Upcoming Talks and a Sneak Peek at a New Project

 I will be presenting two talks at the start of May about railroading in the Civil War.

The first is at the Carolinas RPM Meet on May 3-4 in Greensboro NC. You can get more information about the meet at https://cmrgreensboro.org/calendar/rpm-carolinas-may2025/

The second talk is the same topic at the Chesapeake Forum in Easton, MD on May 7th. You can get more information about it at https://chesapeakeforum.org/course/railroads-of-the-civil-war/  Note, they are charging a fee for admission. 

Next, I started working on a new project for my model railroad. I started off by getting a supply of scale lumber. Any guesses on what it might be?

Hint, I discussed this project on my blog before. It is a structure.

Down to the Sea in Trains - Ships for Model Railroads

 I'll be doing a virtual clinic for the Potomac Division of the NMRA on May 11th at 3:00PM. I believe the clinic will be posted to youtube after I present it if you are not a member of the NMRA.  Here is a brief video clip showing some of the material I will be covering.

Sharing the Word on Civil War Railroad Modeling

 

I donned my ACW Generals uniform to present my talk at Leesyylvania State Park

It was a busy week for sharing the word of Civil War era model railroading.

It started last week when my son and his family were in town for the holidays and a conference. On two evenings we ran trains for the entertainment of my granddaughter, Ruka, and her parents. She seemed to be fascinated with the trains despite just turning one year old on Monday. 

The visitors continued on Friday when Jack Brown, his wife and their friend John Carroll visited the Aquia Line as part of a weekend trip to the Washington, DC area. It was Jack and John's second visit but the first for his wife. We had a nice visit.

On Saturday morning I presented a talk on Railroads of the Civil War to a group of 15 people at the Leesylvania State Park visitor center. The visitor center has a nice museum with lots of information about the history of the land that comprises the park. It was a pleasant surprise as I did not know that there was a museum there. 

 I learned from their exhibits that the Union gunboat Jacob Bell was involved in a small skirmish at Freestone Point. It remained in the Potomac River for much of the war. It would be a good candidate for a model of one of the gunboats that protected Aquia Landing. It was about 141 feet long, so not too big. Perhaps I will replace the Passaic with the Jacob Bell.

On Sunday I hosted an open house for the Aquia Line Railroad. I had 25 people sign the guest list. Five of the guests completed the scavenger hunt check list. I think that was popular with the wives as they all tried it. One couple stayed the whole afternoon looking for every last item.  

Thanks to Bill Mosteller and John Steitz who ran the trains during the open house. 

Alicia made cookies, which appeared to be a bit hit as none were left at the end of the day. Bill also brought some cookies.

Upcoming Events

 

I am scheduled to present a talk on Railroads of the Civil War at the Leesylvania State Park on 2 December at 1000AM.  This talk is aimed at the general public and will cover a variety of topics related to the development and operation of railroads during the Civil War. The talk will conclude with a selection of photos from my model railroad. Please see the link above for details. There is a parking fee for each vehicle, but the talk is free. I hope to see you there.

Leesylvania Park is the site of the former Confederate Freestone Point Battery. Established in 1861, the Freestone Point Confederate Battery was part of the five month Confederate blockade of the Potomac River. Union ships shelled the battery several times with little effect on each.  When Union soldiers made it to shore during the Battle of Cockpit Point in 1862, the batteries were abandoned. The earthworks survive to today as part of the Leesylvania State Park and were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.

On December 3, I will be hosting an open house to give folks a chance to visit my model railroad. The time will be from 1-4PM. If you read this blog, you are welcome to attained. RSVP to let me know if you are planning to come.

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. 

Mid-West Wanderings, Part 2

Coal mine off Corridor H near Mt Storm WV

After completing several jobs at my son and daughter-in-law's house, the road trip continued with my driving to Indianapolis to attend the joint NMRA/RPM Indy Junction Meet. The meet was very successful. About 500 people attended. The hotel was very large and it offered multiple clinic rooms, space for several model train layouts, and two large rooms for vendors.  It was great fun to meet new people, especially folks that say they read this blog! Thanks. Leave a comment if you can. I was greeted at the registration desk by my wife's 2nd cousin, Barbara Soward. She is a model railroader who is married to Fred Soward, the NMRA Louisville Division superintendent. 

