Road Trip Part 2 NMRA National Convention 2026

1

The 2026 NMRA convention in Chattanooga was a fun and productive time.   There were a lot of events going. Here is a quick summary of the events related to Civil War Modeling.

The ACWRRHS, which is also a Special Interest Group, of the NMRA had

*  a large display TTRAK layout

* a computer monitor displaying a early test of a civil war module for Trainz 22

* posing with costumes to create photos that can be used to make 3-D printed figures

* several static displays of engines and rolling stock in N, HO and O scale,

*  a 3R O scale display layout. 

* Thom Radice, DC Cebula, Marty Vaughn and I presented talks on various civil war related topics. There were also other speakers that presented ACW era talks.

* Most of the ACWRRHS members made trips to Mission Ridge and Lookout Mountain. These highlight the importance of Chattanooga in the ACW.

* Artisan Rail Media announced that they will be publishing my next book, “Modeling Civil War Railroads.” We are hoping to have it published by November, 2026.

* I entered my machine and engine shop in the model contest and I was pleased to be awarded 4 awards, The National Judges Award, NMRA Editor’s Favorite Model, Hunterline Award for best scratchbuilt wooden model, and finally, Best In Show.

..

On Monday, several of the ACWRRHS members visited Charlie Taylor’s large O scale layout. We had a great time operating it.

I think most of us in our group thought it was the best NMRA convention we had ever attended. 

it.

. N

Road Trip Part 1 Dixie Rail 2026

Op Session 29

I hosted Op Session Number 29 on 11 July. Five visitors from Williamsburg, Mat Thompson, Ed Rappe, Jim Taverna, Alan Balma and Rich Feller  attended. Local, Marty McGuirk filled in the final spot. The session went pretty well. I did note some problems. Engine Fury, which is normally the work horse, seemed to lose some pulling power. It was slipping on the grades in the tunnels. So we swapped it for Whiton, and Whiton ran fine. I need to check Furywhen I get a chance

On Wednesday, I departed Alexandria for Atlanta to attend DixieRail 2026 as a guest of Scott Dunlap, an old friend. I got to operate on three layouts, Jim Travis, Howard Goodwin and Mark Bridgewater. They were lots of fun. 

Jim's layout spans three rooms of his large basement. It's a large loop with several industries. I ran mostly through trains, with one that required some switching. Jim's wife Kim gave me a tour of the structures she built and detailed. They were very nice. 

Howard's layout was two stub staging yards in the garage that feed  a J shaped loop in the basement. The trains are not too long, but there is a lot of activity. 

Mark's layout is only 20 months old, but it has the making of a top layout in the country. It is a 2500 square foot mushroom layout with two branch lines that are on separate decks. The mainline is about 600 feet with 7 passing sidings. The mainline is operational with some of the branches also working. Mark has built several fine layouts in the past, so I have great hopes for this one.

On Sunday, I headed up to Chattanooga stopping at 5 more model railroads.

The first was Bill Heb’s. This in a N scale layout that spans several rooms in his basement. The theme is the B&O in Ohio. The highlight of the layout is an automated transfer table as a staging yard. It is quite impressive.

Second was David Godwin's HO scale Georgia Central RR. It also spans several rooms in his basement with two decks plus a large peninsula in one room to house a large passenger terminal.

L

Next I visited Phil Stead's On3 DRGW. I was there 13 years ago. He has basically finished the layout. He has 13 engines, dozens of cars, and a fully sceniced layout that goes from flat drylands to mountain peaks. One of his helpers told me it is the largest On3 layout in the US. His wife painted the back drops too.

After Phil I stopped at the Tate Depot Museum where there are 2 layouts on display. Both are excellent. The Depot is a non profit organization that maintains the layouts and opens them to the public as a tourist attraction for the county. In return, the county covers most of the expenses. In addition to public sessions, the club also has their own work and operation meetings. 

The final layout was Steve Austin's On30 masterpiece. Steve expanded the layout by about 40% since I was last there. It is a highly detailed modeling tour du force. Steve probably has every detail part ever created in O scale. 

I am now in Chattanooga for the NMRA National Convention and Train Show.

What? An Operating Session!

Phil, James and Ethan (l-r) work Train 7 At Aquia Landing

It has been a long time since I hosted an operational session. According to my records, the last session was September 5, 2024! (I didn't do a blog post for that session probably because it was part of MARPM and I had to leave my house as soon as the ops were over to go to the hotel for do the final paperwork and payment).

Nick, Jacob and Amby (L-r) work Falmouth

So it was great to host a group of 9 operators on Saturday, 10 Jan 2026 for an official op session on the Aquia Line. That was session number 28. And what a great session it was! The basement was full of laughter and camaraderie as Phil Taylor, James Rodgers, Joel Salmons, Joel Salmons, Remy Salmons, Ethan Rodgers, Jacob Hol, Amby Nangeroni and Nick Ozorak ran the railroad for nearly 3.5 hours. Five of them were first time operators. Remy was only the second woman ever to operate the railroad.

