Monday, April 5, 7:30pm at the Highland Baptist Activity Center, 34th and Quaker. Bob Anconetani will show us how to paint backdrops.
John McKinley, Jr. now has a new baby girl, Trinna Paige, 7 pounds 15 ounces. Congratulations.
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 mail to 5801-22nd St. #24, Lubbock, TX 79407. The club's web page is http://railserve.com/lmra, E-mail address is jackseay@sbcglobal.net mailto:jackseay@usa.net,
Mon. April 12, 7:30pm at Jack Seay's apartment, 5801-22nd St. #24 (facing Frankford Ave.).
Tuesday, April 20, 7:30pm, at Brad Jones house, 5008-58th St. This date might be changed to fit schedules. If so, it will be announced at the meeting.
I would build "SouthLandz". It's only a matter of time until some Texan with too much time and money on his/her hands decides to out-do "NorthLandz". If by some freak of nature, that were ever to be my "fate", what approach would I take?
After creating a virtual reality version of it on the Internet, I might buy a hanger at the now empty Reese Air Force Base or the Texas Instruments building. The benchwork would be the rabbit-warren type, where visitors follow along a trail under the raised layout, and periodically walk up steps to observation platforms to view scenes. There would be other raised trails around the outside that would require no climbing. View blocks of canyon walls, mountains and backdrops would separate the layout into dozens of separate scenes.
I might pick some of the areas my family saw during a two week vacation when I was about 10 years old. We visited Oklahoma , Texas , New Mexico , Arizona , Utah , Idaho , Oregon , and Colorado . It took weeks to recover. We saw the mile-wide Meteor Crater (about 36 feet across in N scale). We hiked Arizona's narrow tree-filled Walnut Canyon , with walking trails along the side of the canyon allowing us to peer into caves (with soot from Indian fires still on the roofs). We saw the Petrified Forest , the Painted Desert , the Garden of the Gods , Glen Canyon Dam , the Grand Canyon , Royal Gorge , and a beautiful little canyon in Idaho called Jump Creek.
Jump Creek has a narrow stream with stepping stones in it, and dead-ends in a waterfall. Visitors can climb up next to the top of the waterfall by wedging yourself into a vertical crack and moving upwards one hand or foot at a time. Someone who had done so slipped on a rock above us, starting an avalance. I watched in horror as a boulder the size of a car just barely missed my little sister.
I might also add a scene of my favorite place in the world, Carlsbad Caverns , or the newly discovered cavern near it. Also modeled would be Arcosanti , the city-in-a-building under construction in Arizona. It is designed by my favorite architect, Paolo Soleri. I designed a similar city 5 years ago, one building about 7 feet across in n-scale. Some of the housing would feature water gardens, solar heating and cooling, atriums, windmills, etc.
To fit many of these scenes into a building smaller than Truman's World requires a small scale. The trains would snake through the above mentioned scenes to two or three towns. Each town would have a basic infrastructure such as police and fire stations, industries, housing, businesses, apartments, sewage treatment plant, water tower, wild-life habitats, landfills, and other delights of city life, such as public "art".
Several trains could run along the single main-line continuously, with some switching done when club members were present. Visitors might be allowed to do some supervised switching after watching a training film and taking a written and driving test. An extra high-speed track could accomodate an ICE or TGV train.
Enough dreaming for now. Time to get back to work on my 1X4 foot z-scale layout. It will be fun for one to operate.
April
5 - Meeting 7:30pm
12- Home Layout Design SIG - 7:30pm
16-18 Arts Festival - Fairground - HO modules
16-18 Celebrate Abilene
20 - Executive Committee Meeting - 7:30pm
July
all month - Mahon library setup
Sept
Narrow Guage Convention