Ennis Thompson, ABTO

The Arizona Big Train Show annual spring open house will be held on April 2-3, from 10:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m.

We’re back with our annual spring open houses and our Sun Lakes Club members are ready for a great weekend, opening their backyards and displays for the public to see this spring. This supplements their Christmas open houses for the public to see all of the detail as the daylight sun beams brighten the “G Scale” trains as they speed across the countryside of each layout. Again, Sun Lakes exhibits four layouts with two newer ones for the public to see. Three layouts are in Oakwood and one is in Ironwood.

The eastern part of the valley will present eight railroad creations with Gold Canyon’s mining railroad back on the tour again with their steam engines hard at work. Three layouts with be open in North Central Phoenix. With an earlier Easter this year, members of the club are eager to show their creations in the beautiful spring weather. The freshness of the season helps motivate the engineers to fire up their engines, refuel the locomotives, clean the tracks and show all of the lookers maybe one or two new scenes on their layout.

Watch for news breaks in the papers and “things to do” on the weekend of April 2-3. The website of ABTO is azbigtrains.org, which will carry all of the addresses and names of the engineers to visit. This is a good time for the family and granddad to get out and see these railroad lines. It will bring back some good memories of yesteryear. “All Aboard!”