Copper Hills Show - A Saturday Happening

One of the goals of our model railroad club, Rail Roadrunners of Yuma, is to take the hobby to the public in schools, homes and fairs.

This afternoon, Marv, Ron and I took two layouts to Copper Hills Assisted Living Facility.  This is about our fourth visit and we shared 4 scales, N, HO, O and G.

Ron

 

 

Here Ron sits comfortably, overseeing his domain, an N scale layout on a 2'x4' Homosote board obtained from Marv, in a wood frame made by me, running on track relaid by Marv.  Encouraged by my Clinic, Building a Diorama, available elsewhere on this blog, Ron and his wife are adding scenery and structures to the small, portable, layout.

 

 Glen

This was Camp Swampy, after the first major changes, removing the flex track and turnouts that seemed to cause derailments.  I had bought a batch of Bachmann EZ Trac and made a simple 22" radius circle.  The white shows where the old track was.  The dark green spot in the center was where the old flagpole stood.

After a week of work I ended with this, a double track, two level circle layout.  The upper level is  1" extruded foam cut to fit inside the 22" radius circle and able to still hold a circle of 18" radius.  Most of the buildings are card models downloaded from the internet, printed on 110# card stock and assembled with glue.  The log cabin and several buildings were scratch built by me.

Another Glen, a Snowbird from Canada, brought this G scale battery powered model to one of our meetings to see if we could help him get it running.  With his permission I took it home and worked at rounding the plastic bearings on the driver axles to allow it to start and run in forward and reverse.  The tender has four orange buttons you press to make different calls, bells, whistles chuffs and running sounds, quit an attention getter.  On a sorry note, I opened the rear door of the SUV in the rain and the box with this and other items fell out.  I have not had the nerve to look yet.

This colorful little train is On30, O scale train running on HO track.  The coach painting is based on Thomas Kincade paintings.  I let this run on the upper level for the entire 2 hour show.

Marv

Marv had a relaxing day, working mostly to help Ron and me move everything in and out.  He also pushed the orange buttons on the G scale engine to create sounds and motions to attract attention.

 

Come join us Saturday mornings from about 9 am till noon for our regular weekly meeting at the Community Christian Church, 6480 East Highway 95, Yuma, AZ.  Pull around back, we are in the South building.

This is an earlier shot of the 5'x10' HO layout we are presently working on during the weekly meetings.  It will be a 2 level layout with 23" minimum curves and 2% maximum grades.  We have the lower level sub-roadbed finished and supported well.  The upper level starts on 12-17-2011.  Be there!

Armchair