in today's arrival of the latest MR, there is a great pictoral of Tom Knapp, Nn3 Chairperson for the NMRA Standards. I know he's dying to call it Z but his modules are utterly fantastic either way. Best western scenery I've seen. For those of us on the West coast that see these at shows, they are a real challenge to us.
That's true, Tom's group is a tough act to follow. They use Ultralight modules with supermagnets instead of bolts to assemble their module legs in record time, and they even have a valance option that really gives a professional looking overhead lighting box appearance. I just got my MR yesterday and have not looked at the article yet....
I'll bet if he was modeling HOn3 they would have left alot of the article the way he wrote it. It just seems to me that MR leans mainly towards HO scale articles and shys away from us N scalers.
On the Nn3 Yahoo list is all the diagrams and info in the files section. I helped Tom setup and run his ultralight modules one year at our local NMRA convention, and setup was a breeze. His modules are only 1 foot deep, and weight almost nothing, so the supermagnets in the legs held up the modules very strong and effortlessly. The modules were made much like a hollow core door, using that venier for the frames to strengthen extruded foam, and they use Bragdon's expanding foam rock and scenery system to give a very convincing scenery system. They are running all DCC now at the shows, and Tom's models are marvels of engineering and beauty!
There was an article on the construction methods in Model RailroadING or Rail Model Journal around the spring of 2004 I think. Randy
