Potomac Division Meet at Mary Surratt House Museum

I attended a mini-meet for the Potomac Division of the NMRA at the Mary Surratt House Museum in Clinton, MD. The meet involved several talks in the morning and two layout tours in the afternoon. I gave the last talk of the morning by describing some of the techniques I used or are using to build my layout. My talk went well, despite some early laptop-projector issues.


The museum is a set of buildings including the restored tavern. It was here that John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln's assassin, stopped to retrieve weapons and supplies which had been hidden there. As a result, Mary Surratt, the owner of the house, which was rented out to others at the time,  was tried and convicted of conspiracy to assassinate the President. On July 7, 1865, she became the first woman to be executed by the United States government.



In the afternoon I visited Dale Latham's Piedmont Southern and Glenn Paulson's Conrail layouts situated in south east Maryland. Dale's layout in a two car garage is largely complete, beautifully finished, and operational. Glenn's layout is a massive double deck in a large basement. He has an impressive steel mill. It occupies about 60-80 linear feet on a narrow shelf of the lower level. The mill is spread out with each major structure residing along the backdrop with mostly narrow benchwork. It is an interesting way to model a steel mill that I don't think I have seen before. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of it.

A scene on Dale's layout. The bakery is named after Dale's wife, Anita, who is legendary for her baking prowess.