Andy Miller continued his work on the railings for the REA/Amtrak Package Express parking lot. He also painted some cars and ran some trains. On the far side of the same parking lot, Ed Drozd installed a wooden fence that separates the parking lot from the back yard of the barbershop building. Ed also painted the railings on a tank behind Coca-Bubblie and started work on the tractor part of a tractor-trailer. Jeff Birkner planned additional wiring for the staging yard (he suggests the name "S-yard") and installed appropriate gaps in the approach trackage. Malcolm Laughlin did some work in the staging yard and also downloaded some demo versions of track-planning programs that may be more featureful than CADrail. John McNamara repaired a roundhouse rear wall section that may have been damaged by an errant locomotive, and prepared this report.

Andy Miller and Alvar Saenz-Otero consulted on the design of the staging yard helix, and Malcolm Laughlin began work on a portion of it, the Berkmanville approach. This will be a track that declines from the present staging yard level to a small area near the bookcase wall. Temporarily, it will be a stub end, but will eventually connect to Phase III of layout construction.

Andy also worked on an extension to his downtown Gifford City department store, Caveat Emptor.

Ed Drozd painted a gas-electric doodlebug that he is donating to the Club. It is dark green with nifty yellow safety stripes on the front.

John McNamara, Alvar Saenz-Otero, and Jeff Birkner gave "grand tours" to several visitors, including Mark Jansen, a research associate, and Andy Leiserson, an incoming Freshman. Jeff Birkner gave Andy a comprehensive course in "System 101", and Andy expressed interest in the new System3.

In addition, Jared and Vicky (who were late in arriving and departing) began work on the camera car version 2.0. This involved the first step in fabricating a mechanism to make the camera "track" (or pan left and right) with the car's front truck. This is so that v. 2.0 of the camera car will give better shots when traversing turns.

Bill & Malcolm discussed the next construction phases for Berkmanville. Meanwhile Ed continued to detail the Coca-Bubblie industrial areas. Jared worked on the mount for the new camera car. Alvar took charge of a major room cleanup.

James & Alvar worked on further design issues for the System 3 basics (advance, etc). James cotinued coding the main system functions, such as advance, switching, and signals.

Jeff came in early to start work on the wiring of the lower loop to System 2. This included wiring a new block, several switch machines, and designing the changes to the MDF. Alvar helped him with some of the wiring and modified the 'tnp.lyt' file that is used by the s-board computer to display the layout. After the MDF gets fully wired the layout will be back to full operation of Phase 1, and will be ready to interface to System 3.

James worked on our web-server. He automated most of the redundant tasks, such as the 'header' and 'footers' of all pages. John Shriver, with Dick Lord's help, continued to wire the trolley tracks; today they ran the power wires from the carbarn area (where the power supply will be located) to the rest of Gifford City.

Bill and Malcolm worked on the ramp from S-yard to Berkmaville and discussed the design of BK with Ed & Dick's input. Ed added details to a building next to the Coca Bubblie factory. Stefano began to plan some railfan trips for later in the term, we'll announce them as they become a reality.

All of us had a fun meeting :-)