The 2016 New England/Northeast RPM is wrapping up as I’m writing this. The meet moved to a new location this year and it seems like it was a success. There were a lot of models on display and quite a few interesting clinics. The new venue isn’t perfect, but I think it’s an improvement over the old location.
I’ve been attending the New England/Northeast RPM Meet in Connecticut since 2007, but in that time haven’t been to any of the numerous other RPM meets that are held regularly across the country. I like these events because they have a heavy focus on modeling and there is often a lot of really excellent work on display.
So, this past weekend I tagged along with some friends who were going to the Valley Forge RPM Meet in Malvern, PA. The model room wasn’t huge, but there was some stuff I hadn’t seen before and I managed to take quite a few photos. There were also a lot of clinics on the schedule, but I only made it to Andy Rubbo’s talk on the construction of his impressive Pennsy Northeast Corridor layout.
We also hit up some hobby shops and managed to get trackside in both New Jersey and Pennsylvania. I haven’t looked at those photos yet, but if they’re any good I’ll post them here or on Facebook. It’ll be the usual NS/CSX/Amtrak stuff, but I did see one interesting thing 😉
Model photos are below the cut. Enjoy!
Chris
I just returned from the 2016 Amherst Railway Society show in West Springfield, MA. Last year I had to drive through a blizzard. This year it reached 53 degrees on Sunday.
Continue reading “Amherst Railway Society – Railroad Hobby Show 2016”
I attended a work conference in Texas last spring and since I was already halfway across the country I decided that I’d might as well just keep heading west and spend some time visiting family and traipsing about the Pacific Northwest.
I didn’t do much modeling over the summer. I’d been increasingly dissatisfied with my little workshop and storage system. A big issue was the fact that I never seemed to have the correct paint, detail part, styrene thickness, etc. when I needed it. Earlier I had begun a process to list everything I thought I should have “in stock” but while I was prepared to spend the money for all this new stuff, I had nowhere to put it.
With that in mind, I made a few changes…
Over the last few months I’ve finished detailing the Gunderson Twin-Stacks. This last bit of work focused primarily on the trucks, couplers and end walkways though I made a few modifications elsewhere as well. Continue reading “Gunderson Twin-Stack – Part 2”
I’ve made some decent progress on the staging yard over the past few months. I mounted the Mole turnout motors, laid down the sound deadening material, attached and sanded the roadbed and have begun to lay track. Continue reading “Layout Staging – Part 2”
I was in Collinsville, CT this weekend for the New England/Northeast RPM Meet. As always it was a good time though there seemed to be fewer models this year than last. Not sure what that’s about, but it is what it is. The models that were on display however were of the quality I’ve come to expect from the attendees of this meet. I especially enjoyed the two presentations Brian Banna gave about building his MoPac SD40-2 and GP35 and was glad to get the chance to see some of his work in person.
If you haven’t attended before, consider it for next year. I have no interest in New England (or even east coast) prototypes, but I always find a lot of variety in the model room and have conversations that introduce me to new ideas and new skills to make my modeling better.
I took a lot of photo’s this year, check them out below the cut. Please let me know if I attributed anything incorrectly or misspelled any names.
Work has been progressing quickly on the removable staging yard I’m building for one end of my layout, and a few weeks ago I had reached the point where I needed to get the turnout motors installed. I’m using Proto:87 Stores, Mole Switch Machines which I’ve mounted on two sheets of .080” styrene sheet. This assembly sits in a notched hole in the foam baseboard, invisible from the top, but accessible from below. Continue reading “Turnout Motors”
I was looking back through my old posts and realized that I’d never written about the intermodal cars I’ve been building off-and-on for the last few years. I recently started working on them again and though I’ve posted a lot of grab shots to Facebook, I figured it was about time I wrote a little something as well. Continue reading “Gunderson Twin-Stack – Part 1”
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