FUNTRAK‘s annual PicNik is just around the proverbial corner, so with this in mind, preparations for the big event are underway. FUNTRAK club members Doug Davis, John Fleming, and Brian King gathered
together over the course of Saturday, May 10 to move the N-Trak layout out of storage and into Brian’s basement. This only made sense since having the layout reside outside in storage and not be used was a waste of space and usefulness. After much grunting and groaning, the modules were all moved to the basement and assembly began. Of course, more preliminary preparations were required as Brian was able to obtain some carpet to put under the eventual layout. Finishing up this minor task, the final setup of the layout began in earnest. All went well until it came time to put the legs on the last module. Where were those legs? Finally, a different set of legs ended up being used so the layout could be completed. We still don’t know where the missing legs are located. Next came placing all the connecting tracks in the layout. This is a rather tedious job with only a few people, but success was accomplished after a relatively short time. Now the moment of truth, would everything run? The red line had some problems because the yard was not properly lined up for trains to pass through from one end to the other. The line ran alright, just not through the yard. The yellow and blue lines were properly aligned and ran well. There were some issues with the yellow line, but those were figured out and dealt with appropriately. Minor adjustments were made later and the N-Trak layout is back!