NMRA Daylight Division Meet

Progress is continuing on the Santa Barbara Subdivision and I will update the blog about that in a week or so. For now I will just say the helix is back together, the mainline, siding and wye tracks have all been permanently installed. I installed an autoreverser on the wye which works nicely. I finally made the decisions about the trackwork in the Santa Barbara industrial area so tracks are in and wired. I have also added some additional car card boxes for the Santa Barbara industries, but all this will be covered in the next installment.

For now, I would like to step back three weeks to May 21 when the Daylight Division of the Pacific Coast Region of the NMRA had their quarterly meet in Santa Barbara. I usually get called upon to help organize the meet here and this time was no exception. We met at Gary Siegel's house and everyone enjoyed seeing the progress Gary has made on his outdoor 1:32 layout. They also enjoyed his fabulous indoor HO L&N EK Division. It is my pleasure to operate on this superb railroad.

The meet included three clinics - modeling Eucalyptus trees, railroad traffic control systems [including a field trip to Gary's functioning CTC machine.] and how to track down shorts on you layout [an electrical discussion] -, a lunch, a business meeting, a white elephant auction, and lots of comraderie. After the meet several local layouts were open, including the SP Santa Barbara Subdivision. I had about 16 folks come by. Most of them had been to the Santa Barbara Subdivision before but the last time the Daylight Division came by there was only one level and only part of the thin walls up so they were impressed by the progress. To me it seems interminably slow, but I see it all the time.

Here is a photo taken by Brewster Bird during the Daylight Division Layout tour.

Check back in a week for the next update with details of the progress.