The Indian Nations Division of the NMRA located in Tulsa, OK is pleased to announce that we will be hosting our 2nd Layout Design and Operations Weekend, March 18-20, 2011. We have 4 presenters lined up with 6 presentations to be given; Tony Koester is going to give 2 presentations. Doug Gurin is going to give 2 presentations; Riley Trigss and Keith Robertson are both going to give a presentation. Everyone will be able to attend all 6 presentations. Updated information on the presenters and presentations will be added to the web page. The cost is only $20.00 (Before the end of the year, then it goes up to $25.00.) You can also pre-purchase your lunch, this year we will do a build your own sandwich bar with all the fixings for a mere $8.00. This will give you an opportunity to talk with the presenters, other participants and old friends while having lunch and not have to get in your car and spend time driving around. We will be doing shirts again, this year we will be doing a polo type shirt, we still haven’t decided on the color of shirt, but as soon as we get that nailed down we will add that info to the web page. The logo will be in multiple colors this year too, depends on the final shirt color on the colors that will be used. The shirts are $25.00, and for 2XL and larger are $27.00. All these can be done using pay pal on line from the web page or print off a registration form and mail it in. If you’d like to operate there is the option so that you can be added to the list so that we can get your info so we can send you a preference sheet to operate (this doesn’t cost, its part of the meet). To engage more individuals in operation this year we will not have a dedicated open house night, even though if you aren’t interested in operating you can still visit the layouts when they are operating if you’d like too. There will be 3 different sessions (Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday morning) there will be multiple layouts available for each session and assignment will be done first come and first serve, preference sheets will be emailed later to you after you register. If you like designing track plans or would like to design a track plan we are hosting a track plan challenge. This isn’t a contest; there are no individual winners, as everyone wins on this as we can see how different people would approach the same area and what they would do. These ideas might be of use to your own layout or something to consider in designing and building a layout in the future. On the web site there is a PDF document with some given and druthers and also footprint and elevation drawing with obstacles in the room and everything you need to know about it. I hope that several of you will give this a try. The layout design challenge entries will be compiled and the author of each one will be given a little time to make a short presentation on their design. If we were to get more entries than time allows for reviewing all of them (This would be a great thing to have!) the committee will go through and select a handful to be presented to everyone. All others will be presented in paper form with a write up about it so that everyone that enters something will have it posted for all to review. After the meet all entries will be compiled and submitted to the Layout Design Journal for possible publication. After each presentation for the layout design challenge the Panel (Comprised of the presenters) will provide comments and feedback on the designs. If we get too many designs We will end the meet portion with an open discussion with the panel of presenters with a question and answer session. This was really great last year and we are allowing a little more time for that this year. Link to the web page: http://ldopsigmeet.tulsanmra.org/ I hope you all can attend the meet as the committee has been doing a lot of work to put together a fantastic program for everyone. It will be a great weekend. Thanks, Dave Salamon
Thanks for the heads-up, Dave- I have that date circled on my calendar. BTW- to my fellow Trainboarders, Dave is the CEO, CCBW (Chief Cook & Bottle Washer) and builder of the Deep River & Southern, an N scale model railroad. He is one of a group of fellows in the Tulsa, OK area who own & operate some awesome model railroads, some of which I have been privleged to run on. They also have their own operators group on Yahoo, and besides keeping other informed on their layouts also have crew calls for layout operations.
