Date/Time
Date(s) - Saturday, February 19, 2022
9:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
Horsham Township Community Center - Meeting Room A
1025 Horsham Rd.
Horsham, PA 19044
Categories
On Saturday, February 19, 2022 the Philadelphia Division will be meeting at a new venue, the Horsham Township Community Center, located at 1025 Horsham Road, Horsham, PA 19044.We’ll be in Meeting Room A. Doors open at 8:30am with the program starting at 9:00am. Maps on page 7.
The program will consist of two clinics. The first will feature Director Mike Dettinger, the de facto Philly Division clinician. The clinic is titled, “A Hardware DCC Install in a Legacy DC Locomotive.”
Fortunately, Mike will not be doing much talking (that alone is reason enough to attend) as he will be doing a complete DCC decoder install on a legacy locomotive. Just a brief introduction on selecting a candidate locomotive, selecting a decoder, and a walk-through of the installation process.
Then the soldering iron will heat up, the camera will switch to the workbench, and the installation will begin. A DCC decoder will be installed in a locomotive with no DCC plug, and that only ever ran on DC—from start to finish! Please note that some prep work may be done ahead of time in the interest of staying within the allotted time frame. Once finished, our newly DCC-enabled locomotive will be handed over to Dan Mycio for use in the second clinic.
By now there is little doubt that most division members can recite Mike’s bio by heart, but we’ll repeat it for those newcomers. Mike is what you might call a “fringe” modeler…or “a little of this and a little of that.” If it’s odd or obscure, he’ll model it and put a decoder in it and/or animate it. He has authored numerous articles on his projects, most recently a log cabin made from toothpicks. His latest preoccupation is with N-scale T-TRAK modules, having recently presented a clinic on a Japanese powered N-scale railcar with cab-view camera mounted inside. He also recently discussed everything you’d want to know about modeling corn.
Next up will be, “The TCS DCC and LCC Ecosystem, Throttles, and Boosters and Command stations, Oh My!” by Dan Mycio. The video face of TCS (Train Control Systems), Dan Mycio will show off TCS’s universal wireless throttles (UWT100 and UWT50) and their ease of use with any command station. Dan will also give demonstrations of TCS’s own new booster and command station.
During the demonstration, Dan will take the newly decodered DCC locomotive chipped by Mike and put it through its paces. Dan will also be handed a sealed envelope with DCC- related programing tasks for this new locomotive, and will then configure it to the envelope’s specifications.
Be sure to grab a door prize ticket, as this clinic locomotive will be placed on the door prize table for some lucky division member to take home and enjoy. Finally a decent door prize!
As usual we’ll have coffee, donuts, and Philly soft pretzels. Other activities include the white elephant table, door prizes, 50/50 raffle, and a model display table. Members are encouraged to bring projects in any stage of completion to display and discuss if desired.
We have at least one excellent layout lined up for the afternoon tour and hope to have more. Hope you can make it!
