Southern Utah T-Trak

[Russ Bellinis]

Time to move this over here:

Hello all!
As our club does not have a permanent location to meet, we don't have a place to build a layout at. When we have our regular meetings, we can't run trains (a big problem for a train club ) For the past year or so, I have been trying to come up with some way to build a layout that we could carry easily and put together quickly and take down quickly. We have the bend track modules, but at 4x3 for each of the two balloons, they aren't transportable in my little car. We came up with several ideas, but all were starting from scratch with measurements and building. Finally, I heard about T-Trak (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://ttrak.org/">http://ttrak.org/</a><!-- m -->). The modules are REALLY small and they are light and they setup VERY quickly. I was watching a Youtube video of an Australian T-Trak club and they put together a large yard in seconds, that was good enough for me. Plus all the measurements were already done so no reinventing the wheel!

Minimum you need four corners, and also some straights to add some length. We glued the modules together one night:

Straight Module:


Corner Module:


You set these up on a table, so you put bolts and T-Washers on so that you can level them. Here are the undersides of the modules:

Straight:


Corner:


A few of our members do not like the 3-tracks on N-Track, so they were happy so see it is only dual track. Here is what the modules look like with track on:

Straight:


Corner:


Will start painting these soon and decorating them. I am hopeful that with their small size, I can get lots of people around here interested in building their own little piece and the layout will grow and grow. For now I am building 4 corners and 4 straights and Mooreway is building six straights, will show more pictures as we update them.

The modular club that I belong to only operates trains at show set ups. At our monthly business meetings we discuss the last show or in some cases two or three that we have participated in and critique what has worked well and what has needed improvement. We also plan the set ups for the next few shows on the schedule. We have a "good & welfare" section at the end where members can report on anything that might be of interest to the other members, and finally after the meting closes we will have a workshop presented by one of the members. The workshops are planned in advance based on what members want to learn about. It may be anything from how to install decoders in various locomotives, how to convert passenger cars from talgo truck mounted couplers to body mounts, how to layout an easement on a curve, or it may be a slide show of prototype equipment showing weathering patterns on the prototype, etc. 2 or 3 times a year we close with a modeling contest. The models are assigned a # to try to keep anyone from knowing which member built which model, and the winners are chosen by popular vote. The club buys three gift certificates to a local hobby shop that are awarded to the first, second, and third place winners. We rent the conference room of a local library for our meetings and generally we would not have time to set up any sort of layout for operation before we would need to take it down for the library to close, so operation at a club meeting is not an option.