March 3James brought in a fancy tripod and took literally hundreds of pictures in order to come up with an incredible panorama of the whole room! You can see the panorama from this site: TMRC Room Panorama (5 MB). But you need to have the latest Quicktime software to view it. Meanwhile Alvar spent the whole day working on the first front face of the Green Building… and finsihed it! So, one more face to go, then painting the sides, and then interior work and roof details. Pictures will soon be available here. Ed painted many items today: the AC units for the Coca Bubblie building, a NdeM (Nacional de Mexico) locomotive, so that maybe by the next Open House there is a ‘generalisimo’ train, and several details for other buildings and people. Bill continued work on the Vegetable Oil facility and added track to the BK helix entrance. Malcolm added more latice stock to the helix. John C. Green Jr. visited the club, since he’s around for business this comming week. March 21Malcolm Laughlin has finished the roadbed in Berkmanville! Ed Drozd continued his work on the NdeM locomotive appropriate to Alvar’s native land. He also worked on air conditioning ducts for the exterior of the building next to CocaBubblie. John McNamara added some scale coffee cups to some shelves in the roundhouse office. In response to a suggestion from John Barringer, Andy Miller created (electronically) and posted (physically) a schematic of the finished layout. It may be added to the web site. John Purbrick installed more brickwork on the produce terminal; he also mounted some of the System3 components on a plywood board to keep them from being achieving random distribution. Ken Terrell tested his Talgo train yet again, but this time with a nicely painted AEM7 in place of the anachronistic BL2 formerly used. March 28Ed Drozd and John McNamara discussed future trackage in the roundhouse area. Ed also worked on some NdeM equipment, and John also worked on a desk for the roundhouse office. John Purbrick did some System3 work and mounted the clock control panel in the tower. This panel controls Jeff Birkner’s nifty programmable clock and was formerly located in front of the dispatcher in the old (Bldg 20) tower. It has been lanquishing in a pile under the new tower ever since we moved. Alvar Saenz worked on a mounting system for mirrors that will be located above P-yard. The next scenic step in the P-yard area is construction of a view-block wall of high buildings that will separate the P-yard scene from the industrial scene immediately adjacent to it. Unfortunately, this will also block the tower operators’ view of P-yard. Mirrors mounted high above P-yard will restore that view. In other news, Malcolm Laughlin did some work on the helix near Bermanville and Ken Terrell tried some different locomotives with his Talgo equipment. March 31Bit accomplishemnts at the club today! First, Alvar finished the framework for the mirrors, and with Jeff’s help, they installed and position the mirrors. Now operators in the tower can see their trains go through P-yard (as well as the roofs - or lack thereoff - of some buildings). The aerial view of Gifford City is really quite impressive. Meanwhile John P. continued to assemble the switchards for Staging Yard, in preparation for deployment of the System 3 development area… as a reminder, S-Yard will be the testing yard for System 3. The blocks within the yard will all be controlled by System 3, independently of System 2. Block 27 of System 2 (which is already S-Yard) will be wired to the ‘DCC’ section of System 3, so that the S-Yard can have trains go in and out. In similar electronic notes, Jeff, JP and Alvar worked on the installation of the TMRC Main Clock in the tower. The main clock now sits to the right of the distpacher, in a console on the counter space. Being this the Daylight Savings Time start, they worked hard to be ready before the work took an hour longer than necessary… the time was set correctly at 3:00am. On the scenic and train end, Ed advanced on the detailing of the NdeM locomotive, which is close to being done. Bill worked on the Berkmanville trackwork, where some discussion is going on about how brown the ballast should be. Alvar finished the second face of the Green Building! The next step is to make a good system to attach the faces to the main body, and then finsish the painting… after that its interior work. John McNamara helped clean the room, definetely a masochistic task :-)