Cowtown Model Railroad Club Fort Worth, Texas Volume 5 October 2018 Number 10 General Meeting The October general meeting of the Cowtown Model Railroad Club will be on Monday night October 15 th at 7:00 PM on the main floor of the Handley Community Center, 3024 Forest Ave. The meeting program has not yet been decided; we will let you know in a separate e-mail prior to meeting. We hope you will support the club with your attendance and look forward to seeing you there. some of the older photos of the layout early in the construction process. All vital member information can be downloaded from the website. Just click on the required information topic on the front page. PRESIDENT'S REPORT by Joe Pritchett www.cmrrc.webs.com We have a limited chunk of memory on the club s free website, 40 MB. I try to stay below that limit by purging off older newsletters and changing out some of the photos. However, I am also looking for inputs from the membership as to what they would like to see up on the site. If you have any ideas or suggestions, let me know. I ve added some of the layout photos that are in this newsletter to the website photo gallery and removed Last weekend we had a successful Fall show. We ended up selling a total of 250 tables and spaces. The paid attendance was about 2000 but we will not get the final number until the October Council meeting. I want to Pat, Tom, Bob, Dale, Rick and especially Pat s wife Wendy for covering the work assignments and clinics. As a reminder, the January show is January 20 th & 21 st so mark your calendars now. We have the same number of work hours and 2 clinics to give. The layout room has been reasonably comfortable for the Saturday sessions. The Thursday sessions
are getting more comfortable. Bob, Dale, Tom, & Peyton have been out working on the layout. Bob has most of the refinery lighting working and it looks really good. Dale and Peyton have been working on ground cover and ballasting the track. We have had a couple of visitors come out to the layout in the last month. I want mention that we have two new folks that are considering joining the Club, Peyton and Travis. So, come out on Thursday nights or Saturday mornings and support the club. I plan to determine the date for the fall operating session at the October meeting. I want to thank Paul Dobbs for 3D printing the new name tags. If you were not at the September meeting I have your name tag. We need some help to organize the layout room and gather up the excess items that will be put up for sale. Pat has put a few things up on e-bay and has generated a good return for the Club. The track & electrical issues found in last operating session have been corrected. That means we will need some people to help clean track and test run. I welcome any and all ideas for the monthly program and encourage everyone participate. Just let me or Dale know when you want to do the program. The Club goals for 2018 include increasing the Membership, completing the Steel Mill Panels, getting the hidden staging tracks running, and more scenery completed. I also want to start regularly scheduled operating sessions. Be sure to let other know that we are open for new members. Now that cars have been spotted on the layout make sure that if you need to move a car to work on something that you put it back where it was. When you are out working on the layout, please make the sure that nothing is left on the rails and remove any leftover materials that could interfere with the testing. Dale has got some new photos up on the website and created a very nice brochure showing the progress. If you know someone that might be interested in joining the club, be sure to invite them out since we are open to having new members. I want to thank Dale for all of work it takes to put together the newsletter each month. We continue the normal schedule of Thursday night sessions, 2 nd & 4 th Saturdays. Saturday sessions will start at 9:00am and run until 12:00pm. Page 2 Joe Pritchett President - Cowtown Model RR Club VICE PRESIDENT'S REPORT Geezers News by Bob Bray I would like to thank all the club members that work hours at the Plano Show. Especially Jim Stegall who helped me put on a clinic on Saturday afternoon and Dale who put on a clinic on Sunday afternoon. Jim and I had 4 people in our clinic while Dale had 7 in his. I sold tickets the first hour on Saturday. We had about 600 people come in at the East gate. I sold tickets again from 12 to one at the East. Probably sold around 100 tickets during that hour. I would say attendance was steady on Saturday. I have just finished all the rework of the wiring on the refinery. Now working on the power supplies that we power the lights. The Plano train show is coming up again in January. That s not far away. Signup sheets will soon be available. If you were unable to work the fall show, please consider volunteering for the January show. Be sure to look at the calendar section to see all the railroading activities that will be going on in the area over the coming months... If anyone has ideas for a Geezer field trip or project, let me know and we will look into doing it. We have invitations to visit several layouts. We just need to work out the details. One of the things we need to concentrate on this year is increasing club memberships. I will be working on this project and report some details over the next couple of months. Remember, membership is open to the public. Sign up a new member this month. Dale has business cards to give out to potential new members.
