Friday, February 10, 2012

A New Family - December 2011


Signature Box

The Utah Society of Railroad Modelers
While attending the Wasatch Rails 2011 show in November, I attended several clinics put on by the Utah Society of Railroad Modelers. The clinics were enjoyable and very informative. Part of the clinic included a recruiting message from the organization. I have been a “lone wolf” modeler for a long time. This fairly new organization looked like it had a lot to offer to somebody like me. The one thing that peaked my interest more than anything was how the “club” was organized. This is what I call a “non-club” club. What I mean by that is, there are no club dues (You need to join the National Model Railroad Association after three meeting), there are no club officers (Just a Chief Instigator and his assistant instigators), all positions within the club are volunteer and not elected. I have belonged to clubs in the past that became riffed with politics. This really takes away from the enjoyment of a hobby, something that is suppose to be fun.

My contribution to the group so far is helping to design a new logo. We needed something that was representational of a Utah club. After many possible ideas, a small group was chosen to be voted by the group. This is new winning design.

USRMLogo_8

Layout Construction
With activities in the new club, work and the Christmas season, not much work was completed on the layout. I continued to the work on Red Coulee bridge. The bridge supports are very time consuming and I’m going slowly to try and do it right the first time.

Videos
I take the time to complete a few videos of layout. The first one is from a spy camera at the front of the train. I built a special car to hold the camera.

mini camcam car

On board video

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This next video was shot in high definition with my camera phone. It is a Motorola Atrix 2 with 1080 video on board. Enjoy!

High–Def layout view.