View from the Cab

I want to welcome everyone back to LIVE meetings on September 17, 2021! The meeting will take place at our usual location, Proclaim FM Community Center (7112 Angola Road, Holland, OH). The doors will open at 6PM with the meeting starting at 7PM. I recommend arriving well before 7PM as I am sure everyone will have a lot of catching up to do!! We will have tables setup for Show and Tell (see Clinic Corner) and if you have items to trade sell, we will have a table for that as well. Refreshments will be available during our break.

This will be my first meeting as Superintendent, and I am looking forward to serving the division in that role. Our agenda for this meeting is short but after not being able to meet in person for so long we have a fair amount of business to attend to. We will introduce the new board, review budgets, talk about the convention and then get down to the real reason we are here, TRAINS!! As has been our tradition for several years now, our first meeting will be all about "What I did over the summer"! So please bring your models, photos, trains or whatever! See Brian's Clinic Corner for more information!!

WE NEED YOU TO VOLUNTEER!!

Our Division needs help at the meetings! We currently need assistance hooking up and running the laptop at the meetings. We will be shorthanded at the first meeting so please bear with us as things may not be smooth. This position DOES NOT need to be a computer guru!!! If you can work a mouse and hook up the projector, you are the person we are looking for!!! E-mail div1ncr@outlook.com if interested.

We also have a need for a new Editor of the Train Order. This person will be responsible for assembling the content for the Train Order but not necessarily posting it to the website. E-mail div1ncr@outlook.com if interested.

Black Swamp Junction Update

As of the writing of this column we have over 129 attendees registered for the convention! This is a very good number considering all the issues over the last year!! Dave will provide an overview of what to expect at the convention and have a Q&A session. We will also have LIVE REGISTRATION available at the meeting. So, bring your checkbook and get registered!!

WE NEED VOLUNTEERS! Black Swamp Junction needs volunteers for miscellaneous tasks from guest registration to room watchers. We also welcome spouses and family members as volunteers!! If you would like to throw your name (or someone you know) into the hat, please drop an e-mail to div1ncr@outlook.com or contact Steve Glass at the September 17 meeting.

The future of Zoom

Zoom has been a great way to communicate and continue our meetings during the pandemic. Attendance during these meetings have ranged from 15-30 individuals. It has served as a great way to keep in touch when we could not meet in person. It also had the added benefit of allowing some of our more distant members attend the meetings. We have looked at bringing Zoom into our live meetings so that those who have trouble attending can still be with us. Unfortunately, due to the lack of personnel (see volunteer message above), lack of equipment (we will need a second webcam) and expense (Zoom is not free), we will not be doing Zoom simulcast at our live meetings. This does not mean future Zoom simulcasts will never happen, if we can get past the above issues, we will take another look at implementing Zoom into the live meetings.

A word about COVID

This will be our first live meeting since early March 2020. With that said, please be aware that we will follow any requirements laid down by the State, County, and local governments. At this time, we are not aware of any restrictions affecting our meeting, but we will continue to follow the situation closely and advise everyone via e-mail if anything changes. Although masks are not required, if you feel more comforatble with one, by all means do so!

Marshall Stull,
Superintendent

Clinic Corner

Happy Fall to all! I hope you all have had a great summer and are ready to get back to in-person meetings.

For the September meeting our clinic topic will be: What I Did This Summer. Anything railroad related is welcomed. If you had any fun or interesting experiences over the summer, please share them with the group. If you have pictures from either of our two summer outings put them on a thumb drive to share with those of us who may not have been able to attend. Travel by train, if so how was your experience? What have you gotten done on your layout? Start a new project, how's it going? Think of this as an extended Show-N-Tell. Don't have pictures? Just share your experiences. I'd like to get more people involved in sharing, even those of us who are less technologically savvy.

I'd also like to thank you all for allowing me to be YOUR Assistant Superintendent. I am still new to model railroading and hope to learn as much as possible from you all and make many new friends, and contacts throughout the hobby. Since I am still so new, I'm going to need some help from all of you for ideas for clinic topics or clinicians you may want to hear from. All ideas are welcomed and appreciated!

My contact information is as follows: 419-340-5247 and firemedicburr1@gmail.com. Texting and email are best.

Again, thank you for giving me this opportunity to serve YOU.

Brian Burr,
Assistant Superintendent

A message from a former Division 1 member

I am a life member of the NMRA since the 1970's and moved from Division 1 to Leesburg, Florida back in 2010 or so. I have worked on a new portable model railroad since. The first module is the Petersburg, Michigan. The second module is the civil war bridge. At present I am working on 4 modules; 2 do not have final scenery but the track and turnouts are in place.

5, 6 and 7 are drawn up but not constructed yet. I am now thinking of adding a 1869 brick bridge on module 7. This bridge was further west of Petersburg and also crossed the River Raisin. (I mean Raisin River. In Monroe, Michigan were I was born, they still use the French way of writing the river.) The subject of the railroad is anything before 1900. It is all built in N-scale.

A side historical note: Before Michigan became a state we had a railroad from Adrian, Michigan to Port Lawrence, Michigan on the Maumee River. After statehood when Ohio took Port, Lawrence (and named it Toledo, Ohio) that railroad was in two states! On maps you can still pick up most of the road for some of it is still being used at least when I was there!

Marcel (Marc) Poupard,
mpoupard@mac.com