Museum
We spent the day after the train show at the Henry Ford museum in Dearborn. This is a must see if you are in the area, wear comfortable shoes. I took lots of pictures, so I will have some blog fodder for the next few days…
-Tim
Renaissance Center
The venue for this years convention in Detroit was GM’s Renaissance Center. This is quite an impressive building with reasonable room rates. We managed to get a room on the top floor of the center tower, 70 stories up. We were right under the white stripe on the near the top. The top three floors are GM offices.
Needless to say the view was spectacular.
\
Our room faced the river and looked back into Windsor. Vita would not come within two feet of the windows, which span from the floor to the ceiling. Its a bit disturbing to look straight down!
It was a pretty good spot for taking pictures, except the windows were dirty. Too bad I couldn’t open one, I’d crawl right out there.
With the 300mm lens I was able to get shots of the railway across the river in Windsor. Our room looked directly down this line. Not sure what line it is though.
With a west facing room, we were treated to some spectacular sunsets. The smog really helps generate some impressive skies!
This was taken a few minutes before a thunderstorm rolled through. That was quite a spectacle.
The hotel was full of cars and what looked like interesting displays. I never actually made it to any of them. While the place is an impressive structure, it is without question the most confusing place I have ever been in. Ask anyone who was there, it must have been designed by some sadistic mouse in a maze dropout. Several times I simply gave up from exhaustion trying to find a restaurant or lounge or anything for that matter. Every time I went up to the room it was a different route, and not intentionally!
-Tim
CBC News Windsor
On Friday we had a visit from CBC Windsor who were doing a piece on the large Canadian presence at the NMRA Train Show. Thanks to Clark we were selected for this story (I’ll get even with him later). I usually shy away from any media coverage, as they always, always get it so wrong and seem to want to put a campy spin on the hobby, but I figured maybe the CBC would do a better job.
Well, they did put an odd angle on the story, but at least it wasen’t the “choo choo whoo whoo” type. We managed to catch the story in the hotel later that evening, and had a pretty good laugh over it. I will see if I can get a copy of it from the CBC and post it here.
-Tim
\
