One disadvantage to college is the general lack of space for a good model railroad. Some people, I know, can pull it off, starting/joining a club or building a very small one. I don't really have that option. What I DO have is a very sizeable amount of Kato Unitrack, along with a DCC system and a good assortment of rollingstock. So, every so often, I claim a pool table in the basement and set up some trains to run. In the past, this has maxed out with two or three lower loops, a loop around the edges, and a pair of 1/2 loops connecting the two. Last Saturday I went with something a bit easier; two loops around the lower level edge, and a veritable spaghetti loop in the center. (You might hear some of my fellows playing Smash Bros. in the background.)
Sooo .. is the Dalek the fireman? I'm impressed by your guts - I'm sure you take some ribbing for "playing with trains". Bravo!
Just a little bit. Most people are very impressed by my quantity of models and the design of the layouts. (Moreso when they learn I've run real trains too.) Also, I guess the Dalek is more of a brakeman (brake-Dalek?), since he's on a cab-forward. That was a Shapeways buy that I painted.
My solution to the train itch in college was some Z track fixed to a 3'x2' framed corkboard that hung on the wall when not in use. I had an F7 and a 2-6-0 for motive power, then MTL came out with a GP35 partway through freshman year- I put a lot of mileage on those little engines for just driving them around in loops. Good way to relax while doing homework... or pretending to.
Good for you! I heard RPI (Rensselaer Polytech) up in NY has a MRR club. I wonder what other colleges have MRR clubs. It would be a good list to compile.
I considered trying to start one, but University of Portland is fairly small as colleges go, so getting enough people would have been difficult. Plus the difficulties of finding a place to store the model railroad, and the cost of building it...UP's also pretty expensive to go to, so I wasn't sure I could get the members to buy stuff for it.
The New England Berkshire & Western at RPI has been in existence since 1972. Unfortunately, it's an HO system, but a beautiful system none the less. We had a member, Corey Lynch, who was president of the NEB&W while an undergraduate at RPI.
I lived in the dorm where the NEB&W was being built in the basement, in 1973-4. Unfortunately for me, was not into MRing at the time.
Trains are an addiction. Those are some nice locos you have there. Almost on topic, hopefully at least interesting to the thread followers, my family was from Troy NY and my mother grew up a block or so over the hill from RPI, above St. Patrick's. She worked summer camps at Frear Park adjacent to the campus and had her high school commencement at RPI Field House. I lived in Troy for a few years as an infant because my father was an engineer at Alco in Schenectady, which leads to an Alco/ RPI trivia connection, Alco's use of RPI's R&D department in the development of the cylinder head and intake manifold for the 251 engine. RPI had a high tech (for the time, early fifties?), high speed camera rig that took movies at a ridiculously high number of frames per second and then played back a several minute long movie where high speed action could be slowed to observe details otherwise unknowable. Alco built a full size see through model of the intake system that could easily be modified and then filmed the flow with what was basically confetti being blown through the system. They could then observe in high detail the flow characteristics, turbulence, etc. This helped in optimizing the intake system for power and fuel efficiency. I grew up on these stories and I'm sure it had some bearing on my continued interest in trains, a soft spot for Alcos, and my career choice, designing and building machinery.
I believe there are a few clubs featuring N in the city where you matriculate who would be delighted to have a young person join their ranks. Have you reached out to any of them?
Not yet. I am thinking about joining a different (HO) club my Dad was a part of for a while. (I'm multiscale, I just focus on N in college 'cause I have room for it.)
