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AMHERST BELT LINES |
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HO Modular Railroad |
Copyright © 2002, Amherst Railway Society
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Sudro Brown BrownSudro@cs.com |
Clark Huber chuber@charter.net |
Alan Rice abel.planning@comcast.net |
What a season! We have brought our 2001-2002 model railroad show season to a close with Pepperell, Bedford, Amherst/West Springfield, Worcester and Little Rhody behind us. The Belt Lines will now take a break from the show circuit until the fall of 2002. We have had quite an eventful time this past fall and winter, so let's look back at the most recent events.
So, the headline is misleading maybe even an outright lie! Just before Thanksgiving, your module coordinators were contacted by a professional production company, Strawberry Productions, and asked if the Belt Lines would be available to do a Christmas Party for a defense contractor in Massachusetts. The party happened to fall on the same weekend, December 1 and 2, as the Greenberg Show in Wilmington, Massachusetts, and all the local groups were booked. After trying to help Strawberry Productions find a group that might have been closer to the show venue, without success, the Belt Lines agreed to do the party. The party was a two-day affair, with an adult party Saturday night, and another party Sunday afternoon for the families of the company. A small contingent of our group Steve and Mary-Lynn Belforti, Sudro Brown, Phil Johnson and William and Alan Rice made the trek to Wilmington Saturday afternoon and got the 14' x 20' layout up and running for the evening's festivities. On Sunday we ran exclusively for the kids of all ages. We had setup the infrared towers and stayed mostly on the outside of the layout, giving anyone who wanted to be an engineer the opportunity for a lap (or two) of the layout. From the feedback we received that weekend and since then, we were a success. While we enjoyed participating in this event, we did learn that the Belt Lines is not really designed for this type of show environment and that there are a number of things that would make the layout better suited to this type of display animation and lights being at the top of that list. A giant "THANKS" goes out to those individuals who answered the call to participate on such short notice.
2002 marked the 24th consecutive appearance of the Amherst Railway Society's HO Scale Modular Railroad at the Amherst Railway Society's Big Railroad Hobby Show in February. The layout has continued to grow from its modest beginnings in 1979 with an oval layout of only 11' x 19', to the huge display that it is today, occupying a 44' wide 'L' shaped space of 76' x 92'. This year was no exception to the layout seeing growth!
We welcomed a new module owner to the Belt Lines crew this year Ray Agar of the Cape Cod Model Railroad club brought his modules to West Springfield to add 17' of mainline to the layout. He is working on what will be a fantastic town/station and engine terminal scene that wraps around a corner. The work he has done so far bears promise of great things to come. Careful examination of his modules revealed some great brick streets that are seldom modeled. Ray joins several other members of the Cape Cod group that add their talent to our display each year including Bruce Erickson, Rich Houghtaling, Howie McCluskey and Doug Scott. We thank them for their continued participation and look forward to seeing them all again in West Springfield next year.
The Dry Hill Model Railroad Club continued to add scenery to their gigantic hump yard display. This enormous twenty-two module set contains 137 feet of double track mainline and occupies nearly 2 and 1/3 scale miles of real estate. The group concentrated their efforts this year on finishing up the scenery around the passenger station and express facility at the east end of the yard and the results are impressive! It appears that the engine facility west of the hump yard and west end flat yard will be the focus for next year.
Several new modules made their debut this year as replacements for modules retired in past years. Sullivans Crossing returned in a corner module to replace the original two-foot module. Eastside Yard was cut in half to come back as a six-foot long module, without the junkyard. The original eight-foot long South Barre was replaced this year with two six-foot modules separated by a corner. Two pairs of six-foot long "flip-flop" modules debuted to permit the mainline to transition from the front to the back of the module; one of these four will become the new M&J Salvage. These modules were designed to work with a standard corner module to provide an inside corner in the layout. We thank Steve Belforti for all his efforts in putting together these pieces, and we understand the replacements are in the works for the two-foot modules of Martin's Ferry and South Hooksett. John and Dana Bock were busy opening up the tight radius curves at Monbak Loop, and, in fact, this year opened the loop up with two six-foot extensions that will be fitted out with a rotary coal dumper for live coal loads! Monbak now acts more like a wye, like Bolton Junction, to have a loop of any size or configuration. We ended up having to build a bridge at the show, but then what would a West Springfield show be without building something! Even with all the new modules this year, the one item lacking was a lift bridge to get into the Bolton Junction loop. Several individuals have already said that they are working on something for the very near future.
With all the additions and replacements this year, the layout hit a size of record proportions. As the accompanying trackplan shows, the mainline took a number of turns to get from one point to the other. A train starting at Conn River Yard, headed west, would have traveled 10.75 scale miles over 651 actual feet of mainline before returning to its starting point. The loop at Bolton Junction was nearly 2 scale miles and the second mainline in the Monbak loop added another 2.7 scale miles for total mainline trackage of 15.4 scale miles (936 actual feet)!!
This year also witnessed the retirement and abandonment of a number of modules. The fixed bridge with 2-1/2" track centers, built over 20 years ago to make it easier to get into the layout, was retired. The following modules were abandoned in West Springfield: the original, two-foot Sullivans, and the two inside corners DC Curve and Dricut. Martin's Ferry and South Hooksett have been retired and scheduled for abandonment and replacement with a four foot and six foot module.
