- January 6
Andy Miller continued work on a highway bridge that he is building near one
end of P-yard. He added pavement (complete with double yellow line) and
sidewalks (complete with cracks). A siding is being added in P-yard that
will permit REA/Material-Handling cars (depending on your era) to be
conveniently removed from, or added to, passenger trains. John Purbrick
prepared the sub-roadbed, and Jeff Birkner added appropriate block wiring
in The System. John McNamara painted window frames for use in the rear wall
sections of the roundhouse.
- January 12
Announcing TMRC's 1999 IAP Activity "Hacking a Model
Railroad" which will take place from 1/20 to 1/23 at 7:00pm in the
clubroom. Be sure to visit us and have lots of fun. Full information can be
found in the TMRC IAP Page.
The main page was changed to reduce its loading time - and add
those funky 'signals' when selecting the menu. All the 'section' pictures
are still there, but they load in a random order.
- January 13
John Purbrick brought in a set of 8 System 3 block cards and connected
them to blocks of the upper loop. There are a few bugs in them, but
the basic design is there. Alvar studied the layout for the cabinets
that some day will hold these block cards.
James brought in the final version of the Time Capsule CD-ROM, which
is now fully compatible with both PC's and MAC's. The CD-ROM is now back
in the EECS Department, ready to go into the Time Capsule.
- January 16
John Shriver continued to expand the trolley track, one of them is
now in front of the Gifford City Station. Andy Miller worked on a new
building that is to stand in the front of Gifford city, at the east
end of the Passenger yard. He will also order a new Hotel building,
that will rise next to the one he is building now. Bill worked on the
street for the bridge he has been building on the east side of
Gifford city. John P. layed down the final ties needed to complete
the new spur on for the Railroad Express terminal. John McNamara
worked on the windows for the roundhouse.
Alvar installed all the cabinets and wire track for the block cards
for System 3... which are being designed by John P. Jeff continued
some designing in order to incorporate the new track into System 2.
Alvar, Howard, Jeff, and Jason (a returning member) worked on organizing
the old layout pieces in order to be able to exhibit them during the
next Open House. Also, they create invaluable 'under the layout' space,
even if that part of the layout is not operational :-)
- January 20
Tonight marked the first evening of a 4-evening TMRC-sponsored model
railroading course presented as part of IAP. Tonight's subject was
"Planning, Building, and Laying Track." John Purbrick gave this course,
with James help. This course attracted (and held the attention of) three
undergraduates. Tomorrow the subject is "Building Buildings and Scenery".
This will be followed by "Car&Loco" on Friday and "Control Systems" on
Saturday. Speaking of control systems, John also did some work on the
8-block System3 prototype unit that he is testing in the clubroom, along
with a new walk-around throttle based on a 900MHz cordless phone.
John McNamara continued his work on roundhouse windows, and Andy Miller
continued his work on "Walker's Fine Dining", a moderate-size building for
the main street of Gifford City.
- January 23
Tonight was the last session of TMRC's IAP class. We had a couple
of visitors attend the class, where we explained the past, present,
and future of our System- the move from System 2 to System 3. Later
on Jeff was able (after some learning from old documents) to fix
the occupancy detection for Block 39, since it was acting in random
manners. Meanwhile James & Alvar researched on components to obtain
a new computer for TMRC which will connect TMRC directly to the internet!
Meanwhile, Andy put together the "Fine Walker's Dinning" structure,
with the next step being interior and roof. Bill continued to work on
the bridge in the far east side of Gifford City. And Jason continued
his work on the Box Car he began to build Friday at the IAP session.
- January 27
John McNamara performed color-matching experiments in an effort to match
the color of the roundhouse walls. It appears that the best match uses
Tuscan Red as a base and adds a wash of white acrylic and light grimy black
weathering. Andy Miller continued his work on "Walker's Fine Dining", a
combined restaurant and office building for downtown Gifford City. It is a
moderate-size building of cubic proportion slightly less than a foot on a
side. John Purbrick continued work on a new switch in P-yard that will
serve the REA/Material-Handling siding. It is similar in design to a slip
switch. John and Alvar also discussed the construction and features of the
System3 block cards in some detail. John Shriver continued his work on the
trolley system, adding another foot or so of curved girder-rail trackage in
downtown Gifford City.