Remy, Joel and John (l-r) at Falmouth

Because we had 9 operators, we ran the normal scheduled trains and an extra. That makes things a bit crowded in the front room when trains meet at Brooke or Stonemans, but everyone seemed to make it work. 

Screen shot of the virtual Aquia Line in Trainz 

Nick is the host "The Roundhouse" podcast. He also builds virtual railroads in Trainz. He brought screen shots of the Aquia Line railroad he is building in Trainz, a virtual model of the Aquia Line. He has been working on that for quite a while. It looks really neat. One of the views he showed me was the layout without the house walls in the way. That was an interesting use of the virtual layout.  After the ops, Nick spent some time taking photos of spots that needed more work in his virtual plan. We also discussed some possible changes to the layout including the foundry at Brooke and the installation of the machine shop at Aquia Landing. When it is done, he will make it available for downloading.  To see more of his podcasting work and virtual railroads go to https://www.youtube.com/@NickOzorak

Nick's concept of the foundry at Brooke. Looks good, but that W&A Car has got to go!

Great Lakes Getaway 2024

I attended Great Lakes Getaway 2024 last weekend. I and 21 other out-of-town guests had the chance to operate on up to 5 great layouts in the greater Detroit area. 

On the first day I operated at Doug Tagsold’s C&S Layout today. It is a spectacularly beautiful model railroad. It is also one of the more complicated Timetable and Train Order layouts that I have run. There is lots to think about as you chug along or wait for meets. I ran an extra ore train that was basically swimming upstream against several scheduled trains. The long runs between control points combined with the slow speeds are unmatched in any model railroad that I am aware. Definitely one of my favorite railroads to operate and visit.

The day capped off with a fun group dinner. The food and company was great but the dang musician was so loud, my ears started ringing. 

View from my office for the day

On the second day I operated on Mike Burgett’s beyond museum quality C&O layout.  I am proud to have contributed to it with some structures and signals via Alkem Scale Models. 

I did my favorite job, West Clifton Forge Yard. That job builds trains and weighs coal hoppers. It all happens from one seated position which I do like.  It really feels like a real railroad when you operate at Mike's. This railroad with its dispatcher office and tower has to rank as one of the best in the country. 

That night I presented an after dinner talk to the group on an update on the Aquia Line.  Travers Stavac also presented his plans for his new layout that incorporates some of Paul Dolkos's former layout. 

Last layout for my trip was Bill Neale’s wonderful PRR Panhandle division. This was my second visit to Bill’s layout. This time I ran a through oil train, and a coal shifter. The pièce de résistance was being engine crew on a massive 45 coal hopper train with three crewmen each running a PRR decapod- 2 on the head and one snapper (aka pusher) on the rear. As an extra treat, Bill’s wife, Terry , provided a tour of their birdfeeders in the back yard and pointed out some of the birds we saw.

Three awesome railroads in 3 days. The Michigan hosts are also great hosts. Thanks to them for hosting a wonderful weekend.

Two decapods on the head and one one the rear with 45 coal hoppers. 

A Haunted Train? Op Session 26

It might still be about 3 weeks until Halloween but some crazy gremlins haunted the layout today. 

It had been about 6 months since the last session. Some of the track was shockingly oxidized and dirty.  It took me about an hour to clean up the track and wheels. But all was ready when the operators arrived.

Previous operators Len White, John Steitz, Ben Sullivan and Kelly Regan joined two first timers, Phil Taylor and Bill Mosteller. They got right to work.

We organized into two 3-man crews. John, Kelly and Bill made up one crew, while Ben, Phil and Len made up the second crew, which events would show to be the jinxed crew.

The first crew ran pretty well except that engine Haupt had some issues about half way through. So I swapped it out with McCallum.

Meanwhile crew two with Engine Fury proceeded well until the first gremlin struck. One of the axles on car 1445 fell out of its truck while switching Aquia Landing. This truck is an arch bar truck that I scratch built. A glue joint between the side frame and bolster failed allowing the side frame to flex and wheel to fall out. It was a simple fix to re-glue the failed joint. This failure never happened before.

Later as that train arrived in Falmouth the draw bar between Fury's tender and engine fell off. This was also an easy fix. It seems that the screw that holds the draw bar had loosened. This also never happened before but again was an easy fix,

Finally, as crew 2 were wrapping up their run for the day, their train stalled in the Clozet tunnel. It was very perplexing as the engine was responding to throttle and seemed normal. It turns out that there was another locomotive in the tunnel. Somehow Engine Whiton was inadvertently energized and left the engine shed. It derailed as it passed the turnout to the engine shed, but continued riding the ties until it entered the tunnel and collided with the other train. I don't think anything like this has happened before. Was it a Halloween ghost train or a rebel attempt to highjack the railroad? 

