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7:30pm at Highland Baptist Activity Center. Marshall Higgins will show scenery slides.
June 24-27 at the Radisson Hotel Houston Hobby Airport. The LSR is the Lone Star Region of the National Model Railroad Association. They will have clinics, contests, layout tours (over 30), operating sessions, auctions, prototype tour, and non-rail activities and tours. Contact Nancy Reed for more details.
If you have some spare time, the Science Spectrum could use volunteers to run trains, do maintenance on their layouts, show the trains to visitors, or build new stuff. Contact James Nesmith at 745-2525 ext. 270.
Joe Faherty will be organizing the module building Special Interest Group, June 12, 2-4pm. Details at the meeting.
The Texas Tech Museum will be burying a 100 year time capsule sometime this year. We will give out more details as soon as we can decipher them.
Wings and Things has the Athern Genesis (undecorated) and the Kato SD40-2 in HO scale. Bob Masten also said they will soon be doubling the size of the store in a new location.
Internet Resources for Model Railroaders Top of this page Jun99
Railserve - "Currently indexing 3402 web sites in 29 categories!" This is an excellent starting point for seeing what the Internet has to offer for model railroaders and railfans. Categories include freight, passenger, modeling, supplies, clubs, layouts, etc.eBay - Online auction to buy and sell almost anything. Currently has 2,092,794 items in 1,627 categories, not all model railroad related. They have excellent methods to check references of those you do business with.
Layout Design Primer This is one of the most imformative web sites I have seen on any topic. Well worth spending a few hours reading.
LMRA web page This is our new address provided by Railserve that bounces you to the actual web page. There are several years of newsletters online, and some pictures.
If you don't have a computer, you can access it at almost any library or get one of those Web TV thingies.
"Just a fad"
While our fearless leaders in Washington would like to take all the credit for our booming stock market and economy, I would suggest that computer technology just might have something to do with it. Consider how the auto industry would be doing if, every year and a half, the cost of cars could be halved and the speed doubled. That's the sort of thing that has been happening with computer chips for the last couple of decades. And it will continue for the next couple of decades.How is this possible? Automobiles must be a certain size to carry passengers, and can't safely go past a certain speed. There are no such limits on computers. A computer is just of bunch of switches that store information. Information has no size and can go any speed up to the speed of light. Each switch in the computer stores one piece of information, on or off. Decades ago, magnetic relays, like some switch machines use, were used as the switches in computers. Then vacuum tubes, then transistors, now microprocessors containing millions of switches on a piece of silicon no larger than your thumbnail. In a few years, a few atoms will make the switches. This is already done experimentally. Soon, computers will be billions of times faster than now, with some as small as a blood cell. Smaller means faster, because it takes less time for light or electricity to travel an inch than it takes to travel a foot. Computers are very different than cars. Different rules apply because moving and storing information is different than moving people.
"Just a bunch of naughty pictures"
This myth started a couple of years ago by a Time Magazine article that contained a lot of errors and distortions due to faulty research. Time soon printed a retraction of the article. But the damage was done, and soon, many people tried to make the Internet live up to its' new reputation. But still, it is only a tiny fraction of all that is on the Internet. (Last I heard, there are more web pages than people on Earth.) So, why doesn't someone just clean it up? That's not an easy problem to solve. No one owns the Internet. It connects millions of computers in over 200 countries. Since the Internet will soon be the world's number one source of all kinds of information and knowledge, whoever could control the Internet would control a lot of the world. Who do you trust with that much power?
"It will never replace books, magazines, or newspapers"
For most purposes, it will, and very soon. It is sometimes quite literally, millions of times cheaper as a publishing medium. That is not an exageration. I expect that a newspaper somewhere will soon shut down the presses, give away handheld computers to read it's paper online, and pay for all those computers in a few months savings in printing costs. This newspaper will give away the daily access to the "paper" as well. And they will make a lot of money doing this. The same economics apply to television and radio programming, magazines, audio books, newletters, etc. They will all become part of the Internet. Hundreds of newspapers, radio stations, and books are now online. One popular lone reporter, Matt Drudge, has more readers than all the major news networks combined. Stranger things are yet to come. Paper printing is a stone axe, the Internet is an atomic bomb. The technology and the economics are that different. Soon, you will carry the world's combined public knowledge and noise clipped to your belt or in your purse.
