Issue Date:
April 3rd, 2009

Inside This Month's Issue:

What's up, What's New and What's Going On

General Membership Meetings

2009 Officers

2009 Suncoast Model Railroad Club Sponsored Events

HO "Gulf & Northern" Layout Progress

N "Suncoast Lines" Layout Progress

NEW Section – Prototype and Model News

Welcome New Members

Clinics – 2009

Visitors – Always Welcome!

 

What's up, What's New and What's Going On

Shows etc.

Well, what a few months.   First, the December 20 th Christmas Moonlight Run Night Open House went quite well.   Over 150 visitors attended, knocking the doors open right at 6 PM!   A fun time was had by all.   We will have this popular event again this year, and perhaps another earlier in the year.

Our January 17 th and 18 th Train Show and Open House was also quite a success, with over 600 paid attendees, and very heavy attendance at the open house.   To all our fans who came by, thank you very much, and please come again.   A good time was had by all, though one very young “engineer” was dragged kicking and screaming from the open house having not got quite enough railroading in.

Our next Train Show and Open House is Saturday and Sunday April 25 th and 26 th.

The good attendance for the last two events is probably due in large our promotional efforts in December and January at the Live Steamers open weekends in Largo Central Park.   To those club members who assisted in those promotions, a hearty thanks.   To the little @#$#% who smashed our On30 steam locomotive on the display module in January, well, I suspect you will one day be a resident in the state prison in Starke, FL; where you will have a really fun time!  

A note on the Train Show kitchen operation: last year the Minnreg Association offered to run the kitchen for us.   We took them up on this for a number of reasons, but primarily to free up our members to do other show and open house related activities.   Now, I know one or two of you out there miss some of our kitchen team’s specialties, but overall most everyone is pleased with the quality and value of what our partners are providing during these shows.   We welcome and thank them for their help, and we plan to continue this partnership.

Given the success of the first one, we plan to have two Olde Fashioned Swap Meets this year.   We have two tentative dates set which are listed below, but please check back as we are awaiting confirmation from our venue for this event.   Once gain, this will be for modelers and collectors to clean out their closets, with no dealers and a limit of one table per person.   Some 130 attended the first swap meet, and this fall we will not be opposite the Ironman Event on November 14 th that caused so much trouble for our attendees last November.

The New On30 Railway

The new On30 layout is still in development as to plan, building schedule and budget.   A second demo module is under consideration, and we expect more action in this area in March after the late February Sn3 symposium in Clearwater is competed.

More news follows in the individual railroad accounts.

 

General Membership and Board of Directors Meetings

As a reminder, our General Membership Meetings run from 8 to 9 PM on the second Thursday of each month.   The Board of Directors meet from 8 to 9 PM on the first Thursday of each month, and may from time to time have a supplemental meeting at either 7 or 7 30 PM on the second Thursday of each month as situations warrant.

 

2009 Officers

Here is your 2009 officer roster with primary scale affiliation:

Board Officers:

President:                      Jim Langston                  HO

Vice President:              Bill Middlemas               HO       

Secretary:                      Mike Shirmer                  HO

Treasurer:                       David Werner                 N, some HO

Junior Director:              Ed Ronshausen              N, some HO

Director:                          Steve Kibort                    N

Senior Director:              Tom Robinson                HO

Directors serve a three year term, all other officers a one year term.

         

Elected non-officer Positions:

N Scale Superintendent:                           Steve Kibort

N Scale Asst. Superintendent:                  Ed Ronshausen

HO Scale Superintendent:                        Carl Marchand

HO Scale Asst. Superintendent:               Ashton Scott

All non-officers serve a one year term.

 

2009 Suncoast Model Railroad Club Sponsored Events

 

April 25 th and 26 th

May 16 th – Note – Date is Tentative, check back for confirmation,

June 13 th

September 19 th and 20 th

October 31st  – Note – Date is Tentative, check back for confirmation,

December 19 th

 

Contact(s) for tables for the Train Shows will be update on the near future.

 

HO "Gulf & Northern" Layout Progress

 

Progress continues.   During our open houses operations have gone well, and no major incidents have occurred.   January saw the first appearance of the Ontario Northland Railway’s former TEE train “The Northlander”, as well as a Penn Central TurboTrain.   Heavy intermodal ops also took place, along with the usual blend of freight and passenger of the 50’s through today.

Plans to connect the 3 rd Division to the inner divisions are still in the works, and visitors in April should see some more changes and additions.   I would expect we will see a Superliner invasion in April as well, along with perhaps some UP/Milwaukee Road City of Every Where action, and some Canadian, PRR and Seaboard.

 

N "Suncoast Lines" Layout Progress

As I suspected last time, the parade of Kato passenger trains on the Suncoast Lines continues, with the 1955 Broadway Limiteds having joined the 1939 Daylights, California Zephyrs and Amtrak Superliner trains on the Suncoast lines.

