Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Frontier Fort Days and the Vintage Railroad Train Ride

I have sort of fallen of the radar lately, and I apologize for that. I had been working on the Starfleet Bustle Gown for Dallas ComicCon, but when the funds didn't come together for me to make it to the Con, I lost all enthusiasm for sewing. I guess I'd been looking forward to that weekend more than I had realized, or the disruption to my sewing mojo was more than I expected, but I've been just laying around and doing a whole lot of nothing for the past couple of weeks.

So, I'm trying to bring myself out of The Blahs by finally writing about the last outing with the DFWCG!

Every year, the Costumer's Guild enjoys the Frontier Fort Days festival at the Fort Worth Stockyards. It really is a fabulous event, with reenactors doing battle drills and other demonstrations, gun fights in the streets, cattle drives, all sorts of fun stuff.

The Costumer's Guild met up in Grapevine, where the Vintage Railroad leaves from to make its trip to the Stockyards. We all arrived a little early in order to do a little bit of catching up with each other and getting to know some newcomers.

 

And, of course, we took photos of our outfits! Jen snapped some fabulous ones of my new burgundy suit. And, naturally, I had to take some 'wedgie' pics!
 

At 1 o'clock, we boarded the train for the longest train ride ever.


The ride to Fort Worth is...less than scenic (lots of junkyards and industrial areas on the route), and our train was forced to stop and wait several times in order to let other trains pass. What was meant to be a 45 minute - 1 hour train ride ended up taking almost 2 1/2 hours! We were so travel weary and restless by the time we reached the Stockyards, and we'd missed most of the day's events at the festival. Bummer. But, it did feel rather awesome stepping out of a vintage train car in a bustle dress, into the Stockyards, which are vintage themselves.



We did get a chance to walk around some of the encampments, and see some of the drills, which was nice. We even got in some shopping at the few sutlers that were set up! I mainly just took pictures of the Gatling Guns. XD



Then...we found cannons. And we took saucy pictures with those cannons, which we dubbed "Ankles and Ammunition" photos.


We only had about an hour in the Stockyards before we had to head back to Grapevine, so we took some pictures with the train (and with ten thousand tourists...who can blame them? We were fabulous).

 

 We three had gowns made of Wal-Mart fabrics!

 

At the end of the day, we boarded the train and tried not to fall asleep on the ride back. At least three of us (myself included!) had stayed up until 4 AM working on our gowns to have them finished in time! We called ourselves the 4AM Sewing Club. XD


The ride back to Grapevine was considerably prettier than our earlier experience - parks, fields, mansions, and other lovely things. All in all it was a very enjoyable day, but next year we're either going to find a new event for May, or we're going to forgo the longer train ride and just enjoy the festival (or take the shorter "Trinity Trail" route, which is about 20 minutes and goes along the river.) It will be interesting to see what happens next year!

1 comment:

  1. Your photos are getting me excited for my groups train ride in July. The one we booked gets robbed by robbers on horse back. Very exciting! (The money goes to a women's shelter!) You all looked lovely!

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