Club Meeting, July 9, 2017

We met at Bob's place on a Sunday afternoon. Even though the entire club was invited, it was not an official club meeting. No club business was discussed. Instead, Bob wanted us to be the guinea pigs for his layout's shake-down operating session. However, before we began, he wanted a group photo. Now, while Bob is a professional photographer, the photo shown here took some 20 minutes to produce. Bob took the comments from the peanut gallery in stride, claiming that he never used the camera's internal timer before. Several photos were taken, but ultimately this is the one Bob concluded was the best. From left to right are Peter, Steve, Dan, Chuck (seated with his son Ryan), Don, and Bob.

Before the others showed up, we were asking Bob what the purpose of the camera in the middle of the room was all about. I'm sure some funny comment was made by Bob.

After a brief introduction to the controls of the layout, we were each assigned a throttle, an engine, and a simple objective: use the engine to grab a handful of nearby cars and move them to the next town. This photo shows the latest extension to Bob's layout, a large yard in a backroom.

Most of us were having problems getting our trains started, and so Bob had to play both dispatcher and maintenance supervisor as he bounced around the layout from operator to operator. However, we all had a good time.

With his father's help, we have high hopes for Ryan becoming a full-fledged S-scale modeler down the line. He sure had a good time running trains.

This view shows the main yard on Bob's layout. Dan is on the other side of the backdrop that splits the layout in two.

Bob's version of spiral hill. Despite the usual gremlins that only come out when there are visitors, we all had a good time. Only a couple of serious issues were found on the layout, which Bob has already fixed.