It is with great sadness that we announce that Lee Reisinger passed away on July 31, 2024. Lee was an avid model railroader hobbyist and served as Superintendent for the Rocky Mountain Region, 7th Division (Roadrunners) and acted as Treasurer for the Southern New Mexico N Scalers for several years. In his memory a living plant called Bountiful Kalanchoe will be delivered to Brenda, his wife, on Saturday August 3rd. The sympathy message card has the following message: “Our thoughts are with you and your family. From the NMRA Roadrunners Division 07.”
On Saturday, January 20, 2024, the Southern New Mexico N Scalers held their Monthly Meeting and Run Day at the SNMNS headquarters at the fairgrounds in Las Cruces. One of the trains featured that day was the Milwaukee Road Hiawatha passenger train led by a set of EMD F7s in an A-B-A configuration.
The Holiday Model Railroad display is fully operational at the Sunflower Bank in downtown El Paso. The Sunflower Bank sponsors the display which is created and run by volunteers from the Railroad Model and Historical Association of El Paso. The layout features O Scale and G Scale trains featuring at least one Polar Express.
On July 16 and 17, the Clovis Area Train Society hosted their train show and Fun Run at the North Plains Mall in Clovis, NM. I transported 15 T-Trak modules that belong to Roadrunners members in the Las Cruces area to the show. I set up our layout in a simple rectangle that was about 12 feet by 5 feet in size.
I was able to borrow a small DCC system so that I could run the SNMNS club’s UP City of Los Angeles Passenger train.
Also on display, the CATS had their rather extensive modular HO layout that consisted of 45 modules. That is approximately 360 feet of mainline track, which is almost 6 scale miles of mainline. Pretty impressive, if you ask me. The layout was so large that it was difficult to get the whole thing in one photo. Here is a panorama shot of the HO Layout:
In addition, the CATS had an extensive N Scale layout that was a combination of N-Trak and T-Track modular systems.
They are able to interface the two modular systems by creating a helix that takes trains down from N-Trak level to the tabletop T-Trak level.
In addition to these temporary layouts, the CATS have a semi-permanent location in one of the stores at the mall. They have a nice size HO layout based on the standard modules as well as an N Scale layout made using T-Trak modules.
Also on display were an experimental table-top HO modular layout and an O gauge layout. For more pictures and some videos of model trains in action, please see my photo album at this link: https://photos.app.goo.gl/4W6bpBGnpN5NnPuUA