Club Member's Activities During the Stay At Home Orders, we will report individual activities of TLMRC members on the

Isolation Projects Pages

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After many months of track work and years of operating model railroads, Bob and Jack have earned these additional AP Certificates

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These Members have worked on their own layouts, the club's Prize Winning modules, and Paul's home layout building track, turnouts, crossovers and gauntlet tracks to earn their AP Model Rairoad Engineer- Civil Certificates.

Over the years each have served in several roles while operating the club layouts and modules in a prototypica fashion to earn their Certification as Chief Dispatchers.

Congratulations are due to each of these members for their achievements.

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Now For Something New

Keith McMillen's New 7.5"-gauge Gon

04/04/20 Check Keith's Workshop

Paul talked to Erica at Three Lakes Library today. Make It! Camp in August?? We hope

Known Activities

Paul is again running 4 trains with 50 cars and 3 steam locomotives and a 4 F unit freight. He is also working with AZ Railroad Historical Society on a LCC Demo/Testing Lab.

The PL&S Main line is open again after the track work was finished at the north end of Bradley Yard. SOO Line 105 ran down from RHI yard to test the track and signals. 4/4/20 Main Line turnouts were rewired, and frogs were powered. Because of isolation Paul did this alone moving many tools across the yard and main to avoid to many trips under the layout for parts and tools. The Railroad room floor needs to have all the tools picked up and returned to their toolboxes.

Roger is working on his O scale layout

Jack got out his Shay and is putting Kadee couplers on his Cresent Ltd. passenger cars

Brian is being a stay at home dad and installing some new sub floors

Bob Knobbe Finished updating his JMRI on all his locomotives

Please send stories and photos to my e-mail pwussow@gmail.com
Call around or text. We have Skype and FaceTime

TLMRC Invited to Help Operate the Park Place Model Railroad Club Layout

To see more (click here)

Progress continues on the large Powerhouse with new floors and a roof installed. (Click Here)

The Achievement Program chairmen held an evening meeting which was very informative and included all of their Division AP Chairs as well as the Region AP Chair. The clinic and discussions were led by Bruce Petrarca, MMR. He brought a refreshing view of AP the way it should work and how to improve AP activity in the Divisions. AP evaluations were available away from the contest room for members wishing to have an AP evaluation.

LCC at the PSR Convention

LCC Demo in a Clinic at the PSR 2019 Convention

LCC at the Arizona Capitol Building

Paul Wussow and Keith Mc Millen were invited to study the construction of the layout at the Arizona Capitol Building. We received a detailed tour of their work creating the layout in the Capitol Building.

Learning LCC: At the NMRA National Convention in Salt Lake City Paul Wussow worked on learning more about LCC. Working with Dick and Karen Bronson of RR-CirKits the club has developed relationships with other LCC users and developers. He will be presenting Clinics on LCC in the Du Page and Fox Valley divisions in March of 2020.

TLMRC Support of the Three Lakes Make It! Camp reported on NBC "Newswatch 12 Today"

To see the newscast (Click Here)

The 2019 Make It! Camp (Our fourth year) was a success, photos and links to come. Survey says 90% would return and 80% would bring a friend next year.

November 2018 meeting generates new programming for teaching signal operations.

View the Updated 2018 report (Click here)

Update on Radio ProCab and PowerCab with Rechargeable Batteries (Read Here)

Operations and Chief Dispatcher work continues with Operations on the PL&S as well as Ron Sharping's layout in Downers Drove IL.

Testing and Storage locations of cars and locomotives of club members continues on the PL&S in Glen Ellyn IL in order to create a roster for the operations via the JMRI Program for Switch Lists and insure problem free Operating Sessions.

Bob and Paul rebuild their Mantua Mike and Pacific and a Big 6 (Click Here )

The New Rhinelander Yard Project

Over this past winter Bob and Jack decided that they did not want to just make samples of track required for the AP Civil award but rather do something useful to the club operations. (in other words they thought it was time to replace the yard that my son and I had removed from our layout the location of Rhinelander).

After planning the yard and access from the main track and following the requirements of AP they started building turnouts and crossovers for the layout. I am happy to say I now have over a 100 car yard with 5 storage tracks, passing sidings, access to the engine turntable and a reverse loop to turn long locos and passenger trains.

The second part of this project was connecting the tounout motors to a control panel with LED lighting to indicate the direction of the yard turnouts. Early work went into the crossovers off the main line to keep the trains running but now we have a control panel for the yard in place and operating.

Bob and Jack still need to finish a third type of track for their Civil AP and then have their work evaluated.

First part of RHI South Tower

Rhinelander Tower(s)

After much work on the building of the yard at Rhinelander on my layout we have decided to have North and South Towers. These would be East and West on the SOO Line or WC in the town of Rhinelander but are at the north and south ends of the layout and Rhinelander Yard.

Each tower and tower operator has control of the turnouts and signals for the main lines coming into the yard limit from their direction while switching in the yard is controlled by the yard master and does not interact with the mainline operations. We have found that we can keep 5 people busy if we have 2 switchers working the yard and engine facility and a tower operator for the 2 towers and a yard switchman on the ground.

RHI Yard tower operational to date

The North tower (under construction) has control of the double crossover and the passing sidings in the mainline loop north (east) of Rhinelander. Because the location of these tracks and turnouts are in a different room the controls for these turnouts have been duplicated near their location as well as in the tower. LED signals and tower indications copy the settings of these Turnouts and each location has control. Because we use stall motors on our turnouts the controls are reverse DPDT switches and the LED indications are wired from the turnouts.

Jack Zimmer's Layout

The Club members have rebuilt the electronics of Jack Zimmer's layout directing his work towards his AP certificate as an model Engineer / Electrical. Bob Knobbe and Jack both worked on the electrical work on both layouts and on my layout in order to finish their AP EE.

DCC Installations

DCC Locomotive installation and programming continues with Soundtrax and ESU systems to add sound to member's locomotives. Here Bobo is using JMRI to program on line his E9.

HO 50' Box Car Frames For NMRA Make and Take

HO and HOn3 Steel Underframes

Tested on a MakerBot Printer they were shown at the NMRA Du Page Division meeting November first.

The new frames HOn3 (left) and HO (right)are steel frames. The center is the HOn3 wood frame.