Hi Guys (and gals, if there are any) --
For this week ‘s fun I decaled an orange undec SHS reefer. (photo) This was a project that was much more difficult than it appeared. Those cars have “grain” in the boards the catch air under the decal. It took days of shredding the decals and hitting them with Microsol over and over again to finally get out all the trapped air. I conned a friend out of decals for his HO railroad, the Atlantic Inland, so there are two heralds on the car. The SLRE reporting marks are for the “St. Louis Refrigerated Express”, a joint venture of our two railroads. The cars owned by his railroad have AFX reporting marks for Atlantic Fruit Express. Today, Nelson Steinmetz and I went up to Flagstaff and the NMRA AZ division meet. A couple of interesting clinics, plus a demonstration of a T-mod N scale layout. The reason this was special is that it was an elementary school project layout with the participating students each getting a module that was 12” long and about 9 or 10” wide (these are commercially produced) to scenic as they chose. All the usual other modular things also had to be done in order for the trains to run and stay on the track. Anyhow, this project netted 14 new model railroaders that seem to be enthused about model trains. It sure looks like a neat way (and inexpensive) to get new blood into the hobby, have fun and teach subjects related to electricity, planning, research, etc. in a painless way. Nelson also took a first place (plaque) in structures for his bulk oil facility diorama. Both Nelson and I took home ribbons for our “favorite” train displays in S, so we got to wave the flag, too. Have fun! Bill Winans