In major news, the N scalers are re-doing their major city…..again.   I now, every time they re do it, some how it keeps on looking the same.   Well, this time is different.   This time they “nuked” the old city.   Yup, there is a crater where the old city was, just like the vanished Federation Colony in the Star Trek Next Generation “Borg” episode “Best of Both Worlds: Part 1”.   A team of N and even some HO people are working on the new city.   While some of the old buildings will “reappear”, there will be no resemblance to the old abomination…errrr…town.   Yours truly consulted on the new passenger station, and a revision of their freight yard.   In some ways the new town will look like some in Pennsylvania (mountain counties) with some good “three dimension” feel.

No major derailments or collisions to report, but during some recent tunnel rat operations the N scalers did find five (5) long missing railway cars inside a “hole” in part of the scenery base.

 

NEW Section! – Prototype and Model News

In this new section from time to time we hope to pass on some information about new models, and prototype news that we feel may be of interest.

 

National Train Day – Saturday May 9 th – Tampa Union Station Event – Noon to 5 PM

Amtrak and the Florida Coalition of Rail Passengers http://www.fcrprail.org/ are sponsoring events at Tampa Union Station from Noon to 5 PM on May 9 th to mark National Train Day for 2009.   Tampa Union Station is located at 601 North Nebraska Ave, Tampa, FL 33602-3525.   At present we hope this event will include the following:

When available, we will post the confirmed details of this event.

 Amtrak cars and locos to be restored to service:

The other big news this issues is also from the prototype, and is in the details of the $1.3 billion Amtrak component of the Economic Stimulus package.    This is the link to the 77 page detailed report on Amtrak’s planned expenditure:   http://www.amtrak.com/pdf/ARRA/Amtrak-ARRA_Project-Summary-FY-09.pdf .     Of interest to us modelers are the equipment repair plans which start on page 67.   These repairs are to be done between April 2009 and February 2011.

 

First, for our N-scalers, Amtrak proposes restoring the Viewliner diner prototype 8400 to service “for the Lake Shore”.   The shell of 8400 was built by Budd in 1983 and along with two sleeper shells (2300 http://www.hebners.net/amtrak/amtVIEW/amt2300f.jpg  and 2301).   Over the next three years they fitted out with interiors by Amtrak at Beech Grove.   The cars were then tested extensively, the sleepers running on Auto-Train and the Cardinal (and other trains), and the diner on the Capitol Limited (where I rode it for the first time) and then elsewhere.   These three cars have been produced by Con-Cor in N-scale, in both as delivered Phase III and in Phase IV (worn by both the Diner and sleeper 62091 Eastern View which was 2301 renumbered.   These three cars were true “prototypes” testing different systems, a/c, trucks, etc.   The diner rode on at least two different types of trucks.  

 

After testing for several years 2300 was sent to Morrison-Knudsen in 1993 when they started building the 50 production Viewliner sleepers 62000-62049 so they could figure out how it was put together (during production, M-K would go bankrupt, and their creditors would finish the 50 cars under the short-lived “Amerail” name) and never ran in service again.   2301 was stored for a while, and then for several years ran as a backup for the 50 production cars primarily on the Boston section of the Lake Shore and on the Night Owl/Twilight Shoreliner/Federal (which is now nameless coach only train 66/67), http://www.hebners.net/amtrak/amtVIEW/amt2301a.jpg   The car was supposedly renumbered 62091, done in Phase IV and named Eastern View, though the photo link shows the renumbering and naming may not have happened.   This car is now stored.   8400, being a standard 48 seat diner, ran in revenue service for several years in Phase III: http://www.hebners.net/amtrak/amtDINER/amt8400b.jpg.     In 1998, 8400 was displayed at Tampa Union Station in May during the re-opening events, and had been freshly restriped in Phase IV: http://www.hebners.net/amtrak/amtDINER/amt8400.jpg  .   You will note in the photo link the absence of the Amtrak logo from the kitchen side.   An Amtrak officer peeled it off in Tampa that weekend as it was the wrong logo/font.  

 

8400 ran in general service for a year or so after that.   As a one-of-a-kind prototype odd-ball prototype that was over 15 years old, the car began to have issues, and became a yard queen, or in airplane parlance, a hangar queen, and was eventually stored.   By fall 2004 8400 and sleeper 2301 (62091) were moved to Bear Shops in Wilmington to be used to test interior configurations for the still pending new Viewliner order (presently planned to include 80 baggage, 25 diners and 25 sleepers).

