JRD's George Gaige wins 3 prizes in photo contest at NMRA National

George Gaige reports that three photos of his layout took First, Second and Third place in the black & white photo category at NMRA National. Way to go George!!

NMRA Atlanta National: My First Three Days… pt 1

The last three days have been a whirlwind as I have… Driven from Charlottesville to Atlanta, given two clinics, attended five other clinics, helped assemble the Civil War Roadshow for display and guest operations, pitched in to assemble the rest of the displays brought by other members of the Civil War RR SIG for our SIG room, driven all around greater Atlanta on the Layout Design SIG home layout tour, drove to a local Michaels to buy supplies and glue, attended the LDSIG annual business meeting, caught up with old friends, made plenty of new friends, visited the NMRA contest room, made photocopies of my clinic handouts, not slept much, eaten too much pizza, and just had a great time.

This was originally going to be a Wordless Wednesday Blog post but if I just posted pictures with captions (and yes our blog page will get better) it might seem a tad under contextualized. To make a long story short…the Civil War Roadshow seems to be a big hit as people have been stopping by all day and night to see the layout, operate the layout, or just watch others operate the layout. This is in addition to all the NMRA convention attendees who have wandered over to the Civil War RR SIG room are looking at all the other models, equipment, artifacts, models, slide shows, videos and whatever else we have laying around the Civil War RR SIG room. We brought all of this wonderful stuff to Atlanta to entice those who have yet to be exposed to the wonders of mid 19th century model railroading that this not only educational, but lots of fun!

NMRA Atlanta National: My First Three Days… pt 2

As far as giving clinics, I had two 90 minute clinics back to back and showed 235 Powerpoint slides to two slightly overlapping audiences of apparently intrigued model railroaders (?) on two very different topics. In my first clinic, “The Delicate Stomach of the Iron Horse:Water Supply, Purification, and Water Engineering Practice on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway, 1918-1948,” I explained the importance of university trained chemists hired by the railroad to successfully respond to the a quest to lower locomotive and operating efficiency costs by avoiding mechanical breakdown due to hard water. To be honest… it is more interesting than it sounds! In my second clinic “‘Going to War with the Railroad You Have:’ Designing and Operating the Chesapeake & Ohio’s Olby Branch in 1944,” I explored the possibilities of designing, operating, and building a C&O layout during WWII using the industrial expansion of the American chemical industry to diversify/complicate operations through increased traffic density. I had 30-40 in the audience through both sessions and received some very nice comments. As far as being a clinic audience member, I attended a number of different clinics in the last 48 hours and especially enjoyed two by Tony Koester on double deck layout design and another on the limits of kit bashing in addition to a great presentation by master modeler John Wilkes’s on the evolution of Appalachian coal tipples from the 1940s through the 1980s. I think I learned more form Mr. Wilkes in 60 minutes than I have by reading any number of books and magazine and journal articles in the past few years.

Let me sign off (for the moment) by noting that there is so MUCH to say about the layout tours and the models in the NMRA contest room…and as time is short…I will just provide you with some photos and captions.

More to follow,

Gerry

Gerard J. Fitzgerald
Charlottesville, Virginia

Civil War Roadshow Update

The Civil War Roadshow proved to be very popular this week from early morning until the SIG room doors were locked at 10:30PM.  Here volunteers, along with a crowd of  visitors who crowded around to watch, run an operations session with scale link and pin couplers in O-Scale.

 














The Civil War RR SIG Room has been a busy place all week demonstrating to model railroaders the possibilities of modeling railroads during the war in various scales among a number of prototypes.

by Gerard Fitzgerald

Kitbashing by Tony Koester

Tony Koester gave a wonderful clinic on structure kitbashing on Wednesday evening that featured models from his home layout and examples from other layouts across the country.

by Gerard Fitzgerald

NMRA Contest Room

The NMRA contest room featured many interesting and highly detailed models including structures, locomotives, and rolling stock.

by Gerard Fitzgerald

Military Loads in the Contest Room

As someone who models the C&O during World War II, I found the military loads train built by modeler Bruce Smith down in the Contest room to be a clinic all by itself. Dr. Smith also gave a regular clinic on the topic this week in Atlanta.

 

 By Gerard Fitzgerald

Young Engineer

The engineer in this photo, who wandered in and was given the Roadshow throttle after showing some interest, demonstrates that model railroading’s future (which for some always seems to be in doubt) will be just fine. 

by Gerard Fitzgerald

Brian Rudco’s Pender Street Mills

One of the most interesting displays in the contest room was Brian Rudco’s Pender Street Mills, a Gn15 layout. Gn15 is G scale industrial/narrow gauge using HO standard gauge track. The portable layout replicates a very highly detailed manufacturing plant with various visual and acoustic effects.   

Courtesy of Gerry Fitzgerald

Philip Stead’s 30’ x 52’ O/On3

The LDSIG layout tour featured the Philip Stead’s 30’ x 52’ O/On3 layout which replicates operations on the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad (Pueblo Division, Alamosa/Chama Subdivision) on September 23, 1949. Brass K-36s, bridges, and mountain scenery make it a great place to visit and operate.    

Courtesy of Gerard Fitzgerald

The W.H. Whiton blows her whistle and officially commences operation of the Civil War Roadshow at the 2013 NMRA Atlanta Convention. Huzzzzahhhh!

Bill Welch and Gabriella add a finishing touch to the Civil War Roadshow

Paul Dobbs mans the main desk at the American Civil War Rail Road Historical Society table in the Civil War SIG room.

