Brick Elks Lodge - September 29, 2024

By Dave Ferrari

The club had a show at the Brick Elks Lodge on Sunday, September 29. With only 4 eight-foot tables the layout was 16 by 5 feet. Bill Myers brought all his modules and Harry brought his new two-triple yard. I brought 2 pairs of wide corners, a triple and a bunch of singles, including Pat's pair. The as built plan is attached in both AnyRail and JPG formats, a couple photos too. In addition to those of us who brought modules, Michael Walpow was also there to help.

E24: N-Scale Operations Weekend - July 24-28, 2024

By Mike Maloney, Northern New Jersey N-Trak

Since I didn't fully participate in the N-Scale Convention in Bethlehem this year, I had the opportunity to sign-up and travel to Evanston, WY for the huge E24 Operations Weekend. 

135 attendees descended on the former Union Pacific yard, roundhouse and machine shop in the small town of Evanston (brochure). The primary layout was an absolutely huge Free-moN which filled an entire building. In addition, there was a large N-TRAK layout along with T-TRAK. I joined in the with T-TRAK team and even travelled with a module!

I put together a small presentation to document my travels. Of course, the majority is about T-TRAK.

Toms River Elks Lodge Show - February 11, 2024

By Dave Ferrari, Northern New Jersey N-trak 

We set up a layout at the Toms River Elks Lodge on Sunday 2/11. It was on 8 six-foot tables, 24' by 5'. Set up started at 8 AM with the show opening at 9 AM and running till 2 PM. Bill M, Jason Sawyer from NJ Southern, Al Etzel from Jersey Central and I were there with modules. Norm came to help set up and Bill brought Harry too. The layout also included a Double from Tommy of TF Trains. Al's modules included his 2 new Wide Corners.

We had the modules all in place and snapped together with wires connected by a few minutes after 9. Unfortunately, there was no track power even after turning it on with a throttle. After a call to Mike Wong and further investigation, it turns out the ops switch was not set to Run. Once it was, everything was fine so we were up and running by 9:15. 

The trains ran well all day but we did have on mishap on my Double Crossover Single. It seemed to run okay in 3 out of 4 directions, but it was adjacent to my Intermodal Yard and later we discovered that one module was probably wired incorrectly underneath. That could have affected the crossover because it was being fed power from that module. I'll be doing some troubleshooting. 

We had the layout broken down and packed up by 3 PM. 

Thanks to everyone who helped!

Brick Elks Show - January 21, 2024

By Dave Ferrari - Northern NJ N-Trak

We did a show on Saturday, January 21st at the Brick Elks Show. All went as planned. Bill M, Steve W, Michael Walpow, plus Al Etzel and John Peruggia from Jersey Central Ntrak were all there to set up and breakdown. One wiring glitch in John's auto transload modules had to be resolved, things ran well otherwise. Everything was packed up by 2:45 pm. Some photos and the as-built plan are attached. Thank you to everyone who participated and thanks to Bill Myers for running the show and providing this report and some photos. Also thanks to Steve W for some additional photos.

Atlantic City N-Scale Gathering - April 21-23

T-TRAK Layout Report

By Dave Ferrari, Northern New Jersey N-trak 

The 2023 N Scale Gathering at the Atlantic County 4H Fairgrounds took place on Saturday, April 22 and Sunday, April 23 with setup on Friday, April 21. I was coordinator for the Combined T-TRAK layout again this year.

There were 86 separate modules provided by six (6) different clubs covering four (4) states: Atlantic County 4H Model Railroaders, New Jersey Southern N-trak Northern New Jersey N-Trak, Jersey Central N-Trak, Keystone N-Trak (PA) and Lynchburg Area N Scalers (VA). In addition to participants who brought modules, there were several attendees running trains and helping with setup and breakdown. 

The T-TRAK layout this year was a bit smaller than last year’s. There were fourteen standard (96” x 30”) banquet tables and eight narrow (96” x 18”) classroom tables used to set up the layout. It was 36' by 28' in a "backwards J" or “modified fishhook” shape, the same as last year. There were 156 feet of modules, or four and three-quarters scale miles. That was double-track mainline and the total run length of the “Red Line”. The modules were the equivalent of 165 single modules. I've listed a full breakdown of module types below and have included the "As Built" plan. 

Setup started Friday afternoon at 1 PM. Once all the table covers were on we started to set up the modules. We had all the modules in place, leveled and snapped together by about 6:15 PM. The Red Line was DCC along with a large Yellow Line loop. A smaller Yellow loop was analog. Everything was running well after a bit of trouble shooting with our wiring bus. We had more trouble with shorts in the DCC system soon after Mike Maloney, my club’s DCC expert, left for his hotel. It turned out one of the modules had a power feed wired with the polarity backwards. A big thank you to Chris Oliva for helping us trouble shoot that problem. 

In addition to the Combined T-TRAK Layout, the 4H Club had another T-TRAK layout in the club room. It was made up of all 4H members’ modules. It included 7 Doubles, a Triple, a Single and 4 Corners. The ends were 2 Standard Corners split by a Double. It was on 4 standard banquet tables, 2 rows back to back with a gap in the middle to stretch it a bit. 

Thanks again to everyone who participated! 

Module Count: 

Singles: 21 

Doubles: 34 

Triples: 14 

Quads: 1 

Standard Corners: 3 

Wide Corners: 6 (includes 1 Wide Inside Corner) 

Inside Corners: 1 

Jackson Junctions: 2 

Ferrari Junctions: 2 

7” Bridges: 1 

One-inch spacer modules: 1 

Photo by Mike Wong