Train Town Relocation Updates
| DATE | EVENT |
| December 2020 | Discussions begin with a well-know local museum for potential relocation of Wade's Train Town layout. |
| January 9, 2021 | "Last Run at Brookford" Open House was held 10 am - 2 pm in Room 107, Brookford Community Center. The room is now closed to the public. Relocation discussions continue. |
| February 1, 2021 | Inventory sessions scheduled for Saturdays during February. Relocation discussions continue. |
| February 25, 2021 | Inventory completed and being studied. Many thanks to volunteers Fred Miller, Alan Hardee, Larry Paffrath, Keith Iritsky, Joe Skorch, Ed Smith, and Andrew Stitt. Packaging the removable items on the layout comes next during March. Work sessions scheduled for March 13th and March 20th, 10 am until 2 pm. |
| March 20, 2021 | It's official! The Newton Depot Authority has agreed, in conjunction with Wade Warren's family and the CSD,
to relocate the layout to the Depot's Model Railroad Center located at 1111 Main Street, in Newton, NC. We believe that this is the
best possible place in Catawba County for this so that future generations can continue to enjoy Wade's handiwork.
Click on this link to see the official announcement. Relocation work sessions during the
last two months have been amazingly successful. As of March
20 all the buildings have been removed from the layout and
packed up along with various other groups of items in the
room. We installed some of the new legs for the tables and
separated all of the 9 tables making up the layout. They are
ready to move! Thanks to Bob Halsey, Joe Skorch, Andrew
Stitt, Keith Iritsky, and Ed Smith for their excellent work
this month. We will have no scheduled work sessions during
April mainly because we are now waiting for the Model
Railroad Center folks to finish up preparing the room that
we will be moving into. They believe it will be finished
during April, so look for us to schedule some moving
sessions during May. |
| April 19, 2021 | April has been a quiet month for the relocation. Ed Smith and Keith Iritsky have been doing some work on the layout table legs and Ed continues to work on replacing the incandescent lights with LEDs. We have been waiting for the folks at the Model Railroad Center to finish preparing the space we are moving into. They report it will be ready for us on or about May 15, so we have scheduled MOVING DAY for May 15. |
| May 15, 2021 | This has been a BIG DAY! Train Town has a new home! Thanks to the efforts of
14 members of the Division, we moved Train Town from the Brookford Community Center
to its new home at the Model Railroad Center of the Newton Depot, which is located at
1115 North Main Avenue, Newton, NC. Rick Beam and Gil Harris pulled the Metrolina Club's
trailers for us. Thanks to them and their club, the move went smoothly and relatively quickly.
We were able to move everything in about 3 hours. In addition to these two, Neal Anderson,
Gil Brauch, Bob Halsey, Alan Hardee, Keith Iritsky, Fred Miller, Larry Paffrath, Daniel Poole,
Chuck Redmond, Ken Riddick, Ed Smith, and Dave Thrams provided the manpower to load and unload
the trailers as well as carrying assorted odds and ends in their vehicles to the new home.
Dave Thrams accomplished the most important task of the day by picking up and delivering the celebratory pizza for us. What is now ahead is putting the layout back together and restoring it to its former 'glory' as a faithful representation of the work of Wade Warren. We have a 'hard date' for our Grand Re-opening of August 28 and there is much work to be done. We are scheduling Saturday work sessions during the summer months to get this task accomplished. We need folks who like to do just about everything involved in our hobby -- trackwork, electrical, scenery, structures, mechanical animation, electrical animation, you name it, we need it. We will not be doing sign-up and urge our members to just show up and we are pretty much guaranteed to have work for you. |
| May-June 2021 | Since our Moving Day, May and June have been extremely active in the relocation journey. We had an extremely successful move on May 15. A whole bunch of guys showed up and made relatively short work (4 hours) of moving the layout and the entire contents of the room from the Brookford Community Center to the Model Railroad Center at the Newton Depot. Special thanks to the Metrolina Railroaders for the loan of their two big trailers that greatly contributed to the success of the move. Since Moving Day, we have held 4 formal work sessions to restore the layout to it's former 'glory'. As of the end of June, we have re-connected eight of the nine tables, reconnected the tracks, installed a new electrical system for both trains and accessories, and begun the process of repairing the basic infrastructure of the scenery in preparation for refurbishing and re-installing the more than 280 structures on the layout. Our goal for next month is to have most of the re-installation complete so that we can concentrate on the fine details that will make sure we have been faithful to the original modeling of Wade Warren. |
| July 2021 |
We held four official work sessions during July and made substantial progress toward our goal of having the layout and room “show ready” by the end of August. We put the last table in place on July 10 and even cleaned up and re-installed most of the buildings on Table #3. The electrical crew activated several tables’ worth of new LED lighting for buildings. Meeting these major milestones allowed us to make really visible progress in the remaining weekends. Thanks to the following guys for helping out that day: Ed Smith, Keith Iritsky, Gil Brauch, Larry Paffrath, Danny Poole, Ken Riddick, Ed Gumphrey, and John Yarborough. During the month we added two new members/workers to the team – Chad Barnette and David Myers joined the Division and contributed to the work as well. During the remaining three work weekends we were able to place all but 12 of the over 280 structures on the layout. The remaining dozen have embedded incandescent lights that need to be replaced with LEDs and Ed Smith should have those converted fairly quickly. He and Danny Poole have spent most of their time under the layout connecting wires while the rest of us worked ‘topside’. Keith has the mainlines and trolly line track in good shape. Larry, Ken, Ed, John, David, and I worked on buildings. We are nearing the ‘home stretch’, but still need workers to show up during August to finish the job. We will be working every Saturday morning in August starting at 10 am each day. |
| August 2021 |
We held four official work sessions during August and made the layout and room “show ready” as was our goal. All buildings are installed and lighted and many new street lights were added to make the layout "pop" for visitors. A skirt has been added (which hides a bunch of 'stuff' under the layout that we will have to deal with later). But the layout is fully operational and ready for a preview showing for the attendees at the National Narrow Gauge Convention in the first 4 days of September. Thanks to the following guys for helping out during the month: Chad Barnette, Gil Brauch, Ed Gumphrey, Keith Iritsky, Fred Miller, David Myers, Larry Paffrath, Danny Poole, Ken Riddick, Ed Smith, Dave Thrams, John Yarborough and his son, John Yarborough III. During our two work sessions in September we will be focusing on dressing up the room to create a truly museum quality display area. We will be working on September 11 and September 18 and still need workers to show up to finish the job. |
| September 2021 |
Our two official work sessions during
September marked the end of the relocation process for Train
Town. We installed the Plexiglas shields, put Fred Miller’s
animation controls in place, spruced up the room, and
declared the layout “show ready”. We will have a
ribbon cutting at 11 am on October 2 at the layout (1115
North Main Avenue, Newton, NC) including Wade’s daughter and
officials from The Newton Depot Authority and our Division.
This project involved a whole bunch of Division members.
Thanks to the following guys for their dedicated work in
making this a successful endeavor: Neal Anderson (MMR), Chad
Barnette, Rick Beam, Gil Brauch (MMR), Ed Gumphrey, Bob
Halsey, Alan Hardee, Gil Harris, Keith Iritsky, Fred Miller
(MMR), David Myers, Larry Paffrath, Danny Poole, Chuck
Redmon, Ken Riddick, Joe Skorch, Ed Smith, Andrew Stitt,
Dave Thrams, John Yarborough, and John Yarborough
III.
Now that the actual work of relocation has been completed, we have a new challenge for the future. Since we will be open to the public every Saturday, we need volunteers to operate the layout and act as hosts. In the beginning, the project leadership team will be there to train volunteers, but for the long haul we need a corps of members who are willing to give up a couple of hours on a Saturday on a rotational basis to help not only to show off Wade's handiwork, but to help promote our World's Greatest Hobby to the visitors. The more we have on the team, the less frequently will any one person be expected to commit to a day. Please contact the leadership team at wadestraintown@carolinasouthern.org to have your name added to the volunteer list -- we will work out scheduling later. All this starts on 9 October, so let us know right away. Thanks in advance for your support to the Division. |
| October 2, 2021 |
This photograph says it all... We are now open to the public
each Saturday, 10 am - 4 pm. |
