The Houston S Gaugers despite setting up our modules several times each
year (looks like we have 3-4 events this Spring) is also having trouble
getting together to repair and work on them. If you check out our
website you will see some now vintage photos of them being readied for
our first show, the 87 NMRA. Notice the young and handsome workers!
Before we participated in the Denver NASG we set up our growing layout
in my studio. We filled it edge to edge or about 1600 sq ft.
Unfortunately I no longer have that studio, so a indoor setup place is
not easy to find so it's been driveways. Unfortunately Houston has
frequent rains, high humidity, and high temperatures making these
efforts difficult.
When I was building my layout, the whole building needed to be built.
Several of the guys helped throughout the project--and I'm talking 20ft
2 x 12's here. We had a bit of an issue with the stairway to the second
story. Jack Troxell, used his engineering background to make up a
drawing with specifications in thousands of an inch!
When it came time to add the bench-work, another long-gone member helped
with hanging bench-work over an open space for my one loop spiral. When
it came time to add my curved corner background, my wife and unborn
daughter helped. My wife leaned against the corner to form it, while I
added a few screws to fasten. The corners are the shape of her
baby-bump in 1984. After many of the handmaid turnouts that I purchased
from Earl Ehislisman (sp) turned out to be a little "too" handmaid, Jack
again taught me to build my first scratch-built turnout--a three-way.
Another member made up some tunnel portals for me. Bill Green lent his
garage workshop for a DCC install workshop session, so some of the guys
we helped. And yes boB, we would have accepted you in our beginner's class!
So helping someone along still happens if you have somebody with the
energy and know how to effect the outcome--and as we age, that may be
much more difficult. Speaking of--we're doing our first train show on
February 16th. So if you're anywhere near our fair city--stop in and
be drafted into helping! The pay is low, the hours hard, but the
rewards have yet to be announced!
Bob Werre
PhotoTraxx
I was reading where someone was reminiscing about the good o;' days
with the LV group where everybody helped dig out someone's basement
for model railroad construction and I was thinking, "Does anybody do
those things anymore?" Unfortunately, such activity is out of my realm
now, especially since I have health issues to worry about, but it is
something I would have enjoyed "back in the day". The closest I ever
came to that was helping a friend dig up a sewer tile that a Chinese
Elm had plugged with roots after we exhausted all possibility that his
young son had tried to flush a diaper down the toilet (considering
that this was mid-November, and the temperature dropped faster than
the setting sun at sundown, we were beginning to wish that had been
the case - railroad content; we had spent some time earlier that day
tuning up a Hobbytown diesel for his HO loop of track).
"S"tring boB
