This weekend is the Oklahoma City Train Show.  This is always a fun time for our members. A group of us are leaving the museum Friday morning. Let someone know if you need a ride.  There are seats available. We are packed and loaded and ready to roll!  I think this is the earliest we've been ready for the show. Gail, David, Chris, Joseph, Tracy, Carter, and Kenneth contributed a lot of time to sorting and pricing our merchandise. 

Thursday is the monthly business meeting.  All are welcome.  I am sure the train show will be at the top of the list, but you really need to come and listen to the amazing progress that's been made in the last month. 

Several members have taken on the task of repairing and reinforcing the retaining wall "out back." that was sagging.  It was a staggering project, but the retaining wall is good for another quarter century at least!  The next stage in the project is to lay the thousands of bricks we rescued from the original Ft. Worth & Denver (CBQ, BN, BNSF) when it was demolished this summer.

We'll load some photos to the website after the OKC show. Thanks to Tracy, Carter, Kenneth, Chris, Garrett, Joseph and others I have forgotten for their hard work and long hours.  With the days so short now, part of the project was done by automobile and i-Phone light! These folks often went back and forth doing "dirt work," welding, and lifting and toting material and helping get our merchandise ready for OKC. 

Chris Mitchell is tying up the project to make the lower (Waynoka) staging yard functional by changing the wiring so that each yard track is independently powered.  Track power can be turned on or off by flipping the appropriate switch on the green panel at the center of the yard.  It is the same setup that we've had on the upper (Clovis) yard when it was built. The lower staging yard is probably now the oldest part of the layout, and truth be told, was wired quickly and simply just to get trains running way back when we were just starting the layout. 

A few weeks ago David, Gail, and I came across a cardboard box while cleaning up the underside of the layout.  We found 50 Sunshine Models HO-scale resin kits that belonged to Virgil Young and donated to the museum on his passing. These are all out of production and Sunshine Models closed shop after Martin Lofton died in the early 2000s.  Sunshine was known for high-quality kits of unique prototypes in HO-scale.  Most of their offerings are the only examples of these freight cars ever done.  I would classify these resin kits as good for the advanced craftsman.  If you are unfamiliar with them, do some searching on the internet.  Anyway, we are selling these kits one at a time on eBay.  If you want a list of what is posted, drop me an email.  I can send you an Excel file.  They are going quickly.  We've sold 16 kits since 10/28.  All are set up as auctions with a buy it now option.

Well that's it for now.  OKC, here we come!