MARPM 2018

Brad Trencamp's American Can factory from Baltimore. A wonderful model.
To top it off, he is using it on a layout from my book, 45 Track Plans

We just wrapped the MARPM 2018. The event was a great success. The volunteers and I had a great time hosting it at the BWI Double Tree Hilton Inn, near Baltimore Maryland. About 150 people attended the event.

Hal Miller, Editor of Model Railroader magazine,
shoots pictures of
Jack Keane's O Scale D&H layout. The layout is about 30 percent complete. 

It started out with operating sessions and open houses on Thursday.  Hal Miller and I visited Jack Keane's O Scale empire and Don Marvel's freelanced HO Appalachian railroad.  Jack's layout has one level of three planned levels complete. It will be a monster layout when finished. Don's HO layout is nearly finished and is beautiful. There were other layouts open, such as David Vaughn and Lance Mindeheim,  that I did not get to visit this time.

On Friday and Saturday we had a steady stream of clinics from 0800 to 2100 with only a hour and quarter break for dinner, that's right - no lunch break.

Alicia and Kent did a great job helping staff the
registration table. 

You had to eat on the fly if you didn't want to miss anything.  The list of clinic presenters read like who's who of model railroading, and all were excellent public speakers too. It will be hard to top this group, but we can try.

John Steitz and Scott Wahl listen intently as Lance Mindheim
gives some backdrop advice

In addition to the presentations, we had hands on clinics for passenger car building and weathering techniques through out the weekend.

The sales area had 27 tables of model railroad goodies from 10 different vendors.  Hopefully our vendors did well. Several said they would consider coming back.

We held a raffle during the meet and it was a big success. There were lots of prizes for the lucky winners, all donated by our generous sponsors.

Shannon Crabtree posted a set of photos to his pbase website. You can find it here.

Craig Bisgeier describes how to do home photo etching
and get remarkably good results

On Sunday we had several layouts open for visits. I had 8 visitors, Ken Montero, John Drye, Tom Pierpoint, Michael Spoor, Ben Hom, Mat Thompson, Gary Boardley and John Stralka stop by. I put them to work running trains on PoLA and Aquia Line.  Alicia made brownies and coffee for snacks.

Thom Radice presented a wonderful talk on his home layout, replete with visions of reincarnation

The venue received nice comments from the attendees.  We are looking into using that same venue for next year's meet. We need to sort out possible dates and other details before we can announce a MARPM 2019.

A big shout out of thanks to all that attended and supported the event. If you want to attend next year there are three ways you can support the event.

1. Register early

1. Stay at the meet hotel (we did negotiate a good rate)

1. Support the vendors at the show by buying supplies and models from them

Shannon Crabtree managed the raffle. Thanks to our sponsors for their support

(r to l) Bill Carl and Travars Stapac operate Don Marvel's layout

Guest operators work PoLA during my open house.