Bob Chaparro: Establishing an Era For Your Model Railroad

The purpose of this presentation is to identify visual cues that establish the era one is modeling
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Michael Eldridge: Enhancing Paper Structures

Note: This is a make-and-take clinic. You must register for this clinic in advance (click here to register). There is a small fee for materials.

We will build a paper structure using several improvements for this type of structure, including some simple techniques and some ideas for using 3D printed and laser cut parts.
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Bruce Morden: North Over Cuesta

Travel from San Luis Obispo to Paso Robles seeing photos of actual sights and historic photos of the route.  This is an important clinic to attend if you have signed up for the excursion on Amtrak Thursday afternoon.  If you are not on the excursion you can travel virtually and see most of the sights and learn the history of the route including the tunnels and bridges.
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Ed Hall: Basic Airbrushing

Origin of the airbrush, types of guns, paint and taping techniques
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Seth Neuman: Arduino-based Circuits For Operation

Seth will describe simple Arduino based circuits for implementing Train Order Board control, Operators’ approach indicators, Interlocking plants, Morse Code systems and other useful effects.
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Bob Chaparro: Freight Car Tune-up Tips

The purpose of this presentation is to help you enjoy the operating your trains through tips for making your freight cars operate more reliably.
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Michael Eldridge: Creating Human Figures for 3D Printing

A look at ways to create scale human figures, including scanning live people, drawing with 3D drawing packages, and a software application that creates realistic, posable figures.
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Bruce Morden: Black Gold and White Earth: Railroads along the Central Coast

This is a visual trip south from San Luis Obispo covering both the current and historic railroad activity and major industries served.  Primarily Southern Pacific, the presentation also covers the Pacific Coast Railway, the Santa Maria Valley Railroad and the Pacific Southwestern Railroad.  Photos of recent and historic railroading in this part of the Central Coast of California.
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Seth Neuman: Model Railroad Communications

Seth will describe the history of Dispatcher to Train Communications on the prototype and how to model them in your model railroad’s operating scheme. He will cover design considerations, matching your communications to the operations of your prototype, system design, equipment selection including use of period telephone and telegraph equipment or inexpensive modern equivalents.
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Bob Chaparro: Open Carloads

A look at loads modelers can duplicate with an emphasis on general service flat cars and gondolas in the steam and transition eras
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Irwin D Nathanson: Tour of Diamond Point Railways

Diamond Point Railways (2005-2024) were three interconnected layouts: American HO, German HO and British 00.  DCC, 100% sceniced, lots of animation/sound.  Tour includes text, track plan, photos and videos. Irwin explains how he was inspired by Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg, Germany.
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Michael Laine: Quarry Railroads of the Granite Rock Company

Located on Southern Pacific’s Coast Route, the Granite Rock Company A.R. Wilson Quarry in Aromas is one of California’s premier supplier of aggregate, railroad ballast and hot mix asphalt.  The Granite Rock story is told with historic photographs that reveal details of quarry railroad history, narrow and standard gauge locomotives and rolling stock and the evolution of quarry operations.
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Chip Meriam: Using Readily Available Software to create TT & TO Forms

Chip will demonstrate how to create timetables and train orders using MS Excel or Apache Open Office spreadsheet software.
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John Stutz: Prototype Timber Tunnel Portals

Most prototype timber tunnel portals are essentially rock sheds,  but with all but their face concealed from track-side, are rarely modeled as such.  John will present photographs and drawings of a couple dozen fairly typical examples, and some atypical ones, together with modeling techniques, some cautions about curves, and example models.
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Frank Markovich : Building a Contest-Quality West Side Caboose Model

Frank will demonstrate the steps to creating a contest quality model of West Side Lumber Co caboose, which will include research, building the model, documenting the model and solving particular problems (and for this model there were a number of problems).
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Byron Henderson: LDSIG Layout Design Mini-Camp

Join a custom layout designer for a one-hour distillation of the LDSIG’s four-hour Layout Design Bootcamp. Learn about three phases of the design process: Conceptual, Footprint, and Detail. Prototype and freelance examples of design best practices.
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Byron Henderson: Small Layout Design – Beyond the Timesaver

Many small layouts are based on maddening puzzles and tedious tricks. But ops on small layouts can be challenging, fun, and prototype-inspired. A custom layout designer describes how to include layout design “best practices” even in small layouts.
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Modeling with the Masters® with Clark Kooning, MMR, and Peter Youngblood, MMR

Five clinics will be offered under the NMRA’s Modeling with the Masters® program. Please note: Every participant should get or be aware of the tool list. It is imperative they have tools to participate. This is a suggested list of tools that may be required to participate fully in the hands-on portion of our program. To allow you to fully take part in building of models you are strongly suggested to have all tools listed.
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You can see more details and the tools list by clicking on the link for each clinic below.

