First FREMO public meet in Athens, Greece

Hello people,

last Sunday we had our first public FREMO meet in Athens, Greece.

I was away from the group, since I was feverishly working towards completing my modules for the 16 December modeling bazaar.

Here are the nearly operable modules, waiting to be loaded into my brother-in-law car:

Three 30-degree modules, with 1670mm radius curve (no easement done, I decided it wasn't worth at such a wide radius and I wanted to have the modules interchangeable in future reassignments, but I may be wrong).

Here is one of these 30-degree modules, with tracing paper and the curve shown over the track to be fixed in place with track pins by Peco.

I also added two straight transition modules (from level to mountainous profiles), with bridges being planned for extra interest.

I worked feverishly in our railroad museum, trying to make everything work (had to add legs in two modules, plus banana plugs on three modules). After some work, we had eight operating modules in the veranda of our railfan club near the mainline:

I was so exhausted from the work needed to finish the modules and the set-up, I didn't shoot many good photos. But here I add one more anyway :-)

This module is planned to become a river crossing, with 2-3 Warren truss bridges (there were some nice ones in Greece, built my USA personnel after World War II, and I would like to reproduce these).

Hope you found it interesting. I wish to note that all my 'blue' modules used Marklin K-track, so I can be compatible with everybody (there are many Marklin users in Greece, and I want to attract them into the joys of modules ;-) )

Since I got some more time, let's add some more photos in the discussion:

Marklin tracks are rather hard to solder, so I used code 100 rail joiners. The third cable is attached to the center conductors (pukos), and was easy to do, after I scratched the painting with my Dremel-clone. The problem I discovered was that the (too thick) cable was raising the tracks appreciably, so I had to move this connection towards the center of the module, and use a thinner cable.

I drilled a 3.5mm hole per cable on the wooden track-bed (I use thick plywood, and seems quiet enough). I had a little difficulty with the thick Dow underground, though, trying to pass the cables through it...

Here are the banana 4mm connectors I use with my colleagues. Note that these are universal, and can work both as males and females (note the holes inside them?). I use speaker cable as the bus for track power, since it is thick, a very good conductor and is colour coded (red and black). The third connector is for the Marklin center stud contact.

And here is the distribution strip I used under each module. I use three pairs of holes (two for track power and one for center conductors/pukos), and there is space for two extra cables for accessories supply (16 VAC). The thin cables are the ones that go down from the module surface.

Cheers, N.F.