By Jeff Moorman

Our next meeting is Thursday, March 1, 2012. Time and place are at the end of this piece. The topic will be CADrail. You’ve seen the ads, now you can see how the software works.

Dennis T did a mini clinic on building N scale Kadee couplers from the kits. Dennis did it this way, instead of buying them ready-built, because he needed a bunch of them for locomotive conversions. There are lots of little pieces, but they all go together just fine, if you take your time and keep referring to the instructions.

Dennis built a little jig (on a big piece of wood) to help with the assembly. The size of the wood was immaterial, but it did make the jig appear more impressive. Basically the jig was a small post to align the parts of the coupler as it is being put together.

There was lots of variety during show and tell. Guest David C brought along some little dioramas with some nice looking evergreen trees. His explanation of building them turned into its own mini clinic.

David uses what he calls the “Low Bucks Railroad” approach. When he started doing the trees the trunks were used chopsticks and the foliage was a fern like moss that grows all over Western Washington, especially near the rain forest. How he whittles the trunks from whatever is handy. He drills tiny holes in the trunks to accept the little moss “branches.”

The trees were over 5 years old and had held up well. David says the fern gets pretty brittle when it gets dry (like in Eastern Washington) but bounces right back when the humidity climbs.

David says that for deciduous trees he has started using maple suckers for the trunk/branch structure.

CJ Riley showed a HO boxcar made with preprinted cardboard car sides like those that used to come in the old NMRA Bulletin. From typical model viewing distances the car still looked pretty good.

Dennis T showed an N scale coal load that he had enhanced with additional real-looking “coal.” Chris F displayed some grain cars he was working on building/painting.

We meet at the Ronald United Methodist Church, 17839 Aurora Avenue North, Shoreline, WA. That is on the west side of Aurora (State Route 99) between 175th and 185th Streets and more specifically, between the Cadillac dealer on the south and Deseret Industries to the north. You can no longer make cross-traffic turns on Aurora, so you need to be going southbound (so you can make a right-hand turn into the church driveway immediately after passing the Deseret location).

Meetings are the first Thursday of each month, except July and August. In June we usually do a tour. For regular meetings enter the lower level of the church from the parking lot at the rear. Doors open around 7:00 PM and the program starts about 7:30.

Remember the next meeting is March 1 and the one after that is April 5.  Hope to see you there or at least sometime on down the line.