It appears that February will be a much quieter month for the club compared to the last three. I would like to thank everyone who helped with the teardown of the Brookside Gardens display. Our members continue to amaze me. According to Jeff and a few other long-term members, this was the quickest that we’ve been able to tear down the display and put everything into storage. We were even able to label the framework and document it before it was taken apart. With any luck, the build in November won’t be as confusing as it was this past year to build.
I hope that everyone enjoyed themselves at the Club’s Holiday party. Once again, I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to attend. I’m looking forward to next year’s party. Thank you again to everyone who worked on making the party a success.
If you haven’t already, please complete your membership renewal form as soon as possible. The sooner that everyone returns their forms, the soon that we can get the Members Directory completed and sent out to all of the members.
Now we can step back and catch our breath before Spring arrives and things start to get busy. As you all know, we recently voted on attending ECLSTS in Annapolis, MD in April. This will be our first big show of the year and I hope that you are able to assist with the display. Even if you are unable to assist, stop by and visit the show. I have been at the show with the club for the past two years and each year it gets bigger and better. It’s not the same size show that used to be held in York, PA but hopefully in the next couple of years they will be able to move it back into a larger venue.
It looks like the G scale manufacturers are starting to either release new inventory or have restarted production of items that haven’t been available for years. AML has released a new GP-60 locomotive. Bachmann shipped the first production run of the Dash 9 locomotive since Aristocraft closed down. They also have some former AristoCraft rolling stock in production now. Some of other former
AristoCraft and USA Trains products are also being produced by Bachmann. They have announced that the GP-40 will be put back into production soon. No word on when they will be shipping. USA Trains has announced that the SD70MAC will be produced again. No date on when they will be available. They also announced that they are producing intermodal container cars and offering new road names and numbers. There will be some new container names for the cars also. Maybe some of the manufacturers will have new product announcements at ECLSTS.
Of course, prices will never be like they were 10 or 15 years ago. I was in Star Hobby recently and they had a used AristoCraft Sante Fe Dash 9 locomotive in the box. The original price tag was still on it, $295. If only I knew back then what this locomotive sells for now at auctions, I would have bought a dozen of them.
Since the February weather is so unpredictable, it’s a great time to work on maintenance and projects. I’m currently building custom wrapped lumber loads for a few USA Trains center beam flat cars that I have and for a friend. If anyone is interested in how I build the lumber loads, I have an article that I wrote for that friend in Pennsylvania. It was for his G scale model train club’s newsletter. I can send you the article or maybe I can do a presentation at one of the meetings if there is enough interset. When the new website is up and functional and when we start putting new content on it, I will put the article on there.
With summer coming up and move club events on the schedule, please volunteer to help when you can. We are still looking for someone to fill the Secretary position. It would be great to get more members involved with our events and to socialize with other members. I know that the times that I’ve volunteered at events, it turns into a social event if you are not running trains. You’re either socializing with other members or with the public. Many people outside of our hobby are unaware of G scale and have many questions.
Hope to see you all at the February meeting. It looks like it will be a very interesting venue and presentation.
George