Justin Maguire, Bruce Erickson, Howie McCluskey and others brought an eight-foot, On30 module to display with the Belt Lines. The module is the work of Justin Maguire and is just beautiful. We have witnessed Justin's work before in the layout on his Hog Island module. For those of you who did not have the chance to talk with these guys, On30 is O scale modeling on HO standard gauge track. The kitbashed and scratchbuilt motive power that they have produced are just fantastic, and enough to get the juices flowing. Nearly their entire layout was displayed a the Little Rhody show (see below); you will just have to wait until next year to see the layout, when we hope to get the entire layout into our show.
We would like to thank everyone who participated in the show this year from the module owners to the numerous individuals that came just to help setup, operate and /or break down the layout. Mark your calendars now for next year's Big Railroad Hobby Show February 1 and 2. Setup will begin on January 30, around noon!
What a terrific turnout we had for this show! The Worcester Model Railroaders Show in Auburn, Massachusetts is our "challenge" show for the season. We have just three hours to get the layout into the Elks Club hall, setup and operating before the show opens at 10:00AM. Thanks to all the individuals who participated this year, we were running trains
on the 14' x 24' layout only 4 minutes after the doors officially opened. The list of participants this year is incredible, growing tremendously from years past. Thanks goes out to Steve Belforti, John Bock, Sudro Brown, Mike Cormier, Jim Fenner, Clark Huber, Dave Kmetz, Gary Munsey, William and Alan Rice, Carlton Rohmer and Doug Scott. If anyone
was left out from this list, we deeply apologizethe response to help this year was just overwhelming!
The report we got back from the Worcester Model Railroaders is that they got about 600 people through the doors and all the vendors were happy. This year the club opened their doors to the public and several of our group made their way into Worcester to view the layout. Their crew has put together an ambitious layout representing several towns between Boston, Massachusetts, and Mechanicsville, New York. The track plan is a continuous run, but has obviously been thought out with the possibility of point-to-point operation.
From our standpoint, our layout ran very well although we seemed to experience some transmission problems with the infrared cabs, direct DCC control was not a problem. John Bock modified the Warner Lift Bridge so that it could serve in a layout with either 2" or 2-1/2" track centers. As a thank you for what has now become our fourth appearance at this show, the club presented the Belt Lines with two of their own custom decorated cars for the Worcester Central. We will proudly run these cars as soon as they can be put together. The preliminary invitation has been extended for next year, so mark your calendars and set your alarm clock for "early" for February 23, 2003.
Our final show this season was the Little Rhody Division NMRA Show in West Warwick, Rhode Island. We brought our "standard" layout, in a 14' x 30' configuration this time. John Bock made a new lift bridge, with 2" track centers, that has a piston underneath to hold it open. Why didn't we do that on the
first bridge?
This was the second year we attended this show, and it was just as enjoyable (maybe more so) this year. Saturday was setup, with a little time for operation as the day went on, since the layout went together extremely well. We had the opportunity to test the new North Coast Engineering radio throttles, which seemed to perform very well in a somewhat controlled environment. The Big E show in February 2003 will be the acid test. After dinner Saturday night a number of us headed back to the hotel and took a stroll down memory lane looking at pictures of the layout from the early and mid-eighties! It is hard to believe that we looked that young then! The photos did prove that the same things that happen now, happened then.
The show Sunday was a great success. Attendance seemed to be fairly good and the vendors did have deals to be found! The layout (and radios) ran very well. We would like to thank Steve Belforti, Dana and John Bock, Sudro Brown (both of you!), Jim Fenner, Clark Huber, Dave Kmetz, Tom Lowry, Gary Munsey, William and Alan Rice, and Wes and Bryan Warner for all of the help to get modules to the show, on their feet and back in the trailer when the time came. Of course we would also like to thank our hosts, Justin Maguire and the Little Rhody Division of the NMRA for a super show, it was a great end to this season.
A couple of items have turned up missing this year, and we hope that you can help us find them. The Amherst Belt Lines is missing a piece of rolling stockwe think. Our record keeping during show cleanup is a bit unconventional, but we know that if we have any extra mechanics cloths that we use for wrapping cars, then we are missing something! We came up with one extra cloth at West Springfield. So, check your rolling stock one of you may have a car that belongs to ABEL! Also, the Dry Hill Model Railroad Club is missing a locomotive. Actually, they aren't missing the locomotive; they just have the wrong one. An Amtrak Dash 8-32BHW (Walthers' Trainline or Atlas) with a RailLynx decoder was accidentally picked up and the same model (different number) with a DCC decoder was left in its place. If you have found that the star of your passenger fleet is not performing properly, let one of the coordinators know so that the appropriate returns can be made. If anyone saw a flannel jacket after the Worcester show and picked it up, please contact a coordinator so that it can be returned to its rightful owner.
That is all for this edition and this season. Planning is beginning on next season, but we'll leave that for a future issue.
Have a safe Spring and Summer and remember
Modular Railroading is FUN!
Sudro, Clark and Alan
