Annual Conventions Typically Feature:
- Daily excursion tours to various sites of interest
- Member home layout tours
- Annual Train Show – table sales of all sizes and types of toy trains (swap meet)
- Operating layouts
- Annual Business Meeting
- Closing banquet – Great Camaraderie with fellow Members!
Visit World Class Layouts
Perhaps the greatest benefit, after camaraderie, is the opportunity to visit world class layouts around the USA. Many of the layouts that we visit have been featured in such magazines as Classic Toy Trains and O-Gauge.
Each layout is unique and interesting in their special ways. These visits leave all of us with ideas for our own layouts, present and in the future. One-on-one conversations with the layout owners/builders give us a unique opportunity to probe, question, marvel and perhaps the impetus to put our layout dreams into operation.
Although most of us are O and O-27 gauge hobbyists, we can learn from every scale/gauge that your LOTS Convention team presents for its attendees. After the LOTS Convention layouts, visit the layouts and collections of your friends and acquaintances. I bet that they will allow and encourage you to bring along a train or two. It is always fun to run trains on someone else’s layout.
Perhaps it will take you back to your initial days in the hobby when you ran your trains at your friends houses and ran them around the track at breakneck speeds to see if and when they would fly off the tracks!
Edward Mazur, DM 3123
Divisions and Chapters
Although LOTS is to remain a national club and shall not be subdivided into formal divisions or chapters (see Article II, Section 3, of the Constitution), LOTS members are encouraged to develop informal local operating groups to promote the enjoyment of operating and collecting Lionel and compatible trains and accessories.
Such operating groups may, for example, build and operate modular layouts; run trains on each other’s layouts; or meet periodically to share their knowledge regarding any aspect of operating Lionel and compatible trains and accessories.
Local operating groups are encouraged to submit periodic reports to the Switcher Editor in the interest of sharing their knowledge, experience and layout construction tips with all LOTS members.
Local operating groups also are encouraged to sponsor regional LOTS train meets. Host a meet today!