Inside This Month's Issue:
- General
Membership Meeting
- New
General Membership Meeting Feature
- Jim
Langston Becomes Club President
- Layout
Progress is rampant!
- DCC
Clinic Series Launched In June
- Welcome
New Members
- DC
vs. DCC Operations -
UPDATED
General Membership Meetings suspended until September
Summer is the best time to take time off from our busy schedules, have a vacation with the family, and do a little railfanning. July and August are also very hot and humid months. As a result, our general membership meetings will be suspended until the month of September. This will not affect the board meeting schedule or our operating session schedule.
Jim Langston becomes Club President
D. Attig, club President recently relocated to Colorado after accepting a great job offer. As a result, Jim Langton becomes the interim President and will complete D's term. Pat Berry will serve as Vice-President and continue his duties as Secretary. Mr. Attig became an integral part of our organization; his leadership and guidance allowed us to take to club to new and exciting heights. And while we congratulate D. on his new endeavor, he will be greatly missed.
Layout Progress is rampant!
A new spirit of enthusiasm has literally invaded the club--and it's contagious. Last week there were multiple members of the club working on some aspects of the layouts or the clubhouse every day of the week.
N-scale layout scenery is making significant progress along with the installation of additional infra-red recievers for control. The n-scalers have a plate full of changes underway for the layout--both short-term and long-term---we'll get details from Bill Knapp and share them along with pictures for next month's website updates.
HO layout is undergoing a rapid scenic freshen-up, along with construction of new structures, the addition of automobiles, people, and other details. All this is taking place amid major projects underway on the signalling system, rewiring, passenger terminal roadway and industrial viewblock construction to separate Kaiser yard from the Alcoa division. There is plenty to do. If you want in on the fun, see Jon Addison or Carl Marchand, and they'll plug you into the right area.
DCC Clinics Series Launched In June
June marked the beginning of our DCC clinic series. Our first two clinics covered DCC programming basics and DCC consisting. Tim Maslyn and Carl Marchand served as trainers. Both men did a great job presenting the topics. Each clinic was presented using PowerPoint on an video projector. Handouts and quick-info guides were given to each attendee. Future clinics will include the following topics: DCC decoder installation, Locomotive Troubleshooting and Maintenance, Advanced Programming and Special Effects. Stay tuned for dates and times.
Welcome
New Members
When
someone makes application for membership in our club, both the club and the
individual take 90-days to figure out the fit factor and the activity level
to see if membership is mutually beneficial. Since we're all about fun and
relationships with other model railroaders, it makes sense to limit membership
to people who find our style and approach to the hobby to mesh with their
own. plus we look for people who will add to our strength through donations
of time and club involvement.
Congratulations to our new members for 2006:
- Irv Batten
- Jon Brey
- Bob DeStephano
- David Cosman
- Stan Jackowski
- Steve Kibort
- Tim Maslyn
- Pierre Ratte
- Antonio Santana
- Robert Sparks
- Bill Timmers
- Tim Whitney
Welcome to the club!
DC vs. DCC Operations - UPDATED
Club consensus has resulted in increasing DCC operations to every Thursday and Saturday session. DC operators fear not; the outside loop has the option of running in DC mode simultaneously each session. Other than the outside loop, the balance of the layout is restricted to DCC operation only. By the way, using the outside loop in DC mode is great for testing locomotive performance prior to installing DCC electronics.
New General Membership Meeting Feature:
The Mini Clinic:
We'll start the meeting with a mini clinic on how to create a soldering pencil tip cleaner. If you do any soldering, you already know the value of keeping the tip of your pencil or iron clean. If you would like to build one of your own in 5 minutes or less, bring the following items:
- One small 4 oz. can of baking POWDER (not soda) . This is available at most grocery stores...you'll want the 4 ounce can with the plastic lid and peel off metal tab top. Clabber Girl and Rumford both package their product in these cans.
- One Package of two COPPER scouring pads. I've seen these in generic form at Dollar Tree, or by O'cedar at Walgreens.
- One sandwich-size or larger zip-lock bag. This is a critical component.
Important
note: When seal is removed, the top of the
Baking Powder can is not entirely revealed.
If you have ideas for other mini clinics you would like to share with other members of the club, let me know--we could use 10 more throughout the course of the year.
That's it for Now, See You Again, Right Here Next Month!
Carl
Marchand
Editor and Webmaster
