Jeff and John P worked on the installation of track feeders for each block. Alvar, Jeff, and James worked on the support structure for the tower desktop surfaces. James also worked on software installation. John M continued his work on restoring the roundhouse, and Andy Miller worked on a new bridge abutment near P-yard.

This is the first posting for over a month! Unfortunately things like finals, graduation, and vacation got in the way. We are up to date, except that no Saturday progress reports were available throughout May, new ones will start again soon. Still, lots of things have happened at the club, and you should not miss reading the progress of May; it is a lot! Oh, and thanks for visiting tmrc's website.

Jeff continued the process of wiring the "ROM" in The System that reflects which block follows which block through which switch (if any). John Purbrick continued the process of adding track feeder connections between the under-layout barrier strips and the rails. John McNamara continued work on roundhouse restoration. Andy Miller began painting the "50th Anniversary" box cars and the cars for the Building 20 time capsule. Andy, John M, and Alvar also began creation of a cardboard mockup of a layout piece to support the trolley car barn and surrounding streets.

Jeff has been working more on the ROM, with over 25% wired, which is more than 1/3 of the layout, but the P-Yard section is missing, which contains the largest concentration of switches. Also, Howard and Jeff took the job of removing the old P-Yard coffin and its wiring, since they will no longer be used with System 3.

Andy brought back the almost finished commemorative cars for the Time Capsule of Building 20. They are looking great, but we need a large '50' that marks TMRC's 50th anniversary in Building 20 during 1997.

Alvar worked on the structural supports for the rest of Gifford City, now that a plan has been made. After a lot of thought a plan was came up with that makes Gifford City almost flat, a great plus for large building construction.

Jeff Birkner and visiting pre-frosh Geoff Schmidt continued the process of wiring the "ROM" in The System. The "ROM" reflects which block follows which block through which switch (if any).

John Purbrick continued the process of adding track feeder connections between the under-layout barrier strips and the rails in P-Yard. He is even labelling the feeders where they pass through the plywood!

John McNamara continued work on roundhouse restoration. All but one of the roof girders has now been restored to full length.

Alvar began work on raising an existing plywood piece to support the trolley car barn and surrounding streets. The planned height will put a siding off the mainline at the proper height for a major factory beside the Whatahack River and simultaneously put that siding at a proper height for a grade crossing on a Gifford City street. There will be a turning loop around the trolley barn. The switches for the trolley barn ladder and the turning loop will all be directly accessible under the layout.

John Shriver began to do models of street car track in order to start planning the design of the new street car routes.

John Pubrick continued with the soldering of track and frog feeders for the layout.

Bill Onorato and Alvar continued discussion on the plans to Gifford City. One main objective was to make sure both Tuesday's and Saturday's discussions agreed.

Jeff Birkner continued to work on the "ROM" of the system. During the wiring process Jeff discovered a 30 year old bug on System 2, which required rewiring some of the original relays! Today the ROM got to the sections where "East meets East" (the part where the loops close electrically), at which point the wiring of the ROM stopped. Jeff and Alvar then tested 143 different routes around the ROM to be sure that everything worked.

In the mean time we can announce the first presentation in the club room, which occurred March 27th 1998. Also, on April 30th 1998 we held another presentation, of smaller magnitude, for a group of visiting alumni. We hope to announce more of these presentations as time goes by.

Today the web version of the Building 20 presentation was added to the web-site. The presentation on the web-site is almost a true copy of the original, without animations. You can access it directly, or first read about it in the page "TMRC @ MIT's Building 20", or through our live video presentation page.

Jeff designed the next additions to the "ROM" in The System that reflects which block follows which block through which switch (if any). This included the double throw switch, which will be possible to wire using only System 2!

John McNamara continued work on roundhouse restoration - all of the roof girders have been extended and work on the flooring is about to begin.

Andy Miller continued painting the "50th Anniversary" box cars and showed off the completed Building 20 time capsule cars. They look great! There will be a photo session for these cars on Saturday, July 4, 1998. This is the only scheduled photo session for the cars, but copies of pictures will be posted on the web soon after. We expect to have the car go into the time capsule early next week.

John Purbrick continued the process of adding track feeder connections between the under-layout barrier strips and the rails.

Andy Miller, John Purbrick, Joe Onorato, John Shriver, and Alvar Saenz-Otero (in various combinations) consulted at some length about the trolley layout plan and a solution amenable to all was agreed upon.

Alvar then worked on the layout structure that will support the Gifford City station. This makes Gifford City extend fully across the width of the layout, all the way from East to West! Full plans for the replacement of a piece of plywood near the turntable with a larger piece are now ready. The new plywood will provide space for the trolley turning loop.