Still have lots to do on the layout. Can use help on work nights Hope to see all of you at the meeting on the 15th. If you would like additional information on this group please call Bob Bray at 817-713-6887 brayrlja@sbcglobal.net See you at the club room. Bob Bray Vice-President Cowtown Model Railroad Club I thought these were interesting due to the shear amount of detail with all the tiny figures and vehicles that were included. The next photo is of a quarry and gravel complex that was done in N-scale. The modeling was great. FALL PLANO TRAIN SHOW I want to thank all the club members, and wife of one, who helped work the club required hours and clinics at this year s Fall Plano Train Show. Here are a series of photos I took while wondering around the show looking at the various layouts: The first two photo were taken of tow of the many small modules on a T-Train layout. This scale is smaller than N-scale. Of course, there were a few HO-scale layouts on display that had some really nice modules and modeling, from photo backdrops to mountainous scenery. Page 3
There were also O-scale, S-scale and G-scale layouts on display as well as many dealers of various scales. There was a new photo-artist displaying many outstanding large glossy railroad photos and of course the Tool Man was there with anything you needed in model construction tools. Then there was the Outlaws On3 layout which is always a favorite of mine. TREASURER'S REPORT by Dale Schmidtbleicher The CMRRC currently has 16 active members, of which 13 are full members and 3 support members. Pat did such a great job selling items that were donated to the club at the NMRA Kansas City Convention that we gave him five more boxes of items to see if he could sell them at the Plano Show. 4 th quarter dues are now due if you already haven t paid them. Please plan accordingly. As always, dues can be mailed to the following postal box address: CMRRC P.O. Box 331513 Fort Worth, TX 76163 Make payable to: "Cowtown Model Railroad Club". The full treasurer's report is provided at the monthly meeting. Page 4
Operation by Dale Schmidtbleicher Things are cooling, a little in the layout room and we hope to have an operation session either late this month or early in October. The rack needs a major cleaning after a few months of inactivity and the various types of work that has gone on with the layout. Still you can come out on Thursday nights or Saturday work sessions and help clean track and run something to catch any track problems Of course roads and railroad crossings still need to be added along with more shrubs, trees and figures. Post Oak Gap has also had basic scenery added. It will need ballesting in the near future as well as road/track crossings, shrubs, trees and detail parts. Update on Re-Construction by Dale Schmidtbleicher What is new in the area of layout reconstruction? The layout room have been cooling down some thank goodness, and the work crew has been busy. Basic scsnery is being put down around the layout. I reported on must basic scenery being added to the Dead River area which includes ballested track. The river and waterfall have yet to be worked. On the upper level in that area, work has been done in the Gila Basin area blending in the part of the old layout section with the new section. Page 5
CLUB INFO HEADQUARTERS Information on membership, constitution, bylaws, etc. can be found on the club website: www.cmrcc.webs.com Interested folks are welcome to come out and visit with us during work sessions or at the 3rd Monday night general meeting. MONTHLY SCHEDULE General Meeting The monthly Railroad Club meeting is held at 7:00 PM on the 3 rd Monday of the month. The meeting is held at the Handley Community Center in the firstfloor room Since many of the buildings in Post Oak Gap look western, I decided to keep the street dirt. We will be working on the area west of Gila Basin very soon. Then we will be concentrating on the center penninsula where the steel mill, oil refinery and Port Allen are located. Joe has the steel mill and Port Allen /yard panels working except for two burnt out diodes. I assume he will begin working the switches down below the layout in the Gulf/Denver area soon. Tom has been working the west end panel of St. Charles yard.. Bob has all the refinery lighting working. We have a lot of stuff in and around the asiles of the room that need straighting. Much of the stuff are donations that we will have up for sale later this year. Work Schedule: The normal work schedule is as follows: Thursday Nights 6:30 PM-9:00 PM 2nd & 4th Saturday 9:00 AM-12 Noon. Newsletter Inputs I haven t received a member input to the newsletter in a few months. I know you guys have some pointers or interesting articles or techniques that the rest of us would like to here. If you have an item, article, internet location, photo, etc. that you think would be great to share with fellow members, e-mail it or the internet URL (address) to Dale and he will see about incorporating it into the next newsletter. With your help, we hope to add more interest to this newsletter Page 6
October 2018 19 th 20 th Southwest O scale meet Fort Worth 27 th 28 th Model Train Show New Braunfels TX December 2018 1 st 2 nd Oklahoma City Train Show January 2019 19 th 20 th Plano Area Train Show CALENDAR OF EVENTS (As of October 2018) High Card for Kansas City - Gary Carter Page 7