The Civil War Road show layout that Gerard Fitzgerald built with Bernie Kimpinski was assembled and operational in less than an hour with the help of a few friends and a cordless drill.

Scale Rails editor Steven Priest displays the detailed plans of his new multi-deck track plan for his Santa Fe St. Louis Division in the Layout Design SIG room.

The Civil War Roadshow Arrives in Atlanta! by Gerard Fitzgerald

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This is the first in what I will hope will be a series of special guest blog posts this week from the 2013 Atlanta NMRA National Convention. Philip has graciously appointed me the James River Division (Blog) Minister without Portfolio for the duration. As such I will hopefully be sending some nice photos and a few thoughts back to those of you at home in the next week or so. This is my third national convention and will be my longest stay to date (Five days!!!) as I was only in Philadelphia and Hartford for 2-3 days respectively. I used to live in the Atlanta area and as a proud graduate of the University of Georgia, it is always great when I get a chance to go back and visit the Peach State.

My interest in attending the 2013 NMRA National convention was driven in part by my membership and participation in two of the NMRA’s special interest groups or SIGs  (http://www.nmra.org/national/sig/sig.html). The Layout Design SIG   (http://www.ldsig.org ) is one of the oldest NMRA SIGs and turned thirty last year. In fact the LDSIG, which was founded by my friend Doug Gurin, may have been the very first SIG (?), but was nonetheless in the very first group.  On the other hand the American Civil War Rail Road Historical Society (ACWRRHS) is the newest, having formally joined the NMRA less than a year or so ago. The group has however existed for a number of years prior to formal NMRA affiliation, drawing together modelers interested in recreating the railroads and operations of not only the American Civil War but also the ante-bellum period though the end of Reconstruction.  The Civil War SIG is having a sort of coming out party in the railroad hub of Atlanta, Georgia with a number of members bringing layouts, dioramas, models, displays, etc… The ACWRRHS  has a Yahoo! discussion forum at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Civil_War_RRs/ and much like the LDSIG is always interested in attracting new members.

When attending a national convention the LDSIG room is always an interesting place to hang out between clinics and tour bus trips to meet other modelers and see raelly amazing displays and architectural models built to assist modelers in creating and successfully completing their dream layouts, regardless of size or scale. The Operations SIG members often meet in the same or an adjoining room so there is usually an all star line up of famous hobbyists wandering around who are eager to discuss what is new and interesting in the hobby. One could for instance strike up a conversation with various members of the layout design intelligentsia… like current Layout Design Journal (LDJ) editor Byron Henderson. For the record, on Monday morning Byron is once again holding a Layout Design Boot Camp, a multi-hour, full immersion series of clinics, designed (no pun intended) to introduce new comers and even experienced modelers to the tools and theory of layout design.  If you are here in Atlanta and cannot get to the LDSIG Boot Camp, and still want to learn more about …say when to add a passing siding to a layout, whether a helix will work or fit, or how many staging tracks you might need for your next project layout (the quick answer is twice as many as you think!), drop by the LDSIG clinic room and pull up a chair. Or if you are not able to be in Atlanta this week, drop by the website, the yahoo group, or better yet subscribe to the LDJ, I think you will find it a great way to become a more well rounded model railroader.

My week here is going to be interesting and is somewhat scheduled although I hope to see some first rate clinics and some nifty layouts.. My primary responsibilities are to give three clinics and also transport and assemble the Civil War Roadshow layout, an O-scale fine scale portable switching layout which I had the pleasure of helping design and build under the carful leadership of my very good pal Bernie Kimpinski (http://usmrr.blogspot.com). Bernie is also giving two clinics. We are holding operating sessions this week in the CWSIG room and the layout will also be open for most of the week while that room is accessible.

On Wednesday Bernie and I, in addition to dozens of others, will be going on a self -guided tour of special layouts on the LDSIG layout tour, which is usually my favorite part of a national convention. It is a great opportunity to visit, study, and photograph layouts in various stages of design and construction. Better yet, visitors get to pick the brains of the layout owners and come away with useful insights in how to design and build better model railroads in the future. I predict about 600 photos that day with my digital SLR.

On Thursday I have a clinic in the early afternoon and then will man a help desk in the LDSIG room to discuss design issues with modelers who have come by to discuss what they are doing…or trying to do. The help desk is open all week and is by appointment. It is a very useful way to get advice on how to design the layout you have been scribbling on napkins for the past few years but not yet fully pulled together.

On Friday morning, NMRA members get first crack at the National Train Show before the regular/normal people are allowed in. The National Train Show is always interesting and a wonderful way to see all the new things you cannot afford but need to soon purchase regardless. Later that afternoon I will be attending the LDSIG dinner at the Trackside Grill followed by a lecture and tour at the which is being held at the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History (http://www.southernmuseum.org ) both of which are located in Kennesaw.

I have been to the museum in the past using their wonderful Southern Railroad archive and it is a great place to visit if you have an interest in the history of southern railroads and industrial technology. Finally, on Saturday, I plan to hit one or two layouts on another self guided tour in the greater Atlanta area before driving back to Charlottesville.

I think/hope later posts will be shorter on text and longer on photos with perhaps a wrap up a week or so later following my return to Charlottesville.

Let me note the day was not a complete success. While I was inside unloading the Roadshow someone (apparently another model railroader here at the convention) hit my car while I was unloading the Roadshow and destroyed my back tail light. They were nice enough to just drive away and leave a jumble of broken glass and metal next to my car. So much for my first five minutes in the hotel parking lot!!!

(Photos to follow in the next post)