WAGRS display at Wichita Old Cowtown "Trails to Rails" Festival. Also included are 1875's building prototype pictures.

[pimanjc]

 The Wichita Area Garden Railway Society ran an exhibit THIS WEEKEND (July 28th & 29th) at Wichita's Old Cowtown Museum. This event portrays the roll of Trains, cowboys, and cattle drives to Wichita's early days. Wichita was a cattle town at the head of the Chisholm trail..

Saturday is also the 3rd Annual National Day of the Cowboy.  Bob Boze Bell who owns TRUE WEST MAGAZINE does things at the Old Cowtown museum for THE WESTERNS CHANEL.  He lives in AZ, in Cave Creek.

http://www.oldcowtown.org/

Era was 1875-1900. We are running two loops: Passenger and stock cars. Buildings were supplied by several members.

Other threads on Historical Cowtown are:
http://www.mylargescale.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=33784
and
http://www.mylargescale.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=40320

The links above contain many links to last year's pictures, which were similiar to this year's activities.  Many prototype buildings are shown.  The buildings at Old Cowtown Historical Museum are originial, restored buildings.

The display at Old Cowtown Historical Museum was a great success for WAGRS and Cowtown.  Crowds were good, events were good, rain waited until 5min. after we got all the equipment loaded at the end.  WAGRS shared a room with the Wichita Toy Train Club [O-scale and S-scale present].
 
Stock train rounds the bend at Southtown.

Freight and sidings at the Elevator.

Passengers roll into Ole' Wichita.

Stagecoach enters town as cattle cars pass in the background.

Kids enjoyed the floor level view.

Overall view of display.

Two trains at Southtown.

Two of my grandkids and several WAGRS members.

JimC.

BTW, WAGRS members noticied how much slower it appeared that our trains were running compared to the smaller gauges.  I timed both.  G:  1ft/sec@ 1/24th,  O:  1ft/sec@ 1/48.  Therefore, the smaller O-scale was going scale twice as fast as the G-scale. [please don't highjack the thread discussing my use of gauge or scale correctly or incorrectly].

[imrnjr]

[Looks like a great festival to celebrate our Western heritage!C):-)]

If I've  done the math correctly the O gauge is running at about 32-33 scale mph and the G at about 16-17 scale mph, A little slow for flat land standard gauge for the G, but not all that bad on the O based on 1870's equipment and not necessarily the best road beds at the end of trail!!

 

mark