Pittsburgh Independent Hi-Railers at Kennywood Holiday Lights 2024

In a little over a week, you fellows have certainly done an amazing job once again!

I always look forward to this thread every year……you guys do great work!

Peter

Thanks for sharing photos again this year @Andy Hummell.  I imagine that once it's up and running the members of your club must get a kick out of running LONG stretches afforded by the space available.

looking forward to keeping tabs on your updates.

walt

Opening night is tonight!  Here are some final shots from the setup days:

Here are a few shots of my module:

Here, we have a Yeti about to go toe-to-toe with a Werewolf with the Grim Reaper on hand to referee...

"Cowboy Joe" has been a fixture at Kennywood for 64 years, and we always forget he is there watching over things.  At night, when the park is closed and the lights are off, his silhouette often startles us.

Andy

Looking great folks!

Looking good!  Nice to see some new faces in the group!

@Andy Hummell, once again the PIHR has done a great job with the layout, and Kennywood doesn't look to shabby either.  Thanks for sharing and looking forward to more photos of this year's layout.

Really neat, Andy!

Peter

Opening weekend went pretty smoothly, with a few kinks worked out along the way.  We had over 5400 visitors to the layout over the 3 nights, which is not bad considering the competition from a big local high school football game on Friday, and the Steelers game on Sunday.

Until my next batch of pix and videos can be uploaded, here is a video by  blogger and YouTuber, "That Adventure Guy" that visited us this weekend:

Andy

Andy, a former coworker posted on Facebook a photograph of his two little granddaughters at Kennywood and said they had a great time.  I asked if they saw the trains, but he said no, they were too busy riding rides!  What was he thinking!! 😄

Here are some pix from opening weekend:

Andy

Thanks Andy. This is one of my most favorite threads every Christmas season! You guys do such an amazing job setting up the huge display and entertaining thousands while creating lifelong memories of train joy for all of the kids - big and little!

I appreciate all of the pics and videos!

Andy:

Thanks for posting.  What could be b etter than Kennywood AND a large O gauge train layout!  Wish I was a kid again!.

Bill T 

Weather this weekend forced an early closure on Friday (we only had 101 visitors that night), so we took the opportunity to turn off the lights after the park closed to do a little night running and photography.  I didn't go in due to the early closure, but one of my club mates sent me some photos to post (used with permission):

Attendance picked up on Saturday and Sunday, even though there was still some light rain on Saturday, and brought our season attendance so far to just about 10,000.  A small group of us even managed to go to the Kittanning Train Show and then on to forum sponsor Hobby Express before going in to Kennywood.

Here are a couple of my shots from Saturday:

I had to re-wire Rudolph this year as one of the connections to the battery pack came undone, but he is good as new, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer os one of the park's themes this year.

There are lots of Jack Pearce vehicles on the layout:

This coming (Thanksgiving) weekend is going to be crazy.  Normally weekends are 4 hrs - 6hrs - 6hrs, but this one is going to be 6 hrs - 7hrs - 6hrs due to the holiday, but we are up to the task.

Andy