7:30pm at the Highland Baptist Activity Center, 34th. German R.R. by Ron Kutch (with models).
In March Bob Moulton will show us how to make styrofoam scenery. Bob Batson will have something for April.
German Railways (outline of Feb. program), by Ron Kutch
We know of the tracks from the East coast to the West coast. Such names as Santa Fe, Burlington, Union Pacific , the Mo Pack and scores of short lines nation wide are burned into our memory. This is something to be proud of our transportation. But what of other trains in Europe? Germany is a country about the size of Montana.The railway revolution in Germany which began on the 7th December 1835 when the first German train ran between Nurnberg and Furth. I say German although both the locomotive and it's driver were actually English. The locomotive Adler (Eagle) was built by Robert Stephenson and Co. In Newcastle, and the driver: a Mr. William Wilson stayed on in Germany and upon his death was buried in Nurnberg.
Over time, the various lands (the German Lander are similar to English counties, or American states) in Germany started building their own railway systems, which began to connect the corners of Germany together.
Now that we know the country, what names did they use for freight cars, passenger coaches, gondolas, hoppers, flat cars and tankers? How did they number them and keep up with where they came from.
In their technical dictionary there is something for everyone a "Ma Bstab"(scale),for Don, and if we were in Denver we would have a Schmalspurlokonotives ( narrow-gauge.)
For further information contact: http://www german railways.com The information in this outline came from this location.
H.O. assembled craftsman's kits of rolling stock - call Rebecca Clinton
O Lionel track, cars - call Sherry Strawn
Home Layout Design SIG
Mon. Feb. 8, 7:30pm at Jack Seay's apartment, 5801-22nd St. #24 (facing Frankford Ave.). Bring your brain.
$2 a set, N and HO scales, black or white. See Dave Lamberts at the meeting.
Brad Jones - president; Jack Seay - vice-president and editor; Dave Lamberts - treasurer; Jerry Dukes - secretary; and Marshall Higgins - librarian. Also members of the board, to keep things running as sanely as can be expected, are Nancy Reed, Bob Batson, and Ron Kutch.
http://home.earthlink.net/~jackseay . E-mail jackseay@sbcglobal.net mailto:jackseay@usa.net, . If you want to write a newsletter article or announcement, give it to me at the meeting, email it, call me: H 785-0068, W 792-6512, or send it by carrier pidgeon to 5801-22nd St. #24, Lubbock, TX 79407.
Wings N Things has the following new stuff: Atlas RS1 (N-scale) and SD60 (N-scale). Athern RS1 (HO-scale). Proto Life-Like 2000 GP7 and 1000 F3A (HO-scale). Bachman Spectrum 2-8-0 (HO-scale).
Tuesday, 7:30 P.M., February 16th, at Brad Jones house, 5008-58th St.
This will be your last newsletter if not paid. Pay Dave Lamberts at the meeting, or mail to Lubbock Model Railroad Assoc., P.O. Box 53674, Lubbock, TX 79453.
Two Books about Operating. top top
Operation Handbook For Model Railroads by Paul Mallery. 199 pages, Carstens. This is a detailed reference book on operating your layout as much like the real thing as is practical. It will take me a number of readings plus a lot of hands-on application to get a good grasp of this book. You will probably not put into practice all the proceedures in this book. The author recommends taking a slow step-by-step approach to adding practices to a railroad operation, waiting until all operators are comfortable with current practices until adding something new. This is an indespensible reference for anyone with a home layout.The V & O Story by W. Allen McClelland. 105 pages, Carstens. A detailed look at one home layout from concept to operations. The emphasis of the author is that a railroad, to be truly realistic, must interchange with other railroads "beyond the basement". Modeling a transportion system, rather than just moving cars from one place to another, is what he outlines.
I am reminded of a concept in movie-making called "suspension of disbelief". The goal of a director is to cause the audience to, for the length of the movie, believe as much as possible that they are witnessing reality. To attain this, two items are important: a realistic setting and realistic action. These same two realisms are what can make model railroading such an interesting hobby to be involved in.
I have recently finished one wood trestle and begun another. This type of bridge is hard to beat for visual interest on a layout. Although they are complicated looking, they are actually quite simple to build, if somewhat time consuming.
The first one I assembled was an O scale model made of redwood, from Miami Valley Products. They also make some huge G-scale bridges.
I first stained the wood with a thinned-down gray acrylic paint. This made it look like old wood. Look at an old telephone pole for an idea of what old creosoted wood looks like after being out in the weather many years.
The kit came with a full size blueprint of a bent (the upright support assembly). The blueprint was placed on plywood, covered with wax paper, then straight pins were hammered in to make a template to hold the wood in position while gluing. Each piece of wood was then cut with a razor saw and placed into the jig. The parts were glued together with gap-filling super glue. The bents were made at various heights to fit into a valley that would later be created around it.
Some people, such as Dave Lamberts, scratch and gouge the wood to make it look more realistic, then glue on thousands of nut and washer castings.
After all the bents were assembled, I traced the shape of the curve onto a piece of newsprint, and assembled the trestle upside down along the curve. I started by gluing pairs of bents together, connected by horizontal braces, called longitudinal tie beams. Then the paired towers were connected together with more tie beams.