Nice limestone quarry model in the contest room

Some type of furnace model in the contest room

RPM Meets and NMRA conventions have a lot of similarities but with just a few differences. For example. the NMRA had a model contest room where NMRA personnel judged the models.  I could not see the name tags for the contest models, so I don't know who made them, But, there was also a RPM room where folks could display models without judging.  This worked very well in my opinion as the judging room was more formal with visitors required to be quiet and to leave drinks at the door. Meanwhile, the RPM room was more social with folks gathering to discuss models and enjoy the experience. 

The judging  is part of the Master Model Railroader process, but it also adds a competition where the "best" models are selected.  I don't get too worked up over the model contests as there is a lot of subjectivity involved.  That is why I tend to prefer the RPM approach.  I had some of my civil war railroad models on display in the RPM room. 

RPM meets also have a tradition of reimbursing clinicians for their presenting a clinic at the meet. For example, at the MARPM, all clinicians get free registration. Normally, the NMRA doesn't not do that. They do reimburse some of the officers' expenses and sometimes for the key note speaker. Mike Skibbe, the RPM manager at Indy Junction, invited me to attend, and the meet did cover my registration fee but none of my other expenses. Nonetheless, that was welcome as the travel expenses were somewhat high this year with gas at $5.30 a gallon.

Nice Great Lakes lumber schooner model at the RPM by Greg Rich

Scene on John Dick's layout 

I presented 2 clinics at the meet describing my Aquia Line progress, I attended 5 other clinics, and visited one home layout, which was John Dick's Milwaukee Road Beer Line. 

Kevin Kayser's clinic on the C&O in Kentucky was neat. He uses a lot of Alkem Scale Models products.  

Bill Darnaby presented a clinic on his Maumee Railroad. About half way through he said, "well that's finished, what's next? "Then he proceeded to show pictures of the Monon RR, a favorite of his youth. I thought he was going to say he was going to rebuild the layout as the Monon. But he calmed my fears by describing how he is just building detailed, scratch built models of his favorite railroad just to keep building. He does not plan to dismantle the Maumee. 

Bill Neale gave a nice talk on what he did on his layout during COVID and after a successful back surgery. His changes included new lighting, fascia paint and operating signals. The latter was a big job. 

Gerry Albers presented a talk on lessons learned from building his huge Virginian RR set in WV. Gerry lives near Cincinnati, but was unavailable for touring when I was there the week before. 

Kieth Kohlman did a clinic on Realistic Outdoor Photography. He showed many examples of artful photographs of his N Scale models and modules taken out doors. 

Beautiful O scale turnouts

I did see some nice O Scale track work and switch stands for sale in the vendor area.  

It was fun to see a lot of folks I know. Notably, Doug Tagsold showed me photos of yet another expansion of his narrow gauge railroad. He is an amazingly fast builder. 

Alas, I developed a sore throat the first night there, so I returned to Lexington the next day after my final clinic was over. Luckily, my son runs a COVID testing lab, so he tested me as soon as I got to his house, and then again next day when I developed cold like symptoms such as runny nose, head ache, and sinus congestion. Luckily, I did not have COVID, just a cold. But, that meant the rest of my trip to see my granddaughter and her parents had to be cancelled. I also missed out on a lot of planned activities at Indy Junction.

I stayed with my son for one extra day to finish installing a new stair railing to his basement. That job was really difficult as they bought a pre-fab-ed aluminum stair railing that was designed for 35 degrees. But their existing  stair railing was 45 degrees. It took me all day to get it installed.