"It will always be too slow to be practical"
Right now, most computers are connected to the Net using the same kind of copper wires used by Alexander Graham Bell over 100 years ago. It's not a super-highway, but a muddy wagon rut. But, a single glass fiber-optic cable thinner than a human hair can carry more phone conversations than the entire United States phone system on Mother's Day afternoon.When I hear someone mention 500 television channels, I just laugh (quietly). That would be like a library with only 500 books available at any time. I have more than that at home, and they are of my own choosing. When the Internet gets some real speed, Each person will only need one channel, but they will have instant access to millions of programs (video, audio, text, or any combination). You will request a movie, and faster than you can blink, it will be flashed onto the tv's hard drive. Better than a personal Library of Congress.
Bibliography - Being Digital, by Nicolas Negreponte; Mirror Worlds, by David Gelernter; Unbounding The Future, by K. Erik Drexler; Nano, by Ed Regis; The Road Ahead, by Bill Gates.
These are usually connected together with other modules for a club's public display. They should be built to the NMRA standards and can be scenicked, if you wish. Common sizes are 2X4 and 2X6. The modules have standardized locations where the track is joined to other modules. This places some limitations on design. Reliable wiring and track are very important to prevent stalling and derailments. They can be set up at home, but for most people may not be the best use of space for a home layout.
Similar to modules, but without the requirement for standardized connections of track between sections. This might be a good choice if you move often or want to set up the layout at public shows.
A good choice for a first or second layout to get practice in building or for small layouts for public shows. If you can hide the loops in cuts or tunnels, they will look more realistic, because real trains don't run around chasing their tails. Consider not even having a loop if you enjoy switching. Try it if you haven't yet. Just put in some sidings and runaround track or a yard ladder. Last Sunday afternoon, I laid track for a 1X4 yard ladder in N scale that only uses 3 turnouts. I have already had more fun operating it than my 2 previous loop layouts that didn't provide for any switching.
This is probably the best choice for most people who want a permanant home layout. If you don't expect to move in the next 10 years or so, you may as well get the best use of space available. This style wastes less room space on aisles than an island layout. Avoid all duck-unders if possible, or at most have one to get inside the layout for operating. You can add peninsulas for yards or even have a backdrop down the center of them to divide the layout into more scenes. If you use turntables, wyes, or loops to turn around, you can make the layout a walk-in, especially desirable for us older folks. Allen McClelland's book The V & O Story is a good resource.
If space is really hard to come by, this is a good choice that can fit into almost any room. These are almost always point-to-point and the smaller the scale, the more can be fit into a small space. They can also be portable.
The British are becoming famous for their innovative small layouts that are usually designed for lots of switching, even at shows! Consider point-to-point even for room sized layouts, as they make excellent use of available space. Dave Barrow's Cat Mountain and Santa Fe is an example.
These usually have one or more helixes to get from one level to the other(s). These will be more difficult to build and maintain, so consider carefully before you choose to build one. They can pack a lot of track into a room, so if that's what you want more than anything, it might be for you. John Armstrong's 20 Custom Designed Track Plans has a bunch of plans to give you ideas.
This is the famous multiple loop, in and out of tunnels layout. Try to avoid for a home layout unless you also include switching. Might be a good choice for a layout designed strictly for public displays.
Usually under glass, often the spaghetti bowl style. Usually N or Z scale. Keep in mind that the novelty might wear off very soon if there is no opportunity for operations.
I wear my strong 3.25 reading glasses now almost as much as my regular ones. They come in handy even when putting grab irons on an HO diesel.
Recently I discovered Sculptamold. It takes paint very much like plaster, and appears to be made of plaster and paper mache. It has a natural rough texture that blends well into scenery, and can be used to "glue" plaster rocks into place.
One of those electric cut-off saws is practically indispensible when building benchwork and is very fast. Just treat that blade like a rattlesnake. Same for any power saw.
The AMSI ground foam has a natural looking texture and some very realistic colors.
Two items from Radio Shack that make soldering much easier are a fiberglass brush and rosin paste flux.
Hobby Lobby has a brush cleaning jar that contains a wire coil. Just brush over the coil, and your brush is clean. The paint settles to the bottom of the jar below the coil.
LPS-1 oil has many uses: cleaning track, motors, switches, and even the volume slide switches on my stereo.
The little shop vac I bought can double as an air raid siren. Next time I will try it out first in the store and watch the employees come out of wherever it is they hide.
Soon, I expect to invest in a quiet air compressor. My airbrush drains the air tank in about 10 minutes, and it is getting to be almost impossible to find a gas station with enough air pressure to be worth the trouble.
I'm learning that having the right tools at hand makes a big difference in the time it takes to do a job and the quality of the results.
June
7 - 7:30pm - Meeting
16 - 7:30pm - Executive Committee Meeting
24-27 - Lone Star Region Convention - Houston
July
all month - Display at Mahon Library
Sept
Narrow Gauge Convention