The NJ Division made me do it........

"I SAID THAT'S FAR ENOUGH!!!"

Well, I went and did it......After returning from a New Jersey Division NMRA meet in South Joisey today (or as we in the North call it, "the Shore", even when it's all the way over by Philly) with friends Jim Fawcett and "Scary" Ted DiIorio (of http://maparr1943.blogspot.com/ fame), I came home around 4PM (after getting up at the un-Godly hour of 6AM on a Saturday morning!) and proceeded to go down to the basement and do what needed to be done. Yes, in response to my last post, I went and tore out those two double slip switches in advance of replacing them - With a total of four! The job wasn't nearly as bad (or hard, or destructive!) as I thought, and all that is left to do now is go and special order two more Peco Code 78 double slips (ugh!), since I think it'll make more sense to replace the two Code 100's with like Code 75's (not to mention one of them is kinda melted to begin with). I'll also need to fill and sand and repaint the slight divits in the foam sub-base that came up when I separated the adhesive-caulked turnouts from the foam. All it took was a little water (to help loosen the caulk - thanks to friend Jerry Dziedzic for that suggestion who is doing the same thing) and a patient hand on the other end of a Mason's trowel. And here's the results -

As it turns out, I didn't ruin any track, and there were no track feeders that needed to be cut (yet). I won't get the turnouts until later next week (takes about 2-3 days once I order them tomorrow), but then I can begin to "rebuild".....Man, those crew members of mine better appreciate this!

Anyway, moving on to some REAL modeling........

So like I said, we went to a real NMRA division meet in south Jersey today unlike the rather lame excuses for meets that we have up here in north Jersey! It was that, or go to an equally lame Greenberg train show only 25 minutes away, but I'm glad I made the trip. Besides the good company, I got to see how a very involved and thriving NMRA division puts on a meet, see some friends from the Philly area, and sit in at some great mini-clinics. One of these clinics was by a gentleman by the name of Arnold Kimmons on building easy, cheap, but great looking trees for your layout. After the meet, there were layout tours, and Arnold's was suggested to us as a "must see", and we were sure glad we did. Arnold is modeling a freelanced layout set in 1956 in South Carolina, and though he only has a small 14x2 section built so far, his scenery work was, in a word, incredibly realistic. His scenes really draw the viewer in, but I'll shut up now, and let the pictures do the rest of the talking......

In the third photo above, you can see some great trackwork, and you might think he handlaid it, and built his turnouts using the method du'jour, with Fast Tracks jigs, but Arnold had the last laugh, and showed us instead that his track and turnouts were built by a company that sells it all pre-made called Custom Trax - http://custmtrax.com/index.html. Though the cost would be out of line for a big layout, something akin to Ted's layout (or smaller), would be able to use this product without sending the purchaser into the poor house. The last photo shows some of his great "tree work", and I suggest checking back to the NJ Division's website in the very near future as they mentioned that they would be posting all the clinic info from the meet on their Yahoo Group.

Soooo, in the end, it seems I need to attened as many NMRA, RPM, LDSIG or OpSIG events as humanly possible to keep up the level of "layout excitement" I seem to experience every time I come home from one. Oh, did I mention I also came home with five new cars from the meet for the layout ready for the layout with Kadee's and metal wheelsets installed for only $48? Good times, good times....


Stay tuned for more developments in the next two weeks!