HN2009: Day 3 - 7/8

Tuesday morning, up early to head to the Danbury Rail Museum, it is an hour or so bus ride before we arrive. The museum is located in the depot for Danbury. The track arrangement here is very interesting with the old yard that now houses the museum collection circled by a multi-track reversing loop. It is like something right off a model railroad really. There are also some unused tracks of the Housatonic that pass by the opposite side of the depot as well.



The museum collection is housed in a fenced in area on the old yard tracks. They opened up the gates for us and we had a guided tour of the equipment on site. Lots of interesting pieces on display, some very unique. I particularly enjoyed the MEC caboose #681 that we were able to walk through.




A Conn DOT commuter train came around the reverse loop for a crew change so I was able to get some pictures and video of the clean locomotive in a New Haven inspired paint scheme.



Pretty neat also was a refurbished PRR RPO. The inside was restored giving us a look at how the mail was handled and sorted aboard the train.




After looking around inside the depot we were taken on a short ride through the yard on a coach pulled by an SW unit. We headed out to the turntable, detrained and then took a spin on the turntable. Then it was back to the depot and onto the bus for the ride back to the convention center.



In the afternoon I checked out a few clinics before heading back to the hotel to recharge, get some dinner and get back to the convention center for the evening clinics. At 7pm I attended a slide presentation on the Bangor & Aroostock and Maine Central prototypes. Then it was time for my two clinics. First up was a look at the prototype railroads of Northern New England, followed by a look at my layout and the design process I used to incorporate 5 railroads onto 1 layout.

A note about the convention center - it is a great location for presenting clinics, but I do find the opening and closing of the rear door distracting and noisy. Before I started I propped the door open to prevent this distraction. It seemed to work out OK and there was not to much noise from the outside hallway. I guess there isn't too much you can do about people coming and going I suppose, but it would be nice if the doors worked in such a way to not be so noisy. A small nit I suppose. Otherwise the convention center is a good location, clean and modern. Very nice are the abundant displays with up-to-date information on clinics throughout as well as outside each clinic room.