Clinic 1: Signs and Lettering Clinic (HO Only). Cost: $25

Clinic#2: Telephone Pole Clinic (HO Only). Cost: $25

Clinic #3: Laser Building Kit (N-HO -S -O). Cost: $50

Clinic #4: Scratchbuilding a Freight Car Shed (HO only). Cost: $50

Clinic#5: Scratchbuilding a Small Bridge (Puddle Jumper) (N and HO). Cost $50

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Thomas Knapp MMR #101: Modeling the Pacific Coast Railway in N Scale

Construction of a sectional layout depicting the narrow-gauge Pacific Coast Railway from Port San Luis to and through the facilities in San Luis Obispo circa mid-1930’s.
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Dana Zimmerli: Introduction to Layout Command Control

What is LCC? Why LCC was developed, a brief history of LCC and and how LCC works. This Clinic is a at the practical level not the technical details.
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Dana Zimmerli: How to use Layout Command Control

Presenting the available parts and a guide to uisinng them in layout control. Assumes a top level knowledge of LCC and a bit of layout wiring. Discusses the way to get started in LCC
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Dana Zimmerli: Clocks, Lights and LCC

Presenting the LCC Fast Clock and how to use it. Includes several methods to control lights on your layout as well as providing a Fast Clock for operations.  Also describes the special effects module to enhance the lighting
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Phil Edholm: Building Structures Two Ways – Acrylic and 3D Framing

Phil will discuss building ruggedized contest quality O scale structures for a module using two techniques. First, he will cover using an acrylic box as the structure for a large building. Two additional structures, one large and one small, use 3D filament printed framing with traditional material for both strength and appearance. In these buildings, the framing and roof are 3D printed with all floors, siding, and roofing being more traditional modeling materials.  The clinic will cover design, building, coloring and finishing for the structures.
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Phil Edholm: Using PowerPoint to Make Modeling Images and Designs

This clinic will cover methods and ideas to use PowerPoint as a drawing tool to create a number of modeling projects.  The clinic will discuss how to use PowerPoint tools, how to set up large slides for high-resolution images and how to manage objects in large slides spaces. Phil will also cover how to use PowerPoint for general design and archiving materials (images, historical, concepts, etc.). Phil will demonstrate how to output image files using different printing options, generally not a home printer.  The clinic  will cover how to generate high-quality laser decals, photo quality images for signs, posters, etc., generating building flats in larger scales and other useful applications around the railroad.
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Tony Thompson: Southern Pacific Freight Cars You Can Model

This talk presents examples of models from kits and kit conversions in HO scale that represent important SP freight cars for the steam-diesel transition era. All types of cars, from flats and gondolas to box, tank and hopper cars and cabooses, are included. The focus is on accurate and reasonable representations of each prototype car, not of museum-quality modeling. Some information on car usage is also included. A handout summarizes the car classes and commercial model(s) used as the basis for each car.
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Tony Thompson: Creating Realistic Operation on an SP Layout

The clinic describes the operation of my small layout, emphasizing SP practices and documents. The layout is switching-intensive, but does have mainline operating also. The presentation concentrates on both car and train movements, with a few comments on the use of prototype-format waybills to route cars, in order to maintain variety of operation in each successive operating session.
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Chip Meriam: Developing and Submitting an Article for Publication

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Bill Kepner: Running Your Layout Every Day and Expecting it to Last Forever!

The Colorado Model Railroad Museum is open most days of the week throughout the year.  There’s been many lessons learned to keep the layouts always running for the  benefit of their guests that could be applied to the average modeler. The session will explain some of the maintenance and management policies that have evolved over the last 15 years, as well as thoughts on technology adoption and volunteer engagement.

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Paul Hobbs: TTX – An Unnoticed Giant

Trailer Train was formed in 1955 by Pennsylvania Railroad and Norfolk and Western Railway to provide a pool of flat cars for the emerging Trailer on Flat Car (TOFC) business. By 1960 Trailer Train was operating autoracks, later also containers. Renamed TTX in 1991, the company is today operating more than 200,000 cars, one of the largest fleets in North America.

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Paul Hobbs: Streamlined Passenger Trains in California

Railroads serving California were early to adopt streamlined passenger cars and Diesel power. We will discuss the trains operated and equipment used from the 1930s until the start of Amtrak in 1971.

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