Diapers are Structures

The Washington, DC area where I live is full of government workers and contractors, who may be good people, but their main products are paper and hot air. So I always enjoy traveling to various other cities in the US and meeting people that actually make and build things for a living.  I had that chance this weekend as I visited Lexington, KY to see my son and his family, and then to Cincinnati, OH to present a talk about military railroads at the NMRA Cincinnati Division 7 monthly meeting. 

Chase and Ruka

In Lexington,  I had the pleasure of hearing more about how my son and his wife are starting a bioengineering company that is producing genetically engineered chemicals to be used as adjuvants for vaccines. Those are chemicals that make vaccines more effective. Their specialty is producing terpene chemicals from genetically engineered yeast. Prior to their work, the adjuvants had to be sourced from shark livers. The techniques they developed are much friendlier to the environment and biota. Plus their labs smells like baking bread. They are doing quite well and I am very happy for them and their new baby (my grand daughter) Ruka. 

On Saturday I drove to Cincinnati, OH as the guest of John Burchnall. We first visited the museums at the Cincinnati Union Station. The history and science museums are very good. That explained why they were packed with visitors on the day after opening day for the Cinching Reds. 

An example of one of the custom scratch built structures on the S scale layout - the music hall

The history museum has a magnificent S scale layout depicting the city in the steam era. It cost somewhere around $2 million dollars to build even with volunteer labor. It is full of impressive models.  

I also really enjoyed the large steamboat wharf and city diorama in the level beneath the layout. 

The steamboat is 1/3rd scale, but it still was huge and large enough to walk into. It was full of crates and barrels of typical of the early steam boat transportation era. Of particular note to me was two boxes of army bread, one was from the usual Union Mechanical Bakery in Baltimore, which I have seen in period photos. However, they had a second box from a bakery that I had not seen before. It may be from a later era based on the typography, but there was no date on it.

The small waterfront stores and shops in the diorama were also very interesting.  You could go inside each and check out the period decor, tools, products etc.

The science museum was also very interesting. The ice age diorama, with saber tooth tigers, giant sloths and wolves,  was really neat. 

 A wolf descended the moraine in front of a ice age glacier

A scene on Bob Lawson's layout

Later that afternoon we visited  the model railroads of Bob Lawson and Ed Swain. Bob is a fine scale structure specialist and his layout had over 100 such structures. He is in the process of downsizing his previous large layout into his new house. He had some finished scenes, but still had dozens of amazing structures on shelves in preparation for the rest of the layout completion.

Ed and his layout

Next we went to Ed Swain's proto-freelanced PRR railroad. It is a nearly finished layout that hosts regular op sessions. The modeling and presentation are first rate.  Ed was a GE aircraft engine executive. In the small world department, he knew my college roommate who also worked for GE aircraft engine group. 

Nice scene on Ed's layout

That evening John and I had a long conversation about his role at Proctor Gamble making baby care products. He was a civil engineer with an economics minor. He became a research fellow after he developed a holistic cost model for the whole company's production processes. I learned that diapers are structures. A disposable diaper has over 40 different materials in it, yet costs about $0.25 and has to support a "load."

Dave by a deep bridge scene

The next day we visited Dave Davenport's freelanced Tennessee Midland railroad. It's a prototype freelanced railroad that appears to be nearly done. Dave hasn't started operating yet, but it looks like it could be a hoot. 

Dave had a neat DCC programming station that had several engine test and  programming aids such as variable DC power,  JMRI Sprog, and ESU programmer built into a portable board with rollers.  Very clever. He said he got the idea from a guy in Europe, but it looked like a neat installation to me. 

Next we went to the NMRA meeting where I presented a clinic on Model Railroads at War. It seemed to go well. 

After the clinic we briefly visited two more nice layouts by Gary Ossenschmidt and Ed Bley (sorry I didn't get any pictures).  Gary actually had 2 layouts, one in N, and a bigger one in HO scale.  Ed layout had steel theme as it was set in the  Pittsburgh area. He had a really neat coke factory. 

All in all a great weekend with a very good group of people.