 

Of note, at a cost of $1.63M, this is the single most expensive per unit repair cost of any of the proposed repairs, and only approached by the $1.42M per unit expense of the 20 proposed Amfleet food service car to coach conversions.   And many of the others to be repaired had wreck damage!   No doubt, the systems and kitchen equipment must need updating, but it is likely this car will not emerge with it’s original 48 seat standard diner interior and may in fact be in a modified plan that may reflect the new layout for the planned 25 production Viewliner diners.   The high expense of the repair suggests a new layout.   The detailed repair explanation specifically mentions the Lake Shore.   With the winding down of the Heritage diner heavy overhauls, and the addition of this car, that would give Amtrak 21 active single level diners.   This seems to indicate a plan (long promised) to restore full dining service to the Lake Shore.   Therefore, this repair may serve the dual purpose of 1) testing an interior layout for the hoped for “production” order for 25 new diners, and 2) more insurance to cover the 16 diner assignments needed to cover diner service on the Lake Shore, Crescent, Silver Star and Silver Meteor.

For those in HO, Amtrak plans to restore 15 P40 800 series locomotives to service.   All have been stored for several years, since the demise of the express business, and several have been sold and/or leased to commuter lines.   These will be used to beef up long haul train coverage.   Now we can run them again!

For both scales, there will be a pending change to the Empire Builder and Capitol Limited.   First, 6 Superliner sleepers are to be repaired “to expand the Empire Builder”.   This implies adding a fourth sleeper to this train, excluding the Transition-Dorm.   Two presently run Chicago to Seattle, and the third Chicago to Portland.   There is no indication as to which west coast destination this fourth car will run.   Apart from Auto-Train with it’s six sleepers, this will be the only train with four Superliner sleepers (all others have 1, 2 or 3), and the first one since the demise of the Desert Wind and Pioneer in 1996 which dropped the California Zephyr from 4 to 2 sleepers Denver-Chicago.

As for the Capitol, it presently runs with diner-lounges, serving regular fare, which were converted from Superliner I diners (they run with a staffed Sightseer Lounge).   The diner-lounge conversions also run on the City of New Orleans (as sole food car) and Texas Eagle (with an unstaffed Sightseer lounge next to it), both of these trains serving stripped down “Cross-country Café” food service.   Interestingly, the diner-lounges displaced from the Capitol are to be added to the Empire Builder, in what role is not known at present.   Given that trains high ridership (over 700 per departure) and premier status as Amtrak’s number 1 train, these will no doubt supplement the existing diner and lounge on all or part of the route.   Perhaps they will serve as a first class only counterpart to the Coast Starlight’s Pacific Parlour, or perhaps to provide hot meal service on the Spokane-Portland segment (where the lounge is the only food service car now) and/or lounge service on the Spokane-Seattle segment (where the diner is now the only food service car).

Either way, looks like in a year or so we will have to add some cars to our Empire Builders!    

A few words about the Superliner “diner-lounges”: these conversions were a part of the miss-guided micro-management of Amtrak food service by Congress in 2005 as a result of the GAO Meade report on this service submitted that year.   This report revealed the fact that Amtrak does not make money on food service,   a fact that has been true of all passenger trains going back, oh, about 140 years. (Remember in Casablanca, as Captain Renault closes Rick’s American Café, exclaiming “I’m shocked! Shocked! To see that gambling is going on here”, just as one of Rick’s employees hands him his winnings from the casino.   Well, same thing here.)   On board food and beverage service was and is a necessity, and was often a “loss leader” and rarely if ever covered the cost to provide it.   The Meade report included several “sensational” factual errors that were caught by Amtrak before it was issued and brought to the GAO’s attention, yet days later they still were presented them as true (lying under oath) in congressional hearings and then widely reported as fact by the media.   They included that Amtrak paid something like $8 a bottle for beer (that was a one time clerical input error) and $20 a piece for steaks (not an error, but a one time emergency re-stocking of a diner while enroute with customers).   The report mentioned that service on Auto-Train almost covered costs and made sense.   The reason for the Auto-Train success was ignored, which was the basic economic theory of “economy of scale”.   On Auto-Train, equipped with Superliners, one diner and one lounge serves passengers from 6 sleepers, and another diner and lounge serve 4 complete coaches full meals (the one case where coach passenger meals in the diner are a part of their ticket).   On regular Amtrak trains, the diner provides meals for 2 sleepers, maybe 3 at most, and for a few coach passengers (who mostly eat in the lounge).   Given most Amtrak trains turn away passengers most of the year, the real answer would be to add cars to carry more passengers to use those diners more and garner more revenue.  

