Railfair October 8 - 9, 2011

Well, Railfair 2011 is in the books. The weather was some of the best we have had in a long time. The high Saturday was 80 with Sunday being a bit warmer at 86. Also of note was the attendance. Saturdays attendance was noticeably up from the past few years. Sundays was lower but that is normal.

As we have been doing the last couple of years, we shared space with the Arizona Railway Museum. I know the city likes it as it saves them money in tent set up and we like it for the extra room we get. We had a great spot this year. Facing west along the sidewalk that goes to the new club building and Scottsdale Live Steamers. We had a lot of visitors but the facing west did give us some operational problems.

We decided to set up the layout on the Friday before the event and this proved to be one of the best moves we have done in a while. We had a team of nine show up, and in about two hours we had the layout set up and leveled. The new spot was much better and flatter than last years. The only issue during set up was we had was one of the 2 X 4 blocks that support the legs broke. We will either have to replace the block or redo the leg system with a leg set up Matt found on the web a couple of months ago. While we did have power, we forgot the base the power supply goes on so we did not do a power check. That was done Saturday.

In about an hour or so of our arrival Saturday we had test trains running. Overall operations of the layout were fantastic. We had no real derailments due to track issues although we do have a section of track that has to be replaced in a curve due to a kink. The improved straight connecting pieces also turn out to be a wonderful improvement.

The work we did all year to scenic the layout paid off nicely too. While we still have work to do, what layout doesn't, we can be proud of the way the layout looked and now it's appealing to they eye instead of a work in progress.

Railfair was also the debut of our new club shirts. It was really great to see all of us wear them. Bummer I did not get a picture.

Other highlights of the event were the new groups that were there. The Winslow Harvey Girls made the trip and had a wonderful display of railroad china, one of which I tried REALLY hard to get to have donated to the Arizona Railway Museum. The San Tan On3 club was there and WOW the work the Paradise & Pacific Tinplate, Sun-n-Sand and Scottsdale Model Railroad clubs have done since last year was amazing. The HO layout has over 500 feet of mainline track!

Matt Furze worked up a switching plan to allow those that wanted to do some operations. A couple of us did just that and it worked out fairly well and provided a nice break form just watching trains go in circles.

Many of the club members got the chance to run trains they normally cannot run on their home layouts. It was nice to see some of those long unit trains, the steam engines and passenger trains run.

We did have a few interesting power problems. Every now and then the trains would just stop then start up again. It mostly happened with consists and Mike Janik later found a couple of feeder lines that had broken which may have caused the issue. Overall electrically we ran fine. Had sometimes 5 trains running on the entire layout with no shorts. The westward facing of the tent however did cause us problems. As the sun went west it started to hit the layout and we started to see derailments on cars that were running all day long.

We talked to Claudia, the planner for Railfair, about next years event. We definitely want to stay in the same place and want to expand another 10 feet. The museum set up has grown and it went beyond the tent. We also talked about finding a way to cover the walkway between where we were and ABTO, straight across from us. We think this would prevent the derails we had and make it more comfortable for us and the museum team. It was tough to stand in the sunny areas and talk to people or operate the layout.

What is Railfair without a few pictures, OK lots of pictures, and videos. I purchased a new Sony DSLR camera and made good use of it. I took several pictures of the trains coming right at me. These trains were running and it was not staged. Some came out pretty good. One of the nice things about this camera is it takes video in HD. The bad, no media player on my computer would run them. I could convert to standard MPEG but you lose the HD. So, if you would like to see the videos, go to www.youtube.com and search for redmus1959 or Railfair 2011.

Click on the pictures to enlarge, turn off pop up blockers.

A local freight runs through Stilts.

The north end of Stilts.

A southbound coal train passes a northbound local freight.

Mike Janik taking my picture while I take his.

A northbound local running through the south part of Stilts.

The town of Stilts

The local freight enters Barcus.

A coal unit train leaves Stilts.

A coal unit train enters Stilts.

The town of Stilts looking south.

Matt Furze's Santa Fe Dash 9's come out of the tunnel.

Lest we ever forget our fallen members. This brick in the brick area around the carousel in memory of Gary and Carol Stilts

Rich Meyer works the switching in Barcus.

The clubs banner.

Matt Furze looks over the switching duties he created.

Busy time in Barcus. Mike Janik's ATSF 3755 decapod leads a refer train while a pair of local freights go about their business.

Matt fixes an oops.

Mike Janik's F unit black widow runs a unit train.

Mark Remond's S2 and Mike Janik's SP Black Widow in Barcus.

The Harvey girls with a wonderful display of railroad china.

A very nice display in the railroad club building lobby.

The Paradise & Pacific O scale club layout.

All set for Halloween.

More of the Paradise & Pacific.

Some of the Sun-n-Sand N-scale layout.

A yard at the Sun-n-Sand.

More Sun-n-Sand.

Look at all that track the Scottsdale Model RR Club has to clean!

More Scottsdale Model RR Club.

Just a neat look to the building.

Bench and track work on the Scottsdale Model RR Club layout.

More Sun-n-Sand.

The Paradise and Pacific models the roller coaster at Disneyland.

#10 was running.

The Scottsdale Live Steamer's were in action too.

#11 comes out of the tunnel.

The Free-Mo group displays a Rio Grande train.

The Grand Canyon Model Railroad Club runs a Rock Island train.

An SP 4-6-4 runs on the GCRR club layout.

More GCRR club.

GCRR club.

Tim Harrington's SP Daylight emerges from the tunnel.

The SP Daylight goes southbound in Stilts.

The SP Daylight in Barcus.

Trains passing in the tunnel.

The SP Daylight stops in Stilts while a north bound local freight and Hiawatha roll by.

Mike Janik's yellow bonnet Santa Fe leads a refer unit train.

Some of the head on pictures I took.

Mark Redmond's VO-660 in a head on picture.

Tough to get both in focus while moving.

Mike Janik's ATSF F7A coming at you.

Barcus is a busy railroad town.

The Hiawatha observation car.

A local freight in Barcus.

A local freight falls behind the Hiawatha.

A close up look at Mark Redmond's VO-660.

A close up look at Mike Janik's ATSF F7A.

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