this weekend the model train club of northern nj in the union, nj area was holding their show at their building behind the home depot building. NYEric is a member and mentioned that he would be helping out, and I was a few miles away so I decided to check it out. I really didn't have any idea about what to expect except maybe that they just showed up and set a few things up here and there, but I had no idea about how complex and advanced their displays would be! the central display area I think has HO scale trains, and was recently finished after 27 years of continuous creation and addition to the buildings and landscaping around the tracks. during a show, they have a recorded sound and light show, where different narrators talk about their life around the railways depicted by their rails, models and buildings, and coordinated lights turn off and on when pointing out the section of rail that's being described. it's very professionally done, and the members are obviously very dedicated to their hobby. nyeric was working in the N scale room and unfortunately I didn't get a pic of him there helping out a young member/visitor who had his own train and was moving it around the rail in the other room. he's worked on a specific section of the N scale tracks underneath the huge display of the buffalo rail yards. the n scale has tons of other miniature road, building and people/landscape displays, some things like helicopters and merry-go-rounds have their own motors and move themselves! a very interesting thing I'd never seen before were the model replicas of neon signs, which use electrofluorescent material and look just like a neon sign in operation. very cool! HO scale is sort of medium in size, a single car is probably 8-10" in length (very generally). the n scale is quite a bit smaller than that, and there are even two other smaller scales that even much smaller than the n. hours and hours and hours (days and weeks) of labor are needed to design, create and troubleshoot the details that make up a single small section of a track. I've got a bunch of pictures so it will take a while to get them all together, but here's a few from the 'n' room
some of the pics are supposed to display side-by-side, so you may want to widen the display in your browser window so that they line up properly. I wasn't able to get safari to line them up properly another way... these are just a small sampling of what was there!
...
a long-time member showing young and old enthusiasts how to work some of the systems
some of the pics are supposed to display side-by-side, so you may want to widen the display in your browser window so that they line up properly. I wasn't able to get safari to line them up properly another way... these are just a small sampling of what was there!
a long-time member showing young and old enthusiasts how to work some of the systems
ounfortunately they belong to my son