Then I cut the roadbed out from under the track and glued two stringers underneath the ties. Stringers consist of three narrow pieces of wood glued together. The trestle was c-clamped and glued to the stringers.
A base was made nineteen inches underneath the track and plywood platforms cut to fit between the base and the bottom of the bents. Some wood shims were needed in some places to get the platforms to touch the bents. The tops of the platforms were painted before gluing them in place. Most of the height of these will later be covered with scenery.
This is a curved trestle in a corner, three feet long. I cut some of the benchwork out to make room for the valley the trestle spans. After the scenery is in place, two mirrors will be placed into the corner to make the valley seem to go on further. Trees will hide the seams between the mirrors and the "real world".
This is not the only way to assemble a trestle, and almost certainly not the best, but it worked. Next time, I'll try building the base and platforms first and build the trestle from the ground up. I will also hand lay track on longer bridge ties for a better appearance.
I have begun my next trestle, an N-scale by J-V Models. I have had the kit for months, and the box of several hundred pieces of wood was scary to open, but I finally screwed up my courage and got started. It wasn't as hard as I feared it would be. So far, I have assembled five bents, each taking about one hour. Since the wood is so much smaller, a razor blade can be used to cut it, much faster than sawing.
It is a lot of fun to build trestles, and even if you don't have a place on a layout for one, you might want one for a display or diorama.
How can railroads, a technology invented more than a century ago, still be state of the art today? Virginia Postrel, in a Forbes Internet article, gives us a clue. http://www.forbes.com/asap/98/1130/200.htm, My observations in this article build on her work.
This is the age when last year's technology is obsolete (sometimes last month's). We tear down perfectly good buildings (and institutions), and put up new ones in their place. We believe in revolutions, that the past must be destroyed to build the future. The past is irrelevant. It has nothing to teach us? Or does it?
Occasionally, there needs to be revolutionary changes. Computer design, for example, seems to demand enourmous changes in a short span of time. New developments quickly bring about vast improvements. The price of memory is now a million times less than it was a few decades ago, and the speed millions of times faster. But this sort of radical change isn't always needed.
It would seem that the Mount Wilson telescope, finished in 1917, is in real need of being scrapped. This is the day of the Hubble Space Telescope. We have to get out of the earth's atmosphere to get rid of the atmospheric distortions, don't we?
Not necessarily. In 1953, a Mount Wilson astronomer named Horace Babcock proposed that all the atmospheric distortions be measured and corrected as they occurred.
Forty two years later, in 1995, that became a reality. Perched under the 100 inch Wilson mirror are now 250 tiny electronic pistons. Computers calculate how the big mirror needs to be warped by mere millionths of an inch to counteract the deforming effects of the earth's pulsating atmosphere on the light rays. For a mere three million dollars, the ancient earth-bound Mount Wilson telescope now sees as clearly as the billion dollar Hubble Space Telescope, although it doesn't see as far.
Imagine looking through a pair of binoculars with lenses that constantly pulsate and vibrate to precisely reverse the effects of heat waves, completely clearing up the view. This seems impossible, but they did it on the big Wilson mirror.
If the old 200 inch Palomar telescope (and others like it) didn't already exist, and someone proposed building it today, any sane person would say it was impossible. We seem to have forgotten the Herculean acceivements of the early part of the twentieth century, because we have been conditioned to believe that everything must be revolutionary: the old destroyed and forgotten, and the new built over the rubble.
A good deal of the past is worth keeping because it was good design then, and is still good design. Steel rails still make sense, and are still the best choice for many applications. Some railroad bridges made in the early 1800's still carry enourmous loads and are among the greatest wonders of the world. When I read about their construction, I am as amazed as if I was reading about men going to Mars.
We can most effectively build the future by holding onto the best things of the past, improving and combining them where appropriate. There is more to it than mere nostalgia.
The Cambodian Pol Pot regime tried to build a future for Cambodia by divorcing it from the past. They emptied the cities and killed nearly everyone with an education. The country's surviving population became wandering refugees and millions perished. In so doing, they devastated a nation, turning it into a roving concentration camp and a human slaughterhouse.
Destroying the past is the surest way to destroy the future. It is when I study history: the culture, thinking, arts, and technologies of decades and centuries past; that I most clearly see the way ahead.
The next few decades will produce technological changes of stunning, breathtaking proportions; but they won't pop out of a vacuum. If we forget the role of history in producing them, we will have lost something of great value. The work, thinking, struggles and sacrifices of the past are the foundations and building blocks for the present and the future. The next century's acheivements will tower because of, not in spite of, the accomplishments of our ancestors, and us.
Bibliography - The Murder of a Gentle Land by John Barron and Anthony Paul (Cambodia), The Perfect Machine by Ronald Florance (Palomar telescope), 1984 by George Orwell, Unbounding the Future by K. Erik Drexler.
1 - 7:30pm - Meeting
8 - 7:30pm - Home Layout Design SIG
16 - 7:30pm - Executive committee
16-20 Goethe library setup (spring break week) - Club module
8 - 8:00 -10:30pm - KTXT telethon
all month - Mahon library setup