Another thing some in Congress could not understand was why “food service workers” were “paid so much”, probably thinking minimum wage and tips should be sufficient.   This discounted the fact that unlike their counterparts at Outback, Amtrak food service personnel are on the road for several days at a time, are responsible for passenger safety, and cannot hold down “other jobs” like other “food service workers” can.   In the end, though, it was clear the main thrust of Congressional action was to direct Amtrak to “eliminate” this “horrible” subsidy.   Now, everyone desires programs subsidized by the government to be run as efficiently as possible, and one can understand the view of some that the whole thing should not be subsidized and shut down.   But this endeavor was just plain nuts, and a waste of time.   Various absurd ideas were suggested, like stopping for 30 to 60 minutes at stations with restaurants at meal time like the old Santa Fe Harvey Houses in the 1880’s (of course, few have restaurants now, let alone ones that can feed 400 people in 30 minutes), to putting on box meals at certain stations.   However, the main action suggested would have seen the elimination of separate lounge and dining cars on most Amtrak long haul trains (probably resulting in the storage of most of the sightseer lounges), and the expensive conversion of the remaining cars to provide reduced food service, and take out lounge/beverage service.   While such diner-lounge cars make sense for a couple of trains, it was clear this was really another effort by the then hostile administration to shut down most, if not all, of Amtrak, through the back door rather than just saying “we want to shut it down”.  

While expenses would have been reduced, the reduction in the quality and availability of food service, plus the elimination of lounge and sight seeing facilities, would have driven far more passengers and revenue away than the costs saved; net effect, higher losses, and more pressure to eliminate the service entirely.   Of course, that was likely the intent of some.   Others may have signed on, not realizing, as noted above, food services on passenger trains had always operated as a loss, and that feature cars such as lounges and dome rarely covered their cost of operation, but these were all essentials in order to attract and keep customers on the trains, and the many business provide “loss leader services” as a course of normal commerce.   Case in point, airlines do not make money on the toilets on their planes, but they are a necessity, though one European low cost airline has raised the possibility of on board pay toilets earlier this year.   Well, as far as the diner lounge conversions go, apparently they have concluded at 17 cars and Amtrak now appears to be focusing on what they should, adding capacity to carry more passengers.

Well, that said, a total of 20 Superliners are to be repaired, the rest adding to reserve, and including 4 Sightseer Lounges.   Also, some 60 stored and damaged Amfleet cars will be restored to service.   This includes 4 Amfleet II long distance coaches, and a lounge (which will get a diner-lite modification as well).   The rest are Amfleet I coaches and food service cars; 20 of the food service cars are to be converted to coaches.   With Acela Express sets replacing the Amfleet Metroliner sets (which had two Amfleet food service cars each, a full dinette and a full club), and the elimination of “club” car service from the second tier “regional” trains (removing the full or half club on each set and leaving just the café) Amtrak ended up with a bunch of surplus Amfleet I food service cars.   20, as noted, will be converted to coaches, and 15 more will be restored to service as is, in some capacity to be worked out.   All of the Amfleet I cars restored to service are to add surge capacity to the corridor, according to the plan, but could also be used to quickly start regional service in Ohio which is advancing a plan for Cleveland-Columbus-Cincinnati day service.   These repairs will leave few, if any, stored damaged cars in Amtrak’s yards.   Restoration of New Orleans – Orlando service might be possible with aggressive management of the Superliner general pool, and especially the “generous” pool of Superliners that supports the pampered Auto-Train, but any other major additions that have been proposed, like restoring the Pioneer, Desert Wind (both terminated in 1996) and even the North Coast Hiawatha (lost in 1979) are impossible without new construction.      

Welcome New Members

There are a number of new members, welcome to all!

 

Clinics – 2009

At present we have no clinics scheduled, but hope to change that soon.   Back in October I ran a successful mini-clinic on  “Fine Tuning HO Passenger Cars” covering Walthers, Rapido and Broadway offerings.   This was followed up by a clinic by Steve Kibort on on-line ATCS monitoring in November and a water scenery clinic by Jon Addison and others in December.

As we decide on new clinics, we will try and do a better job on posting them.

Special note on clinics:   As we all have other lives, please be aware that a particular clinic may be cancelled or postponed with little or no notice.   Any postponements will be posted with adequate lead-time for the new date.

 

Visitors – Always Welcome!

To those who wish to visit the Suncoast Model Railroad Club, please check our "Meeting Times" tab to find the best time to visit.  Visitors are always welcome, but please note we may not be able to host you as well as we would like during our scheduled business meetings.   Visitors may approach our members for permission to test run some equipment on a limited basis, and if it is compatible.   We reserve the right to withhold permission.   Those who are seriously interested in our clinics are invited to attend.

Membership is open, and $25 per month, with no initiation fee.   Please visit us and ask about additional details, and DCC operations.  

Got a question, just grab one of us and ask it!

Special Group Visits

The Suncoast Model Railroad Club will consider hosting visits by special groups with prior special arrangement and agreement.   Please contact one of the board members to see if we can accommodate your group

In closing, thanks again to everyone in the club for their efforts

Lastly, remember, model train tracks always lead to fun!  

Sincerely,

W. James Langston, III

President

 

 

 



That's it for Now, See You Again, Right Here Next Month!

Carl Marchand
Editor and Webmaster

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