West
Central Model RR
News
2011 Winter Open house was our best ever!
The West Central hosted our Winter Open House on
November 5th. We had over 140 guests sign our guest book making
this our busiest open house in over 5 years. We were able to show
off the new trackwork in Plainview and a few other large projects that
different members made great efforts to finish in time for open
house. Stop in at our next open house to see a lot more progress
in the remodeling of Plainview. Our next open house
will be Saturday, June 2nd, 2012.
2011 Summer Open
house was held June 4th, 2011.
We had our new booster installed for the Summer
Open House and solved our power problems with sound locomotives.
We did have some sound locomotives overheat in the summer heat.
There were lots of great guests and we had a couple of new members join
after the open house.
2010 Winter Open
house was a success!
The West Central hosted our Winter Open House a
month early on November 6th. We decided to move our Winter Open
house up to the first Saturday in November to reduce the chances of
inclement weather. The turnout was great with lots of great
guests. We had some minor issues overloading our DCC system with
new locomotives and will be expanding to accomodate the power
requirements of today's more advanced locomotives. Our next open house
will be Saturday, June 4th, 2011.
2010 Summer Open
house was a success!
The West Central hosted our Summer Open House on
June 5th. The DCC rewiring project was finished in May and we
unveiled our newly rewired layout to the public. There were some
minor teething problems, but operations went well and the guests were
wonderful. Our next open house
will be Saturday, November 6th.
The WCMRR is back on the Web:
As some visitors may have
noticed our website has been down for several months after a few months
of sketchy performance. We have switched servers and will
hopefully avoid any future problems.
In 2010 the WCMRR is
going DCC only:
After operational
difficulties at the 2009 Winter Open House, the WCMRR has voted to
remove the DC block control system and rewire the DCC system in an
effort to resolve some recurring DCC gremlins. Previously we had
been maintaining Digitrax DCC alongside the older MRC block
controls. There were several issues related to the way that the
DCC had to be grafted onto our block control system and we hope to
solve them by removing the unused wiring and cleaning up the DCC
wiring. We hope to be finished in time for our Summer Open House
on June 5th, 2010.
2009 Winter
Open House:
The club hosted its annual Winter Open House on December 5th. The
clubhouse was open from 10 am to 4
pm and we received over 150 visitors. Visit
our Open House page for
information on upcoming open houses.
2009 Summer
Open House:
The club hosted its annual Summer Open House on June 13th. We had
over 100 visitors. The clubhouse was open from 10 am to 4
pm. Visit
our Open House page for
information on our next open house.
We've Lost Another
Good Member:
Ross Scheppa passed away in July 2008 from
complications of leukemia and its
treatment. Ross was very enthusiastic friend to all who knew
him. He started in our club at the young age of 12 and sometimes
tried the patience of some of the older members, but his enthusiasm for
the hobby was contagious. He will always be remembered for
listening for passing trains approaching the club and yelling "Hot
Rails!!!" at the top of his voice, so we could all run out and
watch. He will be surely missed for years to come.
We Have Better
Electrical Conductivity:
Members
Henry Bangsberg, Jim Hunter, and Tom Hicks have been hard at work
finding bad spots on the layout and fixing them before the open
house. Tom lives in Waverly, Iowa, so it is a lot of special
effort for him, especially when the roads and weather are bad. He
lost his home layout to the Cedar Rapids area flooding in Iowa.
Thanks
for
the
extra efforts guys!
We have a Club Project:
The
club has elected to do a fundraising project to earn money to help pay
for a new roof on our building which will be needed very soon.
We have worked with Accurail to custom
decorate model 3700 kits in Milwaukee Road that are exclusive to West
Central Model Railroad Club. There are two stylse of the 41' AAR
gondola. The first is a 1920s war emergency scheme that is marked
CMSt.P&P. The second is a 1940s postwar scheme that has
just the MILW reporting marks. We
have renumber kits so there are 12 numbers available in each
style. Click here for
prices and order information.
Operations
have started on the West Central Railroad:
After years of working on
the layout we have started having operating sessions throughout the
year. We are using switch lists and train to train
dispatching to keep things simple and informal.
