Heat Wave

Has it been hot enough for you? At least most of the country has been at or near 100 degrees this week. Yikes, nowhere to go but the basement I suppose!

Well, I have not been real good about posting something at least each month this year like I planned. It was April, and now July is almost over! Well, let me post some stuff to get back on track.

I will have my layout open for the New Jersey Division Meet on September 10th. Check out njdivnmra.org for more info. It will also be open again in November on a date TBA for model railroad month as part of the MD-DE-PA-NJ full month of open layouts.

On the Free-mo front, I am disappointed that the NER Convention in Warwick, RI will not have a Free-mo set up. The New England Free-mo guys tried real hard to get it to happen, but the convention committee seems to have dropped the ball on having a great addition to their convention. Oh well, these things happen.

I will have my Free-mo modules at the October 29-30 Timonium, Maryland Great Model RR Trainshow. I'll participate with the Capitol Free-mo group. I should have some more updates to my modules, and I look forward to doing some operating amongst the modules set up.

Speaking of the modules, I thought I would share a couple of photos about how I store them when I am not using or working on them. My layout was pretty much designed and all benchwork was built before I learned about and started down the Free-mo path. The layout is not changing, and I am not able to incorporate my modules into the layout. Which is OK because part of doing the modules was to allow me to model a time period after my layout which is set in 1980. So things you would see circa 1996 to 2005 are on the modules and would not be easily integrated into my layout.

So I needed a place to store them safely within the confines of the layout room. I built a set of brackets under the layout and use plastic sheeting to keep dust and debris from above the layout.

The smaller module sits to the side and the legs go underneath. They are safe here and still allow me to work on the layout above with no problems.

These have been in storage since the last Timonium show, but they should be up in the garage in September to get ready for the NJ Division Meet, as they will be on site at the Meet location.