American model railroads by British modellers

Mike,

great to see the pictures. I was in Worthing from Sept to Dec 2007 and attended the show at Boundstone in September. I enjoyed the visit and as I said, it is great to see you pictures on the 'net.

Dale Gloer

Mike Hughes wrote:

In message , Dale Gloer writes

Did we meet? I'm the fat guy who was near the entrance with the timesaver layout. If you can make it again on 21 March 2009 I'd love to meet you .

We may have met - I don't remember. Unfortunately I will not be there for the March show.

Our local club, the Southern Alberta Model Railway Club, is hosting the regional NMRA convention this summer. You can check out the details at www3.telus.net/samrc My layout, the Coyote Sub, is on the layout tour and there are a few pictures of it on the site - more will soon be added.

Dale.

Mike Hughes wrote:

Hey, no kiddin'? That's almost the name of my club, the South Shore Model Railway Club, in Hingham, MA.

Okay, dumb question: is Charlie Fox-Wilson any relation to Lord Charles Fox from the 1700's? My hometown is named after Lord Fox (Foxborough, MA), and the town recently erected a monument to him.

AD&D? Advanced Dungeons & Dragons fan? Or coincidence? :-)

I went to the link, and I saw that your Treasurer is Bevis King. Now, I know this is gonna sound weird, but is he by any chance the same Bevis that actually came to the States and visited our club? I mean, it's not like that's a common name in England, is it?

Nice modeling work. The "Broke Brick Mountain" is something I've not seen before with it's large back drop, and it looks good. I like the Operations challenge at Lynneton Yard, tho' I would have removed the packing foam from the switcher. ;-) Also, I would have tried to keep the equipment to the same era. The boxcars without roofwalks do not really go with cars that have roofwalks as it was a pretty fast turnover in the early 1970's. And I think ice reefers were long gone by the time Chessie came into being. About the numbers on the roof...if it's for the public to try, it's probably the best way to go. Unfortunately. Sigh. ;-)

Paul A. Cutler III

In message , Pac Man writes

I don't think so, but if it helps you I'll put some more photos on the modelling part of my site soon and I'll include a photo of Charlie and Syd Bunker, another of our members. In the meantime I think that there is a photo of Charlie already on one of the earlier photos of Broke Brick Mountain

LOL

If you want to see the reasoning behind this one have a look at the club web site

You are absolutely right. In fact our web site has a link to an American site - yours I believe :-))

Again read the background information on Lynneton Yard the you will see that there is a heritage railroad centre at Michaelsberg, the nearby main railroad town and they 'run in' their locos and also provide various cars for filming use, which is why you can see all sorts of mixtures - honest!

We have to have large numbers so that the public (and some modellers) can see which car they are referring to.

If anyone is coming to Worthing on a Wednesday (except the second Wed of each month) they'll be most welcome to come and join us. I can bring Lynneton Yard for you to try and I'm sure there'll be something else to see. We meet at Sompting but just send me an e-mail and I'll give you full details.

In message , Dale Gloer writes

It's a great pity that it wasn't last year. I was in Edmonton visiting relatives. They used to live in Lethbridge when they first moved out there, but then moved to Grande Cache - they were in the jails - but as guards not inmates! That's why I went to Grande Cache and managed to get photos of two trains in the yard at Winniandy, a place which usually only sees two or three trains in a week. Follow the link in my signature to get to the real trains section.

Nah, don't bother. It was just a fleeting thought, really. It's not often one hears the last name of the person one's town is named after in the same place he represented (West Sussex).

Interesting history, there. How much of it is fiction?

Well, I'll be danged. There it is. Hey, great to hear from you guys! Tell Bevis that we said hi! ;-) Tell him that Dan had a heckuva wreck on Monday...he went through a close mainline crossover and derailed just about every car in a tunnel. Then Dan tried to back up with disastrous results (several jacknifed cars, etc.). Truly spectacular!

I believe it. But, um, does the real UP yard switcher have large foam blocks on either end? LOL

Oh, agreed. I think if I were to do a similar switching layout for the public, I might use just the color of the car. Looking at the pics, you have white, gray, blue, yellow, and brown cars. I'd probably draw a map of the layout, and color code it for the cars...just to make it even simpler for the "guests" to use. What do you think?

Heh. The only way I'm going to try that one is if you ship the whole darn thing to our club. 3000 miles is a little far to go just to visit a layout, and none of my family has traveled to England in some 25 years (and that was to see our relatives in Yorkshire).

Paul A. Cutler III

In message , Pac Man writes

I've sent him a copy of this message

Didn't you know I'd started a new trend which has been copied by UP. The foam block are soon to become a mandatory Health and Safety requirement. The foam is specially formulated so that it cushions the bodies of the UP train crews when they are moving about the front and rear of any loco, but in particular NW2's :-))

I've yet to put it to a vote with the members of the club but I feel certain that most of them will be very happy to bring their layouts (and the operators) to you. I assume you will you be sending the expenses before we leave :-))

When I told Dan about this conversation last night at the club, he got this pained look on his face and said, "Is there anyone you didn't tell about the train wreck?" Heh. I didn't mention that it's been posted for the whole world to see on r.m.r.

Ooh, that's a good one. ;-) Once OSHA gets involved, we'll have to install "safety foam" on all our locomotives...including steam!

Har-dee-har-har. Not a chance...unless your club members are shipped in the box with the layouts! ;-) Now I must go and write another edition of "The Operator" for my club's newsletter. It's a multi-page review of each Operation session that we have, and really our only form of rule enforcement at the club. See, each time an operator screws up, he gets an "Oops!" in print (no demerits or anything like that, just a little peer pressue). As you can guess, Dan gets mentioned frequently. LOL

Paul A. Cutler III