Speaking of power supplies, our club picked up a 300wh battery backup power supply last year. These are lithium ion batteries with an inverter. 300wh gives you that total of time and watts, so 3hrs at 100w 6hrs at 50w. Etc. Our club does smaller setups to like 4 table lengths max so it can power that with 2 dc throttles (we don’t do dcc) for two days of a train show or a day with some accessories plugged in. Display shows percentage left (seems to be pretty linear with our use) and power being drawn thru the various outlets (120vac, 12vdc, or 5vdc). Best $200 investment we ever made! You can get bigger ones but they get heavy fast. The little 300ah systems are the size of a kids lunch box and about 7lbs. Little external transformer to plug in to charge. We are getting a second as a backup they are so handy and just incase there is an issue. Really golden at outside events where getting power can be a difficult extension cord run or very expensive to hook into the event’s generator system.

But gone are the days of scoping out outlets and running power cords and taping them down. My business insurance agent said that was number 2 to slip and falls on liability claims/lawsuits and basically even if you tape it down very visibly and well it is almost always considered your fault, period, so I’m so glad to not have those nightmares anymore. So much faster setup and power is where ever we want to put the throttles. We do have a few very slim, long low amp extension cords in the tool bag we can run if a disaster strikes but getting those compact extension cords murphied us well and no issues so far!

Would work with dcc but you would need a much bigger one for a big setup because of the power draw on those systems. But I expect for a small setup with a smaller dcc throttle it might run it for a normal event day, just depends on the watts it draws.

Second huge addition a couple of years back were the folding wagons. I got a 52” long x16” wide one and it’s been such a schlep saver at events. Some of our events require long distances to move stuff from auto loading area to the event space. Making sure they had some pallet dollies was a pain and sometimes hard to get them and lift trucks are dangerous with stacks of plastic boxes sliding around. These are the perfect solution as just about the size of most of the module and support boxes and I stack it like 4’ high and throw a bungee cargo net over the top and I’ve hauled it a quarter mile across a convention center with ease. The pivoting front wheels make it super maneuverable and handle goes long enough for my long leg span to not have the wagon ride up on my heals. Folds up pretty compactly. Definitely easier to stow than any Dollie’s or hand trucks (besides the tiny folding ones that are the most dabderous to use as wheels can collapse on you hitting a hole and tip fast).

Both have ?saved loads of time and effort and way more than worth the cost. Wish we had them 20 years ago! It’s taken the most of the dread out of shows with schlepping and running extension cords. It’s made thinking about doing ver small and/or short events much easier as a wagon full can fill 1-2 tables epithet ease. It’s looking like some of the small, cultural events are actually better reception and sparking interest for newbies to the hobby. We’ve done events of from a few hundred up to 150k and good ROI can be had with the little events now as well with these items added to our system.

Smaller load here

Cheers

Jeff