Much of this evening's activity was directed toward getting ready for the Open House this Saturday, November 10. Malcolm Laughlin, Ed Drozd, and Andy Miller cleaned. Ed also checked the functioning of various track routes. John Purbrick and Alvar Saenz-Otero revised the staging yard wiring to accommodate anticipated Open House operations. Jeff Birkner was also busy wiring, completing the project upon which he has been working the past few weeks. Tom O'Reilly did some track work in Berkmannville. John McNamara replaced a roof section on the roundhouse and did some inventory work on the Marklin cars. James Knight brought the TMRC website back to life.

Another great open house! And, unbelievably, the system behaved really well today :-) Plus, at the end of the night, JP hacked together the Berkmannville track so that for the first time, a powered locomotive ran from Staging to the end of the existing track! (Pictures comming soon!)

John Shriver painted the interior of the trolley car barn. The pillars and floors are now a nice neutral gray. Malcolm Laughlin, John Purbrick, Tom O'Reilly, and Andy Miller performed a "brutal purge of institutional memories" by discarding a substantial quantity of material from the bookcases. The old data books were set aside for Jeff's review. The net result of the purge and set-aside was four newly-vacated bookcase sections. It is planned that these will be used for a forthcoming donation of Railfan & Railroad.

John McNamara did some work on the roundhouse office roof and joined John Shriver on a soda-buying expedition. Andy Miller stocked the machine and also entertained some visitors. It appears that a father left his two children and babysitter at TMRC while he performed at the nearby Endicott Music Center! Andy also put a coat of black paint on the firehouse parking lot. Stefano Curtarolo visited briefly.

Tom O'Reilly layed track in Berkmannville, while John Purbrick did extensive wiring and block-gap-cutting in preparation for separate blocks. James Knight did some System3 programming work. Just before the Berkmannville track work began, a great milestone was reached, as a Budd RDC made two round trips from Gifford City to Berkmannville. A substantial increase in Berkmannville property values is expected now that passenger service has returned!

Despite being a pre-holiday evening, there was a lot of activity. John Purbrick continued his work on wiring the block feeders for Berkmannville. Tom O'Reilly did additional Berkmannville track work, including the commencement of construction on his first switch. Stefano Curtarolo inserted and soldered the components in two more System3 block controller boards. He was especially proud of his work on the fine-pitch surface mount components. "It takes (my) N-gauge hands to do that." Genya Zaytman and John McNamara added a vent pipe to the roundhouse office. Ken Terrell painted the vent pipe for us, and painted some of his buses. Malcolm Laughlin visited, as did Mr. & Mrs. Harold Tepper and their daughter-in-law. Harold Tepper, from New Nersey, is a member of the Class of 1952 and a former Club member.

John Shriver designed a block wiring scheme for the car barn ladder, and Alvar Saenz-Otero worked on building the necessary controller. John McNamara and Ed Drozd filled the Coke machine and rolled some coins. John also worked on a file cabinet for the roundhouse office, and Ed demonstrated an impressive Diesel (Chinese model of a Chinese prototype). Speaking of which, Ken Terrell operated a train of Chinese models of Chinese prototype bi-level long distance coaches. Together, the loco and cars modelled a train upon which Ed had ridden while in China. Tom O'Reilly continued his work on Berkmannville track and switch machines. James Knight continued his work on System3 software. Andy Miller painted a locomotive, while John Purbrick installed some ballast and replaced the video card in the layout switch control computer. Malcolm Laughlin did an inventory of our magazine collection, checking to see what holes could be filled from a recently donated magazine collection.