Katy Dickinson

Pacific Coast Region Model Railway Tour

Several special interest groups of the PCR (Pacific Coast Region) of the NMRA (National Model Railroad Association) toured our local train club here in San Jose, California last night. The Silicon Valley Lines (SVL) club is of particular intrest because of the high degree of its computerization. SVL operates trains using digital command control (DCC), which allows engineers to control locomotives independently on the same track.

Many SVL members are professionally in high tech hardware or software development. My husband John Plocher and several SVL members have been involved in the JMRI open source software project. JMRI was awarded Duke's Choice award by James Gosling at the 2006 JavaOne conference. Duke's Choice goes to the most innovative projects of the year using the Java platform. John is also working on an open source hardware project for model train layout controls. We even have a webcam set up on our home layout so that other members of the JMRI team can test software changes when we are not there. John is SVL President again this year and usually acts as Dispatcher for operations nights.

John and I arrived at SVL at 7:30 p.m. and stayed until the club shut down about 11 p.m. Visitors had fun running trains on SVL's HO-scale layout and asking lots of questions. SVL is open to the public at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and has its regular operations night the last Friday of the month. Club members often stay very late. The local Denny's knows to expect them for breakfast well after midnight.

John and I go on layout tours at least once a year. Visiting a private home to see what one person can do and then visiting a club layout to see what a group has accomplished are both interesting. We hope to participate in the PCR convention 2-6 May 2007 which will feature dozens of layout tours in the Santa Cruz area. We also hope to connect with rail fans and model railfans on our trip to India in a few weeks. We are reading the IRFCA (Indian Railways Fan Club) web site with interest.

Posted at 10:53PM Feb 11, 2007 by katysblog in News & Reviews  |