Other than that, it was a fun session. 

. 

Sprague's Ma and Pa HO layout

Mat Thompson, Paul Dolkos and I had an opportunity to do the first “official” operating session on Bob Sprague's new HO scale Ma and Pa layout. Bob has designed an interesting multideck layout with a counter-flow double helix that connects the various levels. He has beautiful hand laid track, many scratch built structures including some he designed and printed using resin printers. I especially liked his tiny, but flawless running, steam engines and rolling stock appropriate for the 1920s. He also uses digitrax for command and control including remote activation of the turnouts. That was the first time I used that system and I liked it. He has an impressive three-level swing gate made with 80/20 aluminum. It’s very sturdy

Busy Weekend

 This was a busy Father's Day weekend with trains, games, and model building.

John running a passenger train through Winchester 

Wooden fruit boxes under Winchester 

On Friday, Paul Dolkos rode with me to operate on John King's B&O railroad centered around  Winchester, VA. John's layout is wonderful to operate. It hits many of my hot buttons including Time Table and Train Order, Steam, and lots of switching. Paul and I operated the Winchester town switcher. That was a great job with many industries to switch. Winchester was a very busy railroad town with several cold storage facilities for the fruit industry. 

John's track is beautifully laid. He never got around to doing much scenery of structures but he does have lots of interesting mock-ups for the structures in Winchester.  In addition, he has dozens of wooden fruit boxes from orchards and storage houses in Winchester under the Winchester part of his layout. 

B&O Bulletin Book

John has a lot of interesting railroadania. One item that was really neat was a B&O Bulletin book that he uses to have his operators sign. 

On Saturday I participated in a game at Mike Kelly's. He set up a south Pacific scenario involving Japanese infantry guarding American prisoners, a US Navy shore patrol to the rescue, angry local villagers, and man eating animals.   

The game combined elements of role playing and war gaming. He used hidden movement and lots of surprises for both sided.  It turned out our 11-man Japanese squad had to deal with the 25-man shore patrol and 20 unruly prisoners lead by a lone nurse who managed to hide a scalpel on her person. Even the giant crocodile allied with the US Navy. In the end only one Japanese soldier survived to report the outcome to his commander. 

I continued to work on the High Road to Rome diorama too.  It is almost done. Here is a photo showing a vignette from the diorama. A jeep with a wounded soldier is trying to get past the dozer and tanks on the narrow mountain road. This incident is based on Eric Sevareid's report of the actual battle. 

Ops session 25

 

Tim is pulling the pins while conductor John Barry looks on. Meanwhile,
Paul Dolkps tends to his engine.

Five brave operators worked the Aquia Line today for Ops Session 25. We ran one 2-man crew of John Steitz and Amby Nangeroni, and a 3-man crew of Paul Dolkos, John Barry and Tim Tilson. 

This was Tim's  first time operating and he did great. He has nice HO layout depicting the Soo Line in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Tim is also heavily into wargaming. He has written several scenario books for the wargaming hobby.

This was John Barry's first time back on the layout after a long absence.  He quickly picked up where he left off.  Amby got his first chance to be a conductor. He picked it up quickly. He found a few waybills that did not conform to my new track numbering system. We corrected those on the spot. 

Overall this was one of our better sessions. The biggest issue was that Whiton seemed to lose battery power after the first train. We swapped it out and used Haupt.  

The engineer of Haupt ran into a problem when he tried to run into the passenger stub track without first selecting the polarity switch on the  fascia. This switch exists because of the electro-mechanical peculiarities of the area where three turnouts overlap. To keep the electrical power routing to the frogs simple, I have a manual power route to the frog. I really need to come up with an automatic way of routing power to that switch as many of the crews forget to activate the switch when necessary.

We used the random events cars again. The crews selected 4 of them overall. Three of those were some of the more colorful and dramatic events. The example at the left is one. This was just bad luck as about 50% of the cards have no effect. 

None of the guest operators had an iPhone to use the Blunami, so the Eclipse did not get used. The Blunami can be used with a regular DCC throttle, but I am down to only one functional throttle.

The farm boys in the group suggested some kind of lean-to or shelter for the pig pen. I need to further develop that.

During the Op session I was involved in bidding on a set of O scale machine tools for the future machine shop at Aquia Landing. I actually won the bid though with shipping and tax I probably did not get a good deal. But it was an out of production kit and will help me get the machine shop built a lot quicker compared to scratch building all the tools.  I still need a metal planer. Wild West Scale Models is supposed to be working on one of those, so hopefully it will be out before I need it.