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Amherst Railway Society Railroad Hobby Show

annual Railway-centred show

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 29, 2024
Entity authorityQ4746035 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Amherst Railway Society Railroad Hobby Show is an annual show, covering railroads, railroad Museums, model railroading, and railroad related toys, held at the Eastern States Exposition grounds in West Springfield, Massachusetts by the Amherst Railway Society. The show usually held on the last weekend in January. The show currently operates in three large buildings and one small building for a total of four buildings.

The Amherst Railway Society Hobby Show is the largest show featuring model trains in North America in terms of space size for all four buildings. Setup begins on Wednesday morning when the Floor Managers arrive to begin laying out table areas and to prepare the Mallory Building. Preparation for the show occurs year-round.

The Railroad Hobby Show is a fund-raiser for the nonprofit Amherst Railway Society. Since 1991, the society has donated more than $800,000 raised through the show to various railroad museums, historical societies, nonprofit groups and organizations dedicated to preserving railroad history and restoring railroad equipment and structures, as well as scholarships.

History

The show began its existence in Amherst, Massachusetts on the campus of UMass Amherst, where it was held in the Student Union building during the 1970s. It moved to the New England Building on the Big E fair grounds in West Springfield in 1983.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Amherst Railway Society Railroad Hobby Show” as annual Railway-centred show. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1991, 1983—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Amherst, Railway and Society can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as annual Railway-centred show. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 29, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q4746035. Authority coordinates are 42.093, -72.617. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1991 and 1983.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Amherst Railway Society Railroad Hobby Show” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.