On Tuesday May 12, Funtrak made the journey to operate Bernie Messenger’s HO layout. Brian, John, Matthew, Greg and Rick made the trip to Sauquiot. John operated the yard and Brian ran some locals, while Matthew, Greg and Rick ran main line trains. Operations provide a challenge whether you are new to operating or a seasoned veteran. The key to good operations are smooth running track and equiptment, a good routing system and a visually stimulating layout, all of which Bernie provided. The layout spanned Buffalo to Albany, or Boston following a freelanced route across New York State. Car cards featuring eight locations on laminated card stock and marked with wet erase markers made picking up and delivering commodities easy. Also, a unique feature on the layout was the construction of the staging yards. Eight track yards on drawer sliders made entering and leaving the yards easy without extended switches or yard ladders. Check out some photos of our session below.

Construction season continues for FUNTRAK as the above photograph indicates. This is John Fleming’s latest
endeavor and is something new for FUNTRAK, a triple! As is quite obvious, this is in the very early stages of building
but the layout and planning provide some idea of the scope and size of the eventual finished project. More pictures of the
beginnings of this module are inside so its progress can be observed. This module has additional bracing due to its longer
length. This was necessary to prevent sagging in the middle of the module and to provide a more stable and robust
framework. More FUNTRAK modules are also under construction. A new mountain module with a tunnel at the front is
underway. Pictures of the progress of this module are also inside. This module is unique in that the front is hinged to allow
access to the main tracks inside the tunnel if necessary. The tunnel construction idea allows for more scenery to be placed
on top of the module providing more depth of field..Meanwhile, our southern counterpart in Australia, Mark Bean, is
merrily designing and building a set of mountain modules for t-trak in Australia. Mark and Brian have been conversing
regularly and developing some new ideas to try with the t-trak mountain modules. These have not caught on as much as
the regular modules yet, but time will tell how this goes. Discussion on some of the Internet forums has been in the direction
of a second level of modules but no mention of the mountain line has come up. This may provide an alternative to trying
to figure a way to put up a second level independent of the modules on a lower level. Mark and Brian are also looking into
the possibility of having the mountain and main lines interconnect via an interface junction that would allow the trains to
go from the main line to the mountain line utilizing a gradient inside the layout. All this is in the very early planning and
research stages but standby for more in the near future.