Saturday, June 27, 2015

crew

People are rare sight around Brett, it's such a quiet little backwater. This morning however I caught the YPRR crew switching the elevator. They were running no 36, the BL2, newly out of the shops at Fiddle Creek..



Sunday, June 21, 2015

TVNAM 2015

Yesterday I was at 'the' show for American railroad modellers, held each year at Armitage, TVNAM.

I've been to the show a few times and always enjoyed not only the modelling, but the almost social club aspect.. as Nick, the organiser put it, it's a show for enthusiasts, by enthusiasts.. not really one to compare with your typical club model railway exhibitions, run in scout halls and sports halls up and down the country every weekend.

The main room

Midland, Ohio. Nick's O Scale layout

Midland, Ohio. Nick's O Scale layout

Midland, Ohio. Nick's O Scale layout

Florida Springs and Hacienda Avenue

29th Street Wharf

29th Street Wharf

29th Street Wharf

West Allen Street, micro layout


I didn't get many pictures of the great layouts on show I'm afraid, I don't tend to bother too much these days as my camera skills aren't really up to it. Much better pictures will be up on RMWeb and other blogs today, I suspect.

Woodsville
Woodsville

Anyway - this year, our little newly formed loose band of "Freemo' enthusiasts arranged to display in the large side room. In the week leading up to the day there was a series of emails and rough plans drawn up, trying to work out how to best arrange the various modules that we now knew would be there in the room, to give us some kind of running and be accessible to the paying public.

We starting setting up around 8 o'clock, an element of shuffling and seeing how things fitted came into play. By the time that the doors opened at 10, we had the modules up. It took a little longer to fully work out some electrical issues (one of the modules was built to a different standard and a bit of electrical tinkering was required), but we were running trains and answering questions all day.

The Freemo Room!

Very tiring, but good fun. Hopefully may have sparked the interest of one or two visitors.

Personally it was a relief to know that my modules worked ok, although it also highlighted a couple of minor things for me to adapt (checking the rail ends height on Cooper and perhaps arranging to bolt the legs in place rather than relying on the push fit.)

I put together a short video here:



Saturday, June 6, 2015

Freemo modules get 'tested'

Actually, this was a genuine testing session, rather than just an excuse to play trains!

TVNAM is coming up in a couple of weeks, and I want to make sure that the modules are working okay - track clean, no electrical foibles.. that they join up alright etc. 

I did need to re-solder one of the track ends. (Which involved nipping out to buy a new soldering iron!) Why I chose to solder to screws I don't know.. never done it before and eventually I'll replace these with copper clad instead.

Anyway - clearly a lot more to do as regards scenics.. and I'm not 100% about using the brick building for Wolfowitz and Hoffstetter, but for now they are working and that's what matters most.

No pictures today - just a video..