USRM Club – February 2012

Monthly Clinic
This month the Utah Society of Railroad Modelers celebrated its first anniversary. I joined the organization in December and wish I had known about the club sooner. The meeting have been excellent. They are very informative and fun. The clinic this month was by Richard Piccuilla, proprietor of Custom Signal Systems, LLC. Richard helps modelers create signal systems for their layouts. His explanation of signal aspects was very helpful. You can view his website here: http://www.customsignalsystems.com/

Click on the photo for a larger view.

USRM Newsletter
I was asked to create a mast head for the club newsletter. The newsletter was only occasionally done and did not have a name. With the club growing, the newsletter needed to be a marketing piece that really represented the cub. We started with a poll for the name of the newsletter on the club Yahoo Groups website. After several weeks, I created designs based on the top three suggestions. A mock-up of the ideas will be presented at the next meeting and voted on. Here are those designs.

Layout Tour – February 2012

Bob Lewis’s Green River, Wyoming Union Pacific Layout
I had the fabulous opportunity to go on my first layout tour. This layout was constructed by Bob Lewis, a member of the Utah Society of Model Railroaders. It includes over 300 feet of mainline and spans his entire basement. The railroad winds its way through the Wyoming countryside crossing high bridges and nice long tunnels. A large hidden staging yard underneath the layout on the opposite end from of a large radius helix provides plenty of action. On the other side of the room, a visible yard handles the necessary chores for local trains. The entire layout is signaled to help operators complete their runs flawlessly. All I can say is WOW! Thanks to Bob for letting a nubie drool on his layout and thanks to Jim for setting up the tour.

Click on the photo for a larger view.

Layout Construction - January 2012

Wolf Creek Bridge
Needing to do something artistic, I decided to add more scenery detail to the Wolf Creek bridge area. With the addition of more static grass, tuft grass, small bushes, cattails and trees this scene is nearly complete.

Click on the photo for a larger view.

USRM Post Card
Another reason I wanted to enhance this area was an idea I had for a post card. I had taken a photo of the Wolf Creek bridge area just after removing the pink foam for the creek. The idea was to combine the old photo with a new photo showing the transition from start to end. While another design was selected for the actual post card, I thought it was still a unique idea.

Worlds Greatest Hobby Show – January 2012

Once every five years the World’s Greatest Hobby Show ascends on Utah. This years show featured displays from many manufacturers and regional vendors.

Layouts from the WGH Show
There were quite a few great displays of local modular layouts at the show. Including the Utah Free Mo group which is featured in the first to photos. Mike Nelson (top left photo) is a member of the USRM and gave a very interesting clinic about Free Mo modeling.

Treasures from the show
I can’t seem to go to a railroad show with out buying something. This show was no different. I found a three car set of Western Maryland box cars that I could not resist. I had been searching for the “speed lettering” car (Upper left photo) for a long time. The other WM cars were a bonus.

The USRM at the show
The Utah Society of Railroad Modelers had a booth at the show for recruiting new members. We were able to sign up 21 new members to the NMRA. Below are the business cards that I designed to hand out to people interested in joining our club.

A New Family - December 2011

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.

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.

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.