Thomas and Friends

Nikolas is currently fascinated with trains of all sorts, but especially Thomas the Tank Engine. So on Saturday morning we all went to the Columbia Gorge Model Railroad Show in NE Portland where not only were there many different model trains, but there was also a Thomas the Tank Engine train!

It was perfect for a little train enthusiast and the rest of us had fun too. There was a basketball court size model train track with about 20 people sitting in their engineer booths making sure all the trains didn't crash into each other.
They had put countless hours into the whole thing and half of it replicated the Columbia Gorge, complete with Crown Point, and the other half looked like downtown Portland in the 1950's or so. There was even a little tiny drive- in movie screen that was playing "I Love Lucy"!

This guy kept popping out of the woodwork to fix stuck trains.
Isn't he great?!

Nik tried his hand at engineering his own train,
notice all the other Thomas fans.
(Jodi, I am so sorry, I totally should have called you guys!)

Someone wasn't very pleased with leaving Thomas behind. In fact, he was a wreck pretty much the whole rest of the day, saying, "Go see Thomas Train, go see Thomas Train!" in a very sad voice.
Was it worth it? Hmm, well, I suppose it's debatable, but I will say, "yes". My little boy had a memorable time with his daddy looking at trains and even though he probably won't remember this day in the future, daddy and mama will, and we will forget about the problems it caused the rest of the day and remember the excitement and the little voice yelling, "THOMAS!" whenever he saw the Thomas train go by.