Happy Holidays!

Thanks to everyone who attended our 2010 Tiger Tracks Train Show & Sale! Your support helps fund our activities throughout the year, from building our model railroad to our many community outreach projects. Winter quarter is starting up, and we're going to be on break for Christmas and New Year's... Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to all! See you in 2011!

Tiger Tracks Train Show this week!

We hope to see you next week for our 5th Annual Tiger Tracks Train Show & Sale, December 4 and 5!

Norfolk Southern on the R&IT

 

Railfanning is an adventure, you never know what you're going to see coming down the tracks next! Here we see Norfolk Southern power leading a heavy train over the R&IT, seen here passing the Rochester Amtrak station downtown. This NS train will continue east to Geneva, then head south to Corning and the Southern Tier. Photo by J.C. Mayer

Syracuse Train Show

This weekend, November 6th and 7th, is the annual train show at the Fairgrounds in Syracuse. RITMRC will be making an appearance there, although more muted than in years past. We will be in the back of the Americraft Center of Progress building, semi-attached to the Free-mo layout there. We will be selling our world-famous hoppers and boxcars. The models are custom-made by Accurail, and are on sale at the show, get both for only $30!

Also, don't forget that our annual Tiger Tracks Train Show is quickly coming up, on December 4th and 5th at the Gordon Field House here at RIT! Hope to see you there.

One month to TIGER TRACKS 2010!

We're just a month away from our 2010 Tiger Trains Train Show & Sale! Join us at the Gordon Field House at RIT on December 4 and 5 for Rochester's largest train show! Operating model railroad layouts, vendors selling trains, scenery, supplies, books, magazines, and more, plus a special Open House at the RIT Model Railroad Club where you can see our well-known Rochester & Irondeqoit Terminal Railroad! Always free for students with valid I.D., come out and check out this spectacular event! More details can be found on our web site... See you there!

A Day Out on the Rails

This weekend, a few of us went to the Medina Railroad Museum, to look at their large HO-scale layout. It's quite an impressive layout, having over 800 feet of mainline track! That equates to about 13 miles of real-world track (assuming that I have done the math right).

We also got there just in time to see the museum's fall excursion train leave, headed by GVT's Alco RS-32 #2035. Here it is coming back to the museum, long hood forward. The locomotive was originally built for the New York Central railroad in 1962.

We also went out and saw some CSX trains in Batavia and at CP 382, where the West Shore branch (which runs past RIT) diverges from the mainline. All told, we saw about about a dozen trains pass by from our vantage points. Most of the trains were either intermodal or auto racks (car carriers), but the last train that we saw was a mixed freight with a bunch of trash cars (presumably from NYC) in the lead. As a result, it turned out to be quite a good day for watching trains -- especially since the weather was quite wonderful (it got close to 70 at times)!

The View from Red Onion

A heavy R&IT freight train makes its way through the city of Rochester, passing through the neighborhood known as "Red Onion." Even though this neighborhood does not exist in real life, many of our visitors are convinced they know where it is! Detailed scenes like these make up the bulk of our model railroad. Come down and check us out in Room A420, we meet Tuesday nights at 7:30.

Train show at Buffalo Central Terminal

Buffalo Central Terminal was built by the New York Central in 1929 to serve as a union station for the city that served as a gateway for so many railroads. The stock market crash the followed stopped any development, and the NYC was left in its big empty terminal all by itself (with a few exceptions). Never living up to its full potential, Amtrak abandoned the terminal in 1979, and Conrail closed its dispatching center in 1980. The Art Deco structure was vulnerable to vandals and salvagers until a group called the Central Terminal Restoration Corp. took ownership in 1997 and began to clean up the site. The annual train show is just one of the many events that keep the old terminal busy and help raise funds for the organization. Here are a couple of photos from our visit on Saturday, September 11. Photos by Otto Vondrak ('99).

Back to the grind!

It's Labor Day, and you know what that means? Why, it means that RIT is starting school again! What fun. Of course, since RIT is starting school again, that means that the club is also starting again. Our first official meeting of the year will be Tuesday, September 6th at 7PM in our room, SAU-A420. We hope to see all of our old members (and some new ones) there!

RITMRC featured on Railroad Model Craftsman website

An impromptu photo session last summer created some very interesting images showing us what the R&IT of the 1970s might have looked like. Otto Vondrak created a short article for the monthly "Boomer Trail" feature on Railroad Model Craftsman's web site. (We were also the cover story in the October 2006 issue.) Thanks to Dave Scheiderich for providing the great photos!

ImagineRIT and iPods

This past weekend was of course the 3rd annual ImagineRIT festival! We had a lot of people down in the club room during the day. In fact, the room was completely packed at times! Kyle stopped down to help run some trains. Overall, it seemed to run very well. We had a few problems with one of the switches at CP367, but it turns out there was just some dirt preventing the points from closing all the way. As a result, we could only run one way over the switch the entire day, otherwise everything that went over the switch would pick it and derail. (Fortunately, HO- cale trains don't cause catastrophic damage when they derail ) We were also running trains using Robert's iPod, using a program that he's finishing up for a final project... This is definitely not your grandfather's railroad!