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John Williams Face

From the Superintendent’s Desk

By John Williams, Division 15, Superintendent

First off I hope you are having a wonderful holiday season and that with the start of a new year you will be refreshed and ready to continue to enjoy our hobby. While it has been six months since I became the Division Superintendent I’m still learning names and also just how everything fits together.

As a Division/Club, we have several different levels at which we interact: We have the Club which is open to anyone with an interest in model railroading; the Land O’ Sky Division of the NMRA which is open to all members of the NMRA who reside in our geographic region; the module group which is open to Club and Division members, the operations group which is open to anyone with an interest in the operations side of model railroading; and our various outreach activities, not the least of which our interaction with the children at Eliada Homes. Recently we added another dimension, railfanning and regional excursions.

Early in December several of us made the trip to Johnson City, Tennessee. There we had the opportunity to see a store-front layout of several different scales. I was most interested in the American Flyer trains as my first train as a child was American Flyer. We then went to the F.L. Carter Museum at East Tennessee State University. This museum has several operating scale layouts. A visit to the museum is well worth while. You can find out more about the museum at their website.

As I said in a previous edition of The Semaphore, I would like to see us do more of this type of activity. It is a great way to learn about the railroads of this region and a great opportunity for further fellowship. So with the beginning of the New Year,
I encourage you all to remember “Model Railroading is Fun.


Operating Sessions on the LOST RR

We had a very good turnout at the operating session on December 13 with several new operators along with some we have not seen in a while. If you keep statistics, we ran 20 trains, with 190 cars totaling over 18,000 tons of scale freight. The next session will be on Sunday, December 28th at 2:00 PM. In January, we will operate on Saturday, January 10 and on Sunday, January 25, both sessions staring at 2:00 pm. The Module Committee meets the third Thursday of each month, e.g., December 18 and January 15 at 7:00 pm.


Our next meeting is Thursday, January 8, 2009 at 7:00 pm.

This meeting will be off the normal first Thursday of the month due to New Years Day which is the first Thursday in January. We are trying to accommodate your holiday travel and activities plans with the date change. We will be having the February meeting on the first Thursday of the month which will be February 5th.


Local author has New Book

Mr. Edgar Billups of Hendersonville has written a new beautiful book about the Chesapeake and Ohio’s Railway’s famous passenger train The George Washington. See page 5 for more information.