Lounge, checked in and stored our baggage.

I have done several searches to try and find if any of you have had good luck with a way to store your locos and rolling stock when A) you are not using them and don't want them out or B) you need a way to transport your collection to a NTrak/Bend Trak/ TTrak show so you can have all of what you might want to run at your finger tips.

  I really need some thoughts on this subject.  Hopfully many of you have experience with this.

Hope you can help!

Location(s)

These three days were spent playing tourist with no activities even remotely related to trains! The weather was really quite good. A little rain on Monday but nothing to really cause any serious problems.

With this in mind this is not going to be a lengthy entry.

Note: This entry is being submitted from the Metropolitan Lounge in Chicago's Union Station, on our return trip! (First free WiFi connection since Washington on the outbound trip).

Note: The first picture (train arriving in Ft. Lauderdale station) was not taken on this trip. Rather it was taken a little earlier when I went to the station to pick up the tickets. It was, however, made up identically.

This first entry is being started somewhere between Orlando and Jacksonville and we are currently in a holding pattern and something over 30 minutes behind schedule.

We all started out somewhere in the hobby. 

My question to you is, what was your first model railroad related purchase (besides a magazine)?

As a side note, do you still have it, or any pictures of it?

Mine was an HO Tyco Spirit of '76 train set (pn. 7330) with a bicenntenial painted Alco Century 430.  It's long gone now though.

Here's "news" about some upcoming N-scale passenger cars ... The manfacturer website is:

http://www.rapidotrains.com

Their "official" announcement was in their June Telegraph (newsletter) listing:

http://www.rapidotrains.com/telegraph9.html

 And BLW is now including this line ...

http://www.buynscale.com/Panorama%20Passenger%20Cars.htm