Harrisburg-Liverpool
Area - Howard Knouse, 717-444-7720,
Selinsgrove-Sunbury
Area - Milton Scholley, 570-743-7818 (no
email)
State
College-Bellefonte-Lewistown Area -- Bill Lukens,
814-364-1543,
Williamsport-Lock
Haven Area - Jim Ingram,
November Meeting--We
tentatively decided to synchronize our meeting with the Allentown
First Frost Meet Train Show, by meeting after the train show,
Sunday November 12 at 2 pm at Frank Titman's house. Frank has the
famous S-Scale Spiral Hill layout which you are always seeing
photographs of in S Gaugian magazine. Frank also manufactures the
well-known Lehigh Valley Models line building kits right there in
the same basement.
Meeting
No. 5 -
(tentative) Sunday
Nov 12, 2000 at 2 pm Allentown, PA-- discussion
in paragraph above
--
2.
Discussion At Meeting #3, 5/21/00
2a. Meeting Dates--We
tentatively decided to try to use the second
Sunday of every other month
at 2 pm, when workable with the host.
2b. Emailing Newsletters--To
reduce postage costs, we decided to experiment with emailing the
newsletter.
About 8 of our 16 members have
email, so we will need to "snail mail" about 8 copies to reach all
members. Almost everybody we mail a complimentary copy to, can be
reached by email.
Any member with email, who
still wants the "snail mail" version, please let me know.
Otherwise you will receive only the email version.
We will mail directions only to
paid-up members (for privacy).
2c. Treasury
Deductions
Jim Ingram requested
and received approval to deduct $111.34 from the Treasury balance
of $81, which leaves a treasury balance of negative $30.34.
These costs were
thoroughly documented on the Agenda passed out to each member at
the May meeting.
Anybody having any concerns
about these financial transactions, please feel free to contact
Jim Ingram for more details
An overview of the costs is
shown in the next paragraph.
The cost is calculated
at approximately 43 cents each copy when copied on an outside
copying machine, and about 35 cents each copy when printed on my
printer. (These 43 cents & 35 cents totals are broken down in
the agenda, with the biggest item being 33 cents postage, plus
about 7 cents for copying when copying service was
used.)
The costs incurred for
mailing previous issues add up as follows:
Note that Issues #1, 2, and 3
have a higher cost because we were trying to form the club, by
mailing to all known S Gaugers in the region.
Beginning with Issue #5 we
restricted the mailing to paid members only plus a small number of
complimentary copies. Thus the cost is much lower.
3.
Other Comments About The 5/21
Meeting
3a. Adding Publicity
Contacts
Our Susquehanna
S-Gaugers sign is currently displayed in English's in
Montoursville, and Hause's in Sunbury. (Bob Persing took one to
Hause's. Thanks Bob.)
The sign currently
lists Jim Ingram as a contact. Bill Lukens and Milton Scholley
agreed to have their names added as contacts for the Centre Hall
and the Selinsgrove areas. Howard Knouse agreed via email to be
listed as a Harrisburg-Liverpool area contact.
If you missed this
meeting, you missed a lot of Flyer, all of it in operation. Our
host had 2 main loops, plus a figure 8 loop, plus an elevated loop
for his Franklin set. THANKS to our host for a great
time.
He also had the 565 Atlantic S
gauge set with the 3-rail O gauge running gear, operating on a
loop of 3-rail O-27 track.
He has his layout designed with
sidings, such that he can park any trains not in operation. So we
saw about 10 different trains run during the course of the
meeting. All engines and cars are Flyer, except for a half-dozen
or so American Models cars.
He also demonstrated a stock
Flyer Northern, with the we-think large motor, that he could
throttle down to an impressive smooth crawl even while pulling a
long train of cars.
3c. Attendance At Meeting
#3
In attendance were 6
members total. We had Jim Ingram, Bill Lukens, Dennis Oberholtzer,
Bob Persing, Dick Purnell, and Milton Scholley.
We considered Dennis
to be our "Guest Of Honor", since he had to make a 2-hour drive
from Galeton to get to the meeting.
If you haven't made a meeting
yet, I urge you try to do so, as this club may not survive
forever. I feel we are almost "defying the law of gravity" to try
run an S Gauge club in Central Pennsylvania. I consider it a real
accomplishment that we have been able to have 3 good meetings so
far.
