NEWSLETTER VOL 16 ISSUE 2 0.Pdf
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Newsletter of the Nutmeg Division, Northeastern Region, National Model Railroad Association Volume 16, Issue 2 June 2015 - August 2015 Your portal to more fun in model Railroading To promote Model Railroading and help educate modelers in the skills of Model Railroading Volume 16, issue 3 of THE FLYER will be scheduled for publication by August 31, 2015. If anyone has an article, story or anything else that they would like to have published in the next issue of THE FLYER please send it to Ron Pelletier at [email protected] as soon as possible. Please visit our website at http://www.nutmegdivision.com INDEX Election OF Director results Page 2 From the Desk of the Superintendent and Treasurer, James Mayo Page 2 From the desk of the Clinic Chairperson Peter Luchini Page 3 From Communication Manager / Editor / Membership Promotion Manager Ronald Pelletier Page 3 Articles / Stories / Letters Page 4 Rockwell Retro Encabulator Southington Depot Museum Two Virtual/Binary Scale Railroad Programs Shoreline East Rail Service Out of New Haven Collecting Trains and or Finding Time to Work on My Layout Quonset Hut Making a Turnout Electrically Superior One Company’s All-American Success Hartford Division of the Railroad Enthusiasts Inc Great Day for A Run Connecticut Trolley Museum 75th Anniversary Interested In the Restoration of Historic Railroad Equipment Wickham Park Garden Railway Club is Looking for Volunteers A Picture Review of the 2015 New England/Northeast Prototype Modelers Meet May 29 – 30 2015 New Members / Re-rail Members Page 21 Achievement Program – Certificates Awarded Page 21 -1- Birthday Announcements Page 23 Events of organizations in the Nutmeg Division and the Bordering Sister Divisions Page 23 Calendar of Local Events for the Nutmeg Division and its Bordering Sister Divisions Page 24 National / Regional Convention Events Page 25 General Information of the Nutmeg Division and the Other Divisions of the Northeastern Region Page 30 New Address for the NMRA Page 34 ELECTION OF DIRECTOR RESULTS On April 11th an election for the position of Layout Visit Chairperson was conducted and Greg Lang was re-elected as Chairperson The BOD then had a meeting and James Mayo was re-elected as Superintendent for the next year. From the Desk of the Superintendent, James Mayo: [email protected] May 2015 Now that winter has finally ended and moved straight to summer, we all get to go outside and watch trains! So bring a picture or two to a Nutmeg Division meeting and share your train watching spots. Or send a picture to Ron to add to the newsletter and have the rest of us guess where it was taken. Remember to be safe and stay on public property when train watching. I will be taking picture submissions for the new Nutmeg Division promotional banner. The board would like pictures of “us” doing Nutmeg Division “stuff” and pictures from member’s layouts. If you have a project that you have worked on or are planning, bring them along. Get some feedback and give the rest of us some ideas and incentive to move that project that has been sitting on the desk. If you have an event that you deem noteworthy, forward the information to myself or Ron to be included into the announcements. If you have not renewed your NMRA membership, please do so! And remember to support your local hobby shop. That is all I have for now, see you at the June meeting on the 13th. James Mayo Superintendent Nutmeg Division From the Treasurer: Balance as of 5/31/15: $1723.26 Nutmeg Division’s 990-N was filed with the IRS on 15 May 2015. The Pension Protection Act, passed in 2006, requires that small nonprofits, which in the past have not needed to file the IRS 990 Form, have to file the new IRS 990-N. Nonprofits who fail to do so for three years in a row may be stripped of their tax-exempt status beginning in May 2010. -2- This form has to be done annually, but had not been done in a while. That would be why we had lost our not for profit status (not filing). We have since filed and have received our tax exempt status. This form is to provide the following information: 1. Employer identification number (EIN), also known as Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) 2. Tax Year 3. Legal name and mailing address 4. Any other name the organization uses 5. Name and address of principal officer 6. Web site address if the organization has one 7. Confirmation that the organization’s annual gross receipts are normally $50,000.00, or less 8. If applicable, a statement that the organization has terminated or is terminating (going out of business) ________________________________________________________________________________ From the Desk of Clinic Chairperson Peter Luchini [email protected] Clinic Details for the June 13th 2015 membership meeting event of the Nutmeg Division CLINICS FOR THE JUNE MEETING: This month we’re going “retro”. No computers, no PowerPoint presentation – just the clinicians and their materials. Clinic #1 – Pete Luchini will take you through the simple process for building a coal load for a hopper and a scrap load for a gondola. We’ll have a drawing for the finished products at the end of the clinic. Clinic #2 – John Grosner will demonstrate how to construct a conifer tree using a bamboo skewer, a commercial scrubbing pad and Woodland Scenics Turf. _________________________________________________________________________________________________ From Communication Manager, Newsletter Editor, Membership Manager, Ronald Pelletier [email protected] I would like to thank everyone that supplied an article / story / or letter. It is greatly appreciated. We are putting together marketing materials, and we would love to have a collection of photos from which to draw. We are looking for photos showing perspective visitors the best of our Division; the people, places and things that make the Nutmeg Division great. If you have pictures of your layout, pictures of local train watching spots, pictures of you and your buddies enjoying a train related activity, pictures of your models, please send them in. Emphasis on the people! Help us to promote the Nutmeg Division and our activities to a wider audience. Send your pictures, stories or statements about how you see the Nutmeg Division to Ron Pelletier at [email protected] -3- Unfortunately to date I haven’t received photos from anyone. Please send in your pictures. Don’t think that it may not be good enough. Sometimes the pictures that you think are no good are the best pictures around. The photographer is usually his own worst critic. The Nutmeg Division has a total of three voting members of the Board of Directors. Each director serves for a three year term. In April of each year, one of the three directors term will expire, so there will be a vote in April of each year to either select a new director for a three year term or to re-elect the outgoing director if that person has so decided to stay on for another term of three years. James Mayo was re-elected as Director and Superintendent in April 2015. James Mayo’s (second) term as director ends in April 2017 Greg Lang (first official) term as director ends in April 2018 Douglas Henley’s (second) term as director will end in April 2016 There will be another election for a director’s position in April 2016. If you are interested in being an officer of the Nutmeg Division or to volunteer for the Nutmeg Division, please contact Ron Pelletier at [email protected] _________________________________________________________________________________________________ Articles / Stories /Letters ROCKWELL RETRO ENCABULATOR It’s retro all right! For those who don’t remember, or are younger than 40, Rockwell was a huge defense conglomerate during the 70s and 80s. It swallowed up North American Aviation, the builder of a famous line of fighters (P-51, F-86, and F-100) and bombers. My first hand-held digital calculator in grad school was a Rockwell. It was state-of-the-art because it used miniaturized semiconductor integrated circuits “chips” which the company had developed for NASA's Moon program. It could perform all kinds of calculations that were laborious by hand, or previously had required a mainframe computer to solve. The following is a two-minute video classic, especially for the tech-oriented, nerds, computer geeks, systems operators and all the rest of us. Really well done! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXJKdh1KZ0w The above was provided by the owner of the company that I work for. (Editor) _________________________________________________________________________________________________ Southington Depot Museum To Open For Summer By Bill Leukhardt Copied from the May 26, 2015 issue of the Hartford Courant http://www.courant.com/community/southington/hc-southington-depot-museum-0523-20150522-story.html SOUTHINGTON — The Milldale Train Depot, which last served passenger trains in 1926 and freight trains in the 1960s, is opening this weekend for its third summer as a train and manufacturing exhibit. The bright-red building at 447 Canal St., next to the former Clark's bolt factory and the Rails to Trails pathway, is owned by the town and was restored by volunteers. -4- Its office section will be open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekends this summer, with display cases of artifacts and information about the history of trains, transportation, the town's Milldale section and people who helped shape it during the last century. The exhibits come from the Southington Historical Society and private collections. The idea is to give motorists driving past, or using the adjacent rail trail, an interesting place to stop, get a drink of water and learn a bit about the town's past.