Feast or Famine?

That 's a rather harsh term for our weekend at Afton Station.  "Feast" seems like somewhat of an unkind way to describe the incredible crowds that electrified the Station with their presence on Saturday.   And "famine", although accurately describing the paucity of visitors, disregards that each and every one of them was most welcome.  Nevertheless, the fact remains -- we had over 110 visitors on Saturday and 7 on Sunday.   Sometimes it just happens that way, and it certainly makes working at Afton Station a challenge!

Our 7 visitors came from Langley OK, Rogers AR, Lees Summit MO, Quebec Canada, and Minneapolis, MN.

Our Minnesota visitors took a number of photos with the cars, including the '34 that has been residing in the work room since returning from parade duty last weekend in Grove.  It will soon be moved into it's proper place of  honor in one of the showrooms.

 This lady from Rogers, AR did some penny pinching and -- much to my joy -- spent a lot of time through our vintage postcards and emerged thinking that she might just become a postcard collector herself!  As  a postcard collector myself, I'm always happy to convert a civilian to the hobby.  She asked for information about nearby postcard shows and sales, and even chose a few subjects she might decide to collect.

 The gentleman from Quebec came in alone while his family waited in the motor home outside feeling a bit under the weather.  He, his wife, and their two young children are taking a full year off to travel around the USA (starting with Route 66) and then South America.  They are home schooling their children during the year and he is maintaining his business via online communication and phone.  Very exciting!  We wish them well on such an ambitious undertaking.

We have a problem here at Afton Station, and what a happy problem it is!  We have run out of space for wall-signing!  Never did we imagine that so many folks would sign the walls of our work room, but now it's getting a bit out of hand, with people standing on chairs to sign close to the ceiling and covering the electric box and door jambs with writing, too.  The problem is that we have some nice vintage signs in that room and we'd like to make sure no one signs those!   So, we've decided to move all the signs and other memorabilia into one of the showrooms and give over the entire work room to autographs.  Some have suggested we just paint over some of the signatures to make room for more, but I just can't accept that solution.  I want to keep them all.   So, hopefully by next week we will have freed up enough wall space for another year or so to collect the wonderful names of the wonderful visitors who have passed through our building.

(Click on these photos to enlarge them so you can get a better idea of how things look now.)

Tomorrow is Canadian Thanksgiving, and we want to wish all  our neighbors to the north a great  holiday.  In celebration, check out this Manitoba license plate left for us by a friendly Canadian, Dave Werstiuk, who visited recently.