February 7Malcolm Laughlin installed roadbed under two more switches in Berkmanville. Stefano Curtarolo weathered the area around the signal tower, including adding rust to a couple of vehicles. John Purbrick built a small fence to stop vehicles (now rusty?) from driving onto the tracks near the signal tower, and he installed 24 interlocking levers within the signal tower! Alvar Saenz-Otero insatlled the Java Software Developers Kit on our computer for use in System3 development. John McNamara installed a sink, complete with faucets and drain, in the roundhouse restroom. He also re-attached the toilet, which Stefano weathered. Joe Curran worked on, and tested, a throttle for his N-gauge layout. Jared Jonas, long absent in New Jersey, visited with his friend Judy. He bought new batteries for the camera car and ran it around for many traverses of the layout. It’s still a lot of fun to watch, and a group of us sat around watching the PC screen for some time. Jeff Birkner and Ken Terrell also dropped by and “supervised” a few tasks. February 10The day began early when Ed and Alvar welcomed a troop of Tiger Cubs to the club… the small show ran almost flawlessly, especially when the kids were the ones running the trains :-) Later on, James and JP continued to work on System3 software and hardware. James continued with software development for the ‘server’ side of System3. JP brought in some new hardware to test the operation of the PIC based IMP (the processor that controls all switch cards)… a little more work is needed to interface them. Meahnwhile, Alvar began to work on the front faces of the Green Building, finally!!! The painting of the molding is done, and all the vertical sections of one face are now in place. The next steps are the ends of the vertical sections (larger pieces) and the horizontals. It appears this will take about 2 weeks per face. Stefano and his wife worked on the deparment store that ends the row of buildings in the front of Gifford City. This building was previously taped together; it is now glued together. JP also worked on scenic areas, around the switching tower after 105th street. Bill continued to work on the vegetable oil facility. Malcolm installed all the roadbed that connects Berkmanville to staging through the cutoff, and began to install the roadbed for the bottom layer of the helix. As soon as the lattice stock is down, we’ll be able to start laying track and run trains all the way to BK! February 21A quiet night. John McNamara and John Purbrick gave a visiting friend of John M’s the “Grand Tour”. The visitor’s psitons were sufficiently powerful that the track was damaged in a couple of places which John P subsequently repaired. Alvar Saenz-Otero worked on windows of the full-scale replica of the Green Building. Ken Terrell worked on some brass troop sleepers he is building.