What 2020 has brought us to. Every year that we have been together we have run trains on Christmas Eve. We would invite anyone who chose to come by and watch the trains run and gather together for a little pre-Christmas cheer. The train garden would be decorated as well as the trains. We haveContinue reading “Christmas Eve 2020”
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Holiday Show 2020
Our train club, the Tidewater Big Train Operators, has long put on a large Holiday show that runs for eight days and every year that Archie and I have been members we have participated in it. Like everything else in this crazy year the show was cancelled. Sigh. We were not actually planning on havingContinue reading “Holiday Show 2020”
Halloween 2020
Our Open Yard Halloween this year was as much for our benefit as it was for those who stopped by. We have run our trains on Halloween for the last nine years so this provided a small bit of normality in an otherwise weird year. We had all three tracks cleaned up and running trains,Continue reading “Halloween 2020”
Open Houses
Since 2012 we have had an open house every year on Halloween and Christmas Eve. More properly an “Open Yard”, we decorate the train garden for the appropriate holiday, run trains and hang out with anyone who happens to stop by. On Halloween we hand out candy to the kids and chat with the grown-ups.Continue reading “Open Houses”
County Fair
We ran our trains for a display at the county fair this week and had a wonderful time. Just kidding. We do not have a county fair. We do have a regional County Fair in Chowan County that encompasses the entire area. But, like everything else this year (2020), it was cancelled. As was theContinue reading “County Fair”
From Canal to Trolley
When we started construction on our layout back in 2016 Archie wanted it to include a water feature with a portion of it inspired by the Dismal Swamp Canal. So we ended up with a straight ditch with a small pond at one end and a larger one at the far end. The main pumpContinue reading “From Canal to Trolley”
Holiday Show 2017
The annual Tidewater Big Train Operators (TBTO) Holiday train show is the largest and longest lasting display that our club sets up. We take over an entire gymnasium and the show runs for eight days. 2017 was our second year with our own layout in the show and our first year setting up along theContinue reading “Holiday Show 2017”
Golden Spike
In September of 2017 we had the “Golden Spike” ceremony for our layout in conjunction with the club’s annual picnic. A Last Spike is the one driven at the completion of a railroad construction project and when the Central Pacific and Union Pacific rail lines were joined at Promontory Point, Utah in 1869 they usedContinue reading “Golden Spike”
SCARM
Simple Computer Aided Railway Modeler All of our layouts have been designed with a piece of software known as SCARM, or Simple Computer Aided Railway Modeler. There is other software available and this is not the one that our club uses, but when we first started SCARM was free (it was still in beta) andContinue reading “SCARM”
Holiday Show 2016
The annual Tidewater Big Train Operators (TBTO) Holiday train show is the largest and longest lasting display that our club sets up. We take over an entire gymnasium and the show runs for eight days. This year was the third year for us as members of the club and the first year that we hadContinue reading “Holiday Show 2016”
Dismal Creek Railroad 