Open House Day!

Today was the first New TMRC Open House , and we had approximately 70 visitors throughout the day. We had people of every age show up; from babies to alumni members from the 50's! Trains were running around the layout almost non-stop, there was a large crowd for dinner, and above all, lots of fun! We are very happy that so many people showed up, and want to thank all of you for your constant support! Thank you to all of you who supported us during the Open House, it was a great success, and we will continue working so that next fall we can show something even better. Pictures from the Open House will appear soon in the web, we just have to develop and scan them first.

Bill Onorato continued work on the Vegetable Oil Facility. John Purbrick installed decoupling magnets in the siding for the Post Office section at the west end of P-Yard. Justing, a new Junior Member that joined us during the Open House, came and tested his equipment in the TNP layout.

Between Aaron (a new member!), Jeff, and Alvar, they brought the system back to life after discovering that a battery that keeps memory for the new S-Board is dying. Later on Jeff worked on connecting Cab 4 - the remote control one - to the FOO system, so that when FOO-BAR is pressed, that one also shuts down. John Purbrick also introduced the idea - again - that a D-board in needed (as Jeff has been pointing out for a while), which means that we will soon start to deal with the broken video projector... or start thingking of new things to make a new d-board.

Bill worked more on his facility. John Purbrick fixed the 105th street platform, since it was too high in some parts, and low level locomotives (like switchers) would crash into it and derail :-(. Any miller painted a lot of parts for different sections of the layout. Alvar introduced a plan to insert a crossover at the west entrance to P-yard, which will allow the trains on the inside of the loop to go to the outside of p-yard. It was previously believed that this switch would not meet the required 36in radii, but fortunately testing the setup proved that the switch can be done... of course, with a little hacking, like a movable frog!

Then all of them began to talk about the next section of the layout, which is very likely to be the F-Yard section. This section will extend out of the tower to the 'south-east' end of the room, where the computers are now. The F-yard, done this way, would be able to have tracks a long as 16 feet!

Jeff worked on the light for the system, installing a nice switch to make it easy to turn the light on and off, so that we can see what is going on back there!