The meeting began with a visit to the Valdese museum and the Piedmont and Western club layout located at the Museum.

The Museum and layout are in the Old Rock School House in the downtown area of Valdese, NC.  The hallway leading to the layout room at the rear is lined with historic railroad photos and memorabilia related to the local area.  There is a reconstruction of a station ticket office along the hallway with a working telegraph that communicates with another key down the hallway.   A small side room houses a track speeder (12"=1' scale).

The HO scale layout is in a large room with tracks along both walls and a center peninsula.  It was initially built using RailCommand analog command control, but has been converted to EasyDCC.  It is fully scenicked with rugged mountains, a large city, and several small towns and industries.  It generally models the Southern S-line through Western North Carolina.  Division members were kept busy finding the many small detailed scenes everywhere on the layout.  There were several highly detailed and weathered structures.   In some places, building flats against the wall were given more life-like 3D by adding external details to the flat surface such as fire escapes and air conditioners.  Some N-scale details were used in scenes toward the back of the scenery to give the effect of greater distance through forced perspective.  Two trains operated continuously and flawlessly during the visit.  Track is all handlaid with commercial turnouts.

The Museum and layout are open to the public "whenever the club members are there" which is usually Thursday nights.

The Division held a brief meeting during which Dave Chance presented Jack Parker with his AP Certificate for Association Volunteer.

We stopped at the Transportation Museum in Granite Falls, but it wasn't open, so we continued on to Hudson. 

Lunch was followed by a visit to the Hudson Depot Museum.  This is housed in the original railroad depot that has been moved to a small park behind the town hall.  It has local railroad and historic materials.  The two local people who operate it guided us through providing a lot of historical information about the building, local railroad operation, and the individual items on display. The original depot clock is there, stopped at the time the depot was closed to business.  Two highly detailed G-scale models of a steam locomotive and covered hopper, custom made for the museum, are on display.  There are also vintage maps of the area showing the railroads as they existed early in the twentieth century.  Exiting the depot through one of the freight doors, we crossed a wood deck and entered a restored caboose.  It is from the D&H(udson) and is a double sheathed wood caboose with a low cupola at one end.  It has been beautifully restored.  Inside, one side is kept as it would have been during service with the bunks, conductor's desk, and stove.  The other side is set up with displays of railroad lamps, photos, and tools.

On the way back toward Charlotte, we took a short side trip in Hickory to see the small yard at the end of the Caldwell County Railroad, which is a short line between Hickory and Lenoir that also serves Hudson and Granite Falls.  Two locomotives (former L&N Paducah Geeps) were parked there.  We spent some time looking them over and surveying some interesting trackwork that squeezed a wye into a tight space. 

We thank our hosts from the P&W club and Hudson Depot Museum for their hospitality and very interesting and informative tours.

Here are some photos of our day.

Photos contributed by Jack Haynes