I returned home via the Corridor H road from Weston, WV to  Strasburg, VA. This route is not yet complete so there are some 2-lane sections. But the new 4-lane sections run along the ridge tops through some beautiful mountain scenery. I passed the old B&O line through Buckhannon and then through the Western Maryland RR territory of Elkins, Parsons, Thomas and Davis. I saw a coal mine with lots of trucks in action, and the CSX marshaling yard near Mount Storm power plant, but all shrouded in fog. I returned safe and sound, but very tired. I did another COVID test when I got home and I was negative. Luckily the cold symptoms are waning and I feel better now.  It was a good trip, despite being cut short and not getting to see my granddaughter. 

Former WM depot in Parsons, WV. I stopped there for a lunch break.

Floods Averted and other Updates

The Smoke Bush (tree?) in our backyard did not survive the storm last night

Readers of this blog are probably familiar  with the City of Alexandria's continuing struggle with flooding. Alexandria has had some extremely heavy rain on several occasions this year. Last night was another sustained and heavy rain that dropped about 4 inches of water over two hours. Several zones in the city experienced flooding.  I am happy to report that the flood control measures we adopted have been successful and our basement stayed dry, as did most of my neighbors. However, just a couple blocks 

City Sheriff Lawhorne stands in the flooded
alley behind his house a few blocks from ours.

from my house, there was significant flooding.

I learned that our drain pipes will need periodic maintenance. The pop-up emitter on the main exhaust pipe was clogged with the a collection of samaras, or maple tree seeds, the kind we called helicopters as a kid. There are no maple trees near our gutters, so these are propelled by wind onto the roof where the rain collected them in the gutters. Perhaps we need some kind of gutter filters. 

Over the past two weeks I have conducted two zoom seminars on railroads of the civil war. The first was for the John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library at the  St. Louis Mercantile Library, University of Missouri - St. Louis. Next John Ott discussed early locomotive builders, and then Nick Fry covered the history of early railroads in Missouri.  You can watch all three presentations at the following link, 

The second presentation of the same subject was to the Cincinnati Division of the NMRA.

I am scheduled to do two more presentations in the coming weeks. The next will be on August 22 to the Potomac Division and another one at a date to be determined to the Louisville Division of the NMRA. 

I have been working on a model for the new Museum of Freedom in Alexandria. This will be a model of the slave jail that existed in Alexandria before the war. I'll provide an update on that later.

Can You Say Wind Chill?

I am back from a weekend trip to Pennsylvania to attend the Columbia Railroad Day. My itinerary took me to Gettysburg, PA on Friday and to Columbia, PA on Saturday.

View of the Round Tops from the jump off position of Longstreet's Corps

The weather was warm and sunny when I left Virginia. When I arrived in Gettysburg, the skys were clear, but the wind was steady with gusts up to 60 mph and the temperature in  the 50s. My plan was to ride my bike around the part of the battlefield that saw action on the second day of the battle.  So I parked on  the saddle between the Round Tops. From there I rode my bike to the top of Little Round Top, then down the hill and west to the Peach Orchid and back. I was clever enough to plan my route so that my return climb to Little Round Top had a tail wind, but the otherwise the wind was brutal. Unfortunately, I did not pack clothes that were warm enough, so I was thoroughly chilled, despite the climb. I then jumped in my car and decided to tour the rest of the battlefield by auto.  

I wanted to stop at the Gettysburg Train station, but those plans were literally  short circuited.  I was driving north on Stratton Street near the railroad tracks, when I heard a strange humming noise. I thought something was wrong with my car. I looked up and noticed that there was a large orange-blue flame above my car. I drove forward another 100 yards and I saw it again in my rear view mirror. So I stopped and got out and it happened a third time. A pedestrian said to me that a tree was swaying into a power line. Apparently the last time the tree swayed  it caused the power line to snap, or a breaker to trigger, so the flames stopped. I did not get closer to investigate. Instead, I decided to head to the north side of the battlefield to check out the scenes of the first day of combat.   

View from Oak Hill to the east where XI Corps was
pushed back by Ewell's attack on the first day

 The wind was actually getting stronger as I toured the northern sectors and clouds were gathering. I managed to complete most of the auto tour and decided to call it a day. I heard later that the wind caused a tree to fall on a car and a porta-potty at the battlefield. A man was trapped in the potty had to be rescued by the local fire department. 

I arrived in Columbia, PA and met some of the hosts for the model railroad weekend. 

The next morning, the weather was again sunny, but with temperatures in the 40s and wind gusting to 30-50MPH. The meet was held at the Columbia Pavilion, which is an outdoor covered deck.  The cold weather resulted in light attendance at the meet. Nonetheless, Thom Radice from the ACWRRHS was there as well as several of my friends from Facebook that lived in the local area. It was fun to meet with them. 

Despite the small crowd, there were several vendors and exhibitors present as well as a reenactment unit. 

A female re-eanctor was making samples of 1860 cuisine including some hard tack she had prepared in advance. I got to taste some and it was pretty good and not that difficult to chew. She said the cracker would get harder after a few days of drying out. So I brought some home to test out. She also made some tasty corn meal mushies and some kind of stew that I did not get to sample.

The 45th PA Infantry reenactment unit was on hand with an encampment and display of civil war era weapons. Some of the weapons were originals. They even let spectators handle them.  I got to handle an original Sharpe's rifle and a smoothbore musket.

Scott Mingus lead off the presentations with an interesting discussion of the Gettysburg RR.  I also purchased his latest book on the Cumberland Valley RR in the civil war. 

Larry Hoover shows a local police
officer a civil war era weapon

Then Joel Moore showed photos of his highly detailed HO layout and described how he used his railroad as a setting for some novels he wrote.

I presented two talks. The first was an Introduction to Civil War Railroads, a talk I have done many times before. Alas, I was so cold during the talk that I was shivering as I spoke.  That made for an unpleasant experience for me and many of the folks watching expressed concern afterwards. I should have worn my civil war uniform as it would have been perfect for the weather instead the light cotton clothes I had with me. 

Luckily, the weather warmed up a bit and the wind died down for my second talk on my Aquia Line Model Railroad. That talk went off quite well.

The last talk was by Chris Vera on how the people of Columbia were involved in the underground railroad.

 

In between the talks, my host Barry Schmit, took me to see the Columbia Model Railroad Club layouts.  They have large HO and O scale layouts in a former church which is now the Columbia Historical Society building.

I returned home safely Saturday night. It was a fun weekend, despite the cold and windy weather. 

2021 Columbia PA Railroad Day

Next weekend will be an interesting day for people interested in civil war railroads.  

The  2021 Columbia Pennsylvannia Railroad Day program is scheduled for May 1 after cancelling last year's event due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They will be using the new Columbia Crossing River Tails Visitor Center for facility for their Civil War Railroading theme presentations. It is located along the Susquehanna River at 41 Walnut Street, and offers full audio/visual support and extensive seating both inside and out.

Columbia, PA is located east of York near the former Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge, which the scene of an important skirmish and bridge burning during the Gettysburg campaign. The burning of that bridge pretty much ended the rebels plans to cross the Susquehanna River during the invasion of Pennsylvannia. 

I plan to drive up the day before and revisit Gettysburg on the way. In addition to my talk, I will have some of my ACW era models on display.

The schedule of events is as follows

09:00AM - 09:30AM: Civil War Railroad Day Opening Remarks.

10:00AM - 10:45AM: Civil War Railroad to Gettysburg, Scott Mingus.

11:15AM - 12:00PM: Civil War Canals and Railroads, Doug Bosley.

12:30PM - 01:15PM: Railroads During the Civil War, Bernard Kempinski.

01:45PM - 02:30PM: Civil War Aquia Line Model Railroad, Bernard Kempinski.

03:15PM - 04:00PM: Rails to Freedom in Columbia, Chris Vera.

Other planned activities during the all-day program include four Civil War Encampments on the Columbia Crossing grounds. The Columbia Historic Preservation Society will host three all-day model railroad activities: their large HO Columbia and Susquehanna Model Railroad Club that depicts Columbia in the early 1950's, the O-Scale Lower Susquehanna Model Railroaders modular layout, and several NMRA Susquehanna Division model railroad displays. Lastly the new owners of Rail Mechanical Services may allow tours, displays, and speeder activities at their site.

It should be an interesting day. 

LDSIG Panel Discussion - What would you do differently?

 I was a panelist on a Layout Design Special Interest Group (LDSIG) on the subject of "What would you do differently." There were six of us on the panel. We each had a chance to do a short presentation on our layouts with respect to the above question. 

I structured my brief presentation as a summary of how I got where I am and what I would do differently.  The image at the left, with apologies to the Talking Heads, is a rough outline that I followed. 

I described the layout space I had available, the layouts I tried to build before the Aquia line, and how the Aquia Line evolved and grew. 

I presented a short list of things I would do differently if I was starting over, all from a layout design perspective. I post the list here without elaboration. 

• Build an integrated design. The iterative/phased process resulted in sub-optimal design
• 36” Minimum radius with 30” only in alcove
• Longer sidings and longer trains
• Prototype length bridge at Potomac Creek
• Track elevation in accordance with prototype terrain
• Master switch for the layout lighting
• Buy a different house

Finally, I showed a quick sketch track plan of how I would redesign the Aquia Line RR if I were starting from scratch. This was the LDSIG after all. The main difference is that I flipped the railroad. Aquia Landing is in the crew lounge while Falmouth passes the current location of Burnside's Wharf and extends into the home office. Putting Aquia Landing in the crew lounge area allows the track to climb after it leaves the river, just as it does in the prototype. 

In this redesign, about 25% of the railroad would require only minor changes from the current plan, but the rest would have extensive rebuilding. This railroad satisfies all the items I listed above.  Will I do this? I highly doubt it. But it was a fun exercise.

The LDSIG will make the recorded talk available on line for viewing. I will update this blog with the link when it is available. 

Meanwhile, the spackle is drying on the new coved corner by Stares Tunnel. I should be able to start painting backdrops tomorrow.

Layout Expansion - Phase 2 begins - and other news

 After several months of delay due to floods, hip surgery, and my mom's passing, I finally started Phase 2 of the expansion of the Aquia Line. Over the past few days I have been installing the benchwork for the new section. I decided to go with less ambitious plan of adding just Falmouth and not modifying Aquia Landing. This will allow me to get the railroad back in operation sooner. It leaves open the possibility of expanding the railroad later if I still feel the urge to build. I needed to reprioritize the timeline of the expansion over other projects, such as the locomotive build, as I have a dead line for an article coming up and I need to have some of this expansion done. 

Speaking of articles, please check out my latest piece in Model Railroad Planning 2021. In that article I discuss some ideas to designing backdrops for model railroads.

Back to the expansion, as you can see in the photos, the benchwork is very similar to what I built for the POLA layout. I ended up using only 12-inch deep Ikea IVAR shelves  under the layout as opposed to the deeper 19-inch ones I had under parts of POLA.

The second photo shows the expanded area available for new location for Falmouth. This new area is about double the length and wider than the old Falmouth. I wanted the area above the TV to be deep enough so that my operators would not bang their legs against the glass shelf of the TV stand below the benchwork. The wider layout space space also gives me more room for structures and scenery at Falmouth. 

One of my main concerns was the grade of the track coming out from under the stair landing. At a minimum, the tracks need to climb up to the top of the IVAR shelves. That requires an elevation gain of about 1 inch over 13 feet, less than one percent, to an elevation of 49 inches.

I wondered if I should make the height of the track at Falmouth the same as at Burnside Landing, which is 51 inches. The only reasons to do that are, first,  if I wanted to make a continuous run, which I don't, the tracks needed to be at the same level. The second reason is more subtle and relates to the prototype geography. The track at Falmouth should be higher than the track at Aquia Landing since Aquia Landing is at river level and Falmouth is higher on the ridge.  But, if I placed Falmouth 51 or higher inches, it would require climbing at least another 2 inches, resulting in about a 2.5% grade coming out of the closet. I was concerned that my engines would not be able to pull the design length trains up that grade.  So I opted to minimize the grade. Thus Falmouth will be about 2 inches lower than Brunside's Wharf and Aquia Landing.  The difference is hard to detect when you are standing at the layout.  We will have to chalk up this discontinuity in space-time continuum to the effects of traveling under a stair landing. Perhaps we can blame Harry Potter.

I am also reconsidering the scenic treatment of the section behind the couch. I designed a long low trestle in that spot. But I now think I would be better off breaking up that stretch of track into two discrete scenes. I think that might make the distance traveled seem longer if one can not see the whole train at one time. 

So I am looking at some combinations of bridges, cuts and fills in this area. Also, because of the book shelves under the layout, I don't have a lot of depth to exploit. One idea that appeals to me is to install a through truss bridge over a creek in this area (see photo below) . I built one several years ago for the road show layout, but Gerry has that now. I still have the laser drawings for it, so making another one would not be hard. That kind of bridge looks good in a low clearance application.

Today I presented a talk to the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at American University about railroads of the Civil War. The talk seemed to have been well received. We have tentatively scheduled an open house so the OLLI members can visit my railroad and perhaps some other civil war sites in Alexandria.

Talk to the Union League of Philadelphia on Civil War Railroads

This evening I presented a talk to the Union League of Philadelphia on Railroads of the Civil War. The Union League of Philadelphia was founded in 1862 as a patriotic society to support the Union and policies of Abraham Lincoln across a nation torn by civil war. 

 You can watch a replay of the talk at https://youtu.be/J45508kPjmM?t=371

Open House for the Rockville Model Railroad Society

Members of the Rockville Model Railroad Society stopped by to see the USMRR Aquia Line today. They included  Tom Matty, Greg Cassidy, Deane Mellander, Jim Novaco, Roger Andes, Ben Sullivan, Kelly Regan, Fritz Fahlin and Joe Ney. I had not run the layout in quite some time, so I was pleased to see that it operated without problems during their visit.  It was a fun time. Ben Sullivan mentioned that he has a blog on the layout he is building. His layout is based on the Georgetown Branch of the B&O.  The Georgetown waterfront scene has always been a favorite of mine.   After seeing my layout, the group headed to Paul Dolkos's house to see his layout.

The visitors seemed as interested in the wargame board I am building as they were in the layout. A few of them said that they too did wargames.   This game board is going to be used in the Northern Virginia Gamers Group (NOVAG) Game Day in Chantilly, VA on 26 January. John Drye and Mark Franke are helping me host the game.



I am presenting a talk on Civil War Railroading on 16 January at 1000AM at the Model Railroad Club at the Hollin Hall Senior Center.   Please stop by if you get a chance to see the talk and check out their layout.

Liberty Bell Special 2019

This weekend I attended the Liberty Bell Special, the 2019 annual convention of the Mid-Atlantic Region of the NMRA. The convention was held in King of Prussia, PA, near Valley Forge. I drove up on Friday. After registering for the convention and submitting 4 models to be judged for NMRA Achievement Program purposes, I took a short ride to visit Valley Forge National Historic Park.

Replicas depict a few of the 1,000 log huts built at Valley Forge

This home served as General Washington's HQ during the encampment 

Valley Forge was the site of the 1777-78 winter encampment of the Continental Army. With 3,500-acres of monuments, meadows, and woodlands the park is much bigger and hilly than I expected. I had a chance to tour some of the replica huts that the soldiers spent the winter.  I also had a chance to visit the stone home that was Washington's headquarters for several months.

Back at the convention, I attended some clinics and visited some layouts.  I also presented a talk on the USMRR Aquia Line, which seemed to be well received.

The interior of Washington's HQ is set up as it might have looked in the
winter of 1777-1778

Ted McLean stands near Sand Patch on his layout

 Ted McLean's N scale layout was very impressive. He models the B&O and WM lines up the Sandpatch Grade in the early 1990s. The scenery, structures and overall look of the layout is spot on. It is beautiful layout.

My models did well in the contests. All four models received AP Merit Awards. The judges awarded me three first place plaques for  Passenger Car,  Freight Car and Non-Revenue Car. They picked my model of  the Lee-Brooke gun as the best in show. 

With this recent spate of travel over, I hope to finally get some work done on my layout.

The judges selected my models for these awards..