3d. Paid-Up
Members
We currently have 16
paid-up members as follows: Joseph Bering Jr., Allen Bubb, Gene
Emery, Tim Horner, James Ingram, Jim King, Howard Knouse, Bill
Lukens, John W. Maize, Jack McLaren, Don Mengle, Dennis
Oberholtzer, Robert Persing, Dick Purnell, Terry Ries, Rodney
Ries, Milton J. Sholley.
4.
Visitation Notes
4a. Possible Future Visit, Roy
Hoffman, Orrstown PA
Roy Hoffman has issued us an
invitation to visit his Penn Western S-Scale scale layout. Roy
says we can visit as a group, or individually if any if you are in
the area.
Location--Orrstown is located a
few miles northwest of Shippensburg, which is southwest of
Harrisburg off Rt. 81. Roy's email is , and his phone is
717-530-7977.
Dates--Possibly we could
combine a visit to Roy's with one of the shows in that area. I
believe there is a GATS show in Lebanon on Oct 14 and Oct 15. That
may be a possible date. Or there is usually an NRHS show in
Harrisburg in March I believe.
4b. Visitation Report - So. Jersey S-Gaugers at Steamtown
(5/28/00)
Memorial Day weekend, the South
Jersey S-Gaugers had their portable railroad operating at
Steamtown.
They were also operating some
Flyer steam engines with some interesting features, including
high-intensity headlights, DC can motors, Soundtraxx DDC decoders,
more realistic-looking replacement trailing trucks, and more. One
of their members Chick Viggianno (see following Section 4b) is the
primary source of these modifications.
Since the theme that weekend
was military, the layout was decorated with lots of military
equipment, including troop trains. Since several members are also
military modelers, they have considerable talent for modeling
military equipment.
Note they plan to sell this
impressive railroad, complete with trailer, if any of you
happen to be in the market for a railroad. You can see photos of
this layout on the SJSG website at http://www.magpage.com/~mmcconn/pict.html
They were kind enough to stop
their troop trains for a few minutes and photograph some PCC cars
that I needed photographed, as shown in the following photo. Note
the military convoy on highway at left. (More photos of the PCC
cars can be seen on the SSG "Page 4 - PCC Car Photos" at
http://www.trainweb.org/sss/pcc/index.pcc.html
.)
4c. Visitation Report - Chick's Hobby Center, Gibbstown NJ (8/9/00)
I refer to Chick Viggianno as
the "wizard of Gibbstown". Chick specializes in both basic and
somewhat exotic modifications to American Flyer and other S-gauge
engines
Engine Mods--One of
Chick's many talents is installing Soundtraaxx decoders and
speakers in S-gauge engines, plus many other innovative
improvements. Chick took me to his test layout in the basement of
the store, and I got to watch him operate Flyer steamers with
high-intensity headlights, DC can motors, different gears and
wheels, tender truck conversions for better pickup, firebox
lights, cab lights, special drawbars to hide the wires going to
the tender, lights on tenders, more realistic-looking replacement
trailing trucks, and special marker lights on K4's. The K4 had
four green marker lights on the front, and two red marker lights
on the tender, which could be turned on and off via the DCC; very
pretty to look at.
S Gauge Rules--Chick's
goal is to be the "category killer" for S-gauge in southern New
Jersey. Chick's is one of the rare stores, maybe the only store,
where S-gauge is the dominant scale. If you're in the Philadelphia
area, you may want to stop and browse. Chicks website can be
viewed at http://users.jnlk.com/~chicks/
. The website has contact information, but currently does not
include the engine modifications.
Closed-Frog S-Trax--In
his shop, Chick had a custom-made, closed-frog S-Helper S-Trax
switch. He and a gentleman named Mark Mogil made it by combining a
piece of straight S-Trax with a piece of curved S-Trax, then
constructing a closed-frog from scratch. In other words, they did
not begin with a switch. They began with two pieces of plain
track, and "kitbashed" them into a switch (Several photos of this
switch are on "SSG Page 5 - Closed-Frog, S-Trax Switches" at
http://www.trainweb.org/sss/extras/switches/index.switches.html
.)
The below photo is one of the
photos that Mark sent me. Note that they are NOT selling these,
but just making them for their own use.
Here are a few notes on S-Gauge
displays open to the public. (So far as I know, nobody is
tabulating this information yet.
Note that these are ordered by
state, then by city.
Cincinnati History Museum
Ohio,
Cincinnati--1-800-733-2077
Display is still under
construction by Clarke Dunham, but is open to the public, as
described in page 30-33 of July 2000 S Gaugian, as "possibly the
largest S scale layout in the world".
