Thank you for visiting!
This page provides the schedule for the 2009 O Scale West home and club layout visits. This page is updated whenever there is a change in the information below, so re-visit here when you need the most up to date information.
The preliminary schedule will be posted early January 2009. Please check back after that time.
The schedule below contains 30 layouts! Have fun!
Layouts are open for visiting immediately before, during, and after the meet. Some of them are several hour's drive from the meet location (those are only open Sunday.) The Layout Visits Map Packet contains complete information about all layouts.
People who are registered for O Scale West can obtain an advance copy of the Map Packet by sending a 9 x 12 Priority Mail envelope with postage affixed to it to the O Scale West address that is on the registration form. Do not send money and your address! The packets will be available late January.
So for as far as we know, no one has been able to visit all the layouts in just one OSW meet! Please don't take that comment as encouraging you to try! Choose the layouts that are of interest to you; layouts in the same general area are for the most part open the same day/time to make it easy to take in several with minimal travel between them.
A road map of the San Francisco Bay Area will be a great help in your planning. (Note: Friday evening commute traffic heading out of the Santa Clara area can be heavy, so please allow for that possibility in your planning.)
Whether you are unfamiliar with the San Francisco Bay Area or live here, we cannot recommend too highly the use of a street-oriented GPS (global positioning system) to get you to the layouts of your choice. You enter into the GPS the address of the location where you want to go, and the GPS system will give you voice commands (e.g., "take 101 north for 10 miles", then "take next right exit", then "take next left turn", etc.) and guide you right to your destination, regardless of where you are starting from. These things really work and are not that complicated to use. If you enter the correct address, you will not get lost, even if you make a wrong turn. If you rent a car and plan to use your own portable GPS system, make sure the cigarette lighter in your rental works, as you may need to supplement the GPS's batteries with power from the car.
There are some HO scale layouts open for visiting. These layouts are world class model railroads that are widely known. Some are in the same vicinity of other open layouts, you might want to visit them when visiting those other layouts. This year we are very pleased that Jack Burgess is opening his HO scale Yosemite Valley layout for us. Jack is an excellent modeler as well as historian, so his YV is a masterpiece both in accuracy and quality of the models; you have have to wait a while to get in as this layout is always very popular when it is open.
Also please note that the two layouts in Mariposa are open only on Sunday.
THURSDAY Jan 29, 2009
FRIDAY Jan 30, 2009
SATURDAY Jan 31, 2009
SUNDAY Feb 1, 2009