CIvil War Road Show at the MER

Did you miss the JRD Civil War open house this summer? Built by Gerry Fitzgerald and Bernie Kempinski If you did not then you will have a chance to see it at the MER and learn more about Civil War Railroading from Bernie Kempinski and his talk about the Aquia Line.

MER Convention coming up

Two Weeks to the C & P Junction Convention. Hop aboard!

                On Columbus Day Weekend, October 10-13, the annual—and big--C & P Junction Convention gets underway. People regret most the things they don’t do. So make the call now and ensure that you’re not going to miss an outstanding event. This convention has three things going for it: substance, timing and location. Substance introduces you to some of the nation’s best clinicians, layouts, operations call boards and contests, capped with a Banquet and Auction. Timing gives you a long weekend to enjoy the convention and an extra day to savor Location: the attractions of Washington and Baltimore.  With 250 registrants from 15 states plus Canada we’ve added more operations layouts and a B&O Museum tour (both require advances registration), a hosted DC sightseeing excursion, and a manufacturer tour. So even if you’ve registered early, it’s not too late to add to your registration. And if your schedule is unsettled, walk in and register the day of the convention! C & P Junction, Crowne Plaza Hotel (www.cprockville.com) with a free shuttle to the Metro and other points. Visit our website: google C & P Junction-Comcast.net or http://home.comcast.net/~CandP2013/. For questions, email CandP2013@comcast.net.
 

Rooms available!

                The Crowne Plaza Hotel has notified us that it has been able to free up some double and King rooms previously reserved for another group.
 

Help Make the Convention Fun!

                In keeping with the tradition of ensuing quality door prizes, we are asking those who are planning to attend or support the Convention to donate new (or –as-new) engines, rolling stock, structures or other items of value to the Mid-Eastern Region. We’ll pick the very best donations for door prizes. Being a nonprofit organization, a tax deduction is appropriate for each donation. Donors of items should email Clint Hyde (chyde@cox.net) in advance of the Convention; when you give your donation to Clint in the Auction/White Elephant Room at the Convention, he will give you a receipt for tax purposes.
 

Call for Volunteers!

                With a nod to the U.S. Marines, C & P Junction, the coming MER Convention in Rockville, Maryland, over Columbus Day Weekend, October 10-13, 2013, is looking for a few good men—and women.  In past conventions, men and women have volunteered to help staff the registration desk, the Contest Room and the Company Store with its accompanying White Elephant Room.  Shifts would be four hours in length or less and only once per convention. Virtue will be your only reward, although a handsome certificate will attest to serving your Region. If you are interested, please contact Bill Day of Potomac Division, billday22@verizon.net or 703/406-4112.

Marshall Abrams, Potomac Division, co-chairman

Kurt Thompson, Chesapeake Division, co-chairman

RPM Part 2

After a delay included below are some more pictures from the first RPM meet held in the JRD. Thank you to Gerard Fitzgerald for the following photos.

Norm Wolf

Norm Wolf

Mike Hart

Mike Hart

Making Trees

The New Jersey Model Railroad Layout Design and Operations Event

The title for this 2 day event November 2nd & 3rd is a mouthful but so is the content of the two days.  Well known names are giving clinics in their areas of expertise.  The full clinic list still is being finalized as of this posting but should give additional food for thought to those who attended the RPM meet in VA last weekend. 

The event is an all day clinic on Saturday and layout tours on Sunday. The tours make the event worthwhile by themselves with many well know layouts.  Look at the list and if you don't know the list then you are truly missing out.  Cost for the 2 days is $10 and a list of local hotels is provided on the web site.  Registration is by mail at the moment.

The event is sponsored by the Garden State Division, NER, NMRA with an LDSIG tie-in.

Link to the website

Mid Atlantic Prototype Modelers Meet Part 1

Friday the 13th and Saturday the 14th of September saw the inaugural Mid Atlantic Prototype Modelers  Meet being held in Stafford, VA.  This was the first RPM meet in Virginia and the first in the JRD.  Several JRD members were present and JRD member Gerry Fitzgerald was a presenter.  The Saturday presentations were all solid and a good report was heard about Bernie Kempinski's Civil War talk on Friday.

The venue had its challenges with a boat storage house being used as the clinic room.  There was plenty of space here and the weather was fantastic.  Here the closing clinic is giving and overview of using LED lighting in theory and practice.

Of course, there were more challenges than just the size.  The interruptions were the most unusual ever experienced at an RPM meet.

Yes, the loading and unloading of boats is probably a first for an RPM meet.

Of course, with every bad interruption there are good ones.

All photos are courtesy of Gerry Fitzgerald, text by Philip Taylor

End of part one

Civil War Roadshow Open House for the JRD

 American Civil War comes to Charlottesville

The Civil War Roadshow came to Charlottesville on August 11th thanks to the Bernie Kempinski and Gerry Fitzgerald.  The JRD was invited to the home of Gerry Fitzgerald and Gabriella Petrick where there was not only a world class layout but a delicious spread of summer food.

The roadshow was most recently featured at the NMRA National in Atlanta.  A most appropriate venue for a Civil War Roadshow.  The Roadshow is scheduled for several other appearances later this year.  Stay tuned for more news as it becomes available.

So Charlottesville was for a few hours occupied again by Union forces commanded by our two intrepid builders.  The level of workmanship on the modules is museum grade.  There is always a new previously unseen detail when looking over a scene each successive time.

The display broke down in a few minutes and Bernie Kempinski was able to load his sections in the back of his vehicle.  Pictured above is the loading crew (from left) of Bernie, Gerry, Gabriella, Rick, Phil and Ken (who also manned the door as greeter).

Thanks to everyone who made the day great for the approximately 26 visitors.

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