See you there - or there! (March 5-6, 2016)

(Workshop member Jim Martin updates us on two upcoming exhibitions...)

The March 5th weekend will mark a first for the S Scale Workshop. For the first time in our 20-year history we will be have operating S scale layouts in two far flung venues.

Our principal display will be at our annual favourite, the Copetown Train Show.
This is a small show held in Copetown, Ontario - just west of Hamilton. The show may be small, but it attracts high profile modellers and manufacturers from across the country. It’s more often thought of as a think tank rather than a train show.

Saturday is a low pressure setup day with lots of conversation, networking, and catching up with far flung friends. Sunday, when we open the doors to the public, we all pretty much behave ourselves.

(The set-up for Copetown 2016: Click on the layout plan to view a larger version)

Simon Parent, Andy Malette, David Clubine and Jim Martin will host a large modular layout showcasing our 1:64, Canadian National Railways theme. They'll be helped by Brian Nicholson, Trevor Marshall and Fredrick Adlhock. There is also a chance that our old friend Claude Demers will travel from New Jersey to join us.

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200 kilometres to the east, Workshop members John Johnston and Paul Raham will have their S scale modules set up at the Cobourg Train Show. (Check the CARM Events page for details.) John’s excellent Burnt River module will be flanked by Paul’s Marshall Station (Featured in the May/June 2015 issue