Page 15 - March April 2002

‘show quality’ several things were desirable, if not essential; (a) a house with a large basement, preferably on a hillside for ease of access (b) plenty of time (c) plenty of money (d) plenty of friends to help build, run, and maintain the system and (e) desirably, a supportive wife if you had one at all! Of course, some of these can be achieved as a club, as shown on some visits. Of individual visits, one owner had bought an industrial building. One corner held a part time model shop, another was where he lived, (he had no wife!) and he was left with some 80 feet by 60 feet for the layout! It was enormous, and was supported on 144 kitchen cabinet units as the main structure. The looped main line provides a run of 550 feet. To make me feel at home from the East Midlands, it had a Black Diamonds Mine, and a large iron and steel works. Ore trains of 99 hoppers and a caboose were lost in the space! A very different scene was a 20ft x 18ft American Flyer S gauge layout; tinplate track, two or more parallel circuits with ‘tail chasing trains’ but in the scenery was a drive-in theatre showing the current movies on its screen. Not a railway item, but in the sitting room were two full sized juke boxes in good working order. One of the smaller layouts, the San Miguel Southern Railroad was featured in the August 2000 Bulletin. Lots of mountain scenery that does live up to the published pictures (the owner is a professional artist) in which the On3 trains are dwarfed; and have very effective sound, including the fireman shovelling coal! The ‘non- progress’ of my own intentions for a layout was put into perspective at one visit, where the owner had started construction on 27th February 2001, and by the beginning of July had installed all the baseboards round a sizeable basement, and laid the primary circuit of track plus some extra, so that trains were in operation for our visit on the 11th July. I must go home and DO something instead of dreaming about a layout! (Perhaps I’m just a bit short on the first four requirements noted above)My non- model visit was to the Museum of Transportation where there is an extensive collection of railway equipment. The prize exhibit for me was a Norfolk and Western Y6a 2-8-8-2 articulated locomotive in excellent appearance (though sadly not in operating condition. It was as impressive as I had imagined it should be. There was
also a UP ‘Big Boy’ with which to compare it, another ‘first sighting’. Other exhibits ranged from an 0-6-0 switcher to a Milwaukee E2 Bi-Polar electric and a Burlington Zephyr early streamlined diesel express. Enjoyment was somewhat reduced by the temperature being over 90, causing one lady visitor to remark “another sweltering hour before we can get back on the bus!” I did not get to many of the clinics. Woodland Scenics market a kit of their products which provides all that is necessary to create a diorama based on high density foam. One of the clinics was an entertaining ‘double act’ by Fran & Miles Hale, who assembled one from white to finished product in a one-hour clinic - though they had to resort to the ‘here’s one I got this far with earlier’ technique to cut out the time needed for wet plaster gauze to dry out. It was an encouraging demonstration that scenery creation is not something the be scared of. At another session, the same couple did a similar presentation on how to make buildings with DPM modular kits, using sections about 20mm to the foot scale instead of HO to demonstrate techniques with pieces big enough for the audience to be able to see what they were doing. Clinics on airbrushing techniques, and on how to tune Athearn locomotives were instructive. A session of ‘Meet the chairman of the NMRA’ produced a debate about the NMRA finances, past and future. Much of the discussion echoed Steve Park’s report to the Half Yearly business meeting quoted in the August 2001 ‘Roundhouse’. It was said that allowing for inflation dues are now less than they were in 1975.During the convention, unlike British meetings, there were no operating layouts at the convention hotel, and no trading other than the NMRA ‘Company store’, and advance reservations for the next three conventions. But at the end of the week, there was the National Train Show in the TWA Dome, on the scale of the NEC at Birmingham. Convention members had special entry on the Friday morning, with general public admittance in the afternoon. Here there were several large layouts on show in all scales from Z to O, many big enough to run scale length trains, such as an S scale train with 5 units at the head followed by 48 autorack cars, all within the length of one side of the layout. Many of the layouts were modular, and two modules caught my eye. The first had thunder clouds
complete with lightning flashes, and thunder sound, plus a rotating tornado which travelled the length of the module. The second was a highly detailed corner module. The builder had commented that the original corner was lacking in scenery, and reappeared about six weeks later with a highly detailed module, including illicit gamblers engaged in a game of craps on a bit of spare space! The full list of exhibitors was in the July Bulletin. Manufacturers were showing off their wares, but not generally selling, which was left to retail trade whom there were many. As one entered the hall, Bachmann were giving away a plastic building kit from their Plasticville range, with an option to take either HO or N scale. This generosity seemed to continue throughout the three days of the show. Catalogues were freely available, and I now know why registration included the provision of a canvas shoulder bag - it was to carry the free paperwork and purchases! It was necessary to keep ones credit card firmly inside ones pocket to resist the temptation to over spend. A disappointing aspect of the convention was the small number of entries in the competition classes. The only categories with large numbers of entries were for photographs, and craft work. In the steam locomotive class, there were only three entries, (two HO and one O) Is this because modellers are scared off by the very high standard shown by the winners? Most other competition classes were in single figures of entries too. Finally, there was a banquet in the Grand Hall of the refurbished Union Station - which was for traffic to the Worlds Fair in 1904, and had 34 tracks. Now there are no trains, though it does have four tracks which are connected and can be used for excursions. Not knowing anyone when I registered I had simply put my name down for a seat at table 13. (in the interests of economy, I was staying in the Youth Hostel, and I discovered later that a fellow modeller from Dallas staying at the hostel was also on table 13) Once seated, the MC announced that if we looked under our plates, at each table two people would find they had a prize ticket and I had one. It was then announced that table numbers would be called for winners to go and make their choice from the prizes on show. Table 13 was called first! So I came away with a Proto 2000 BL2! A pleasing end to an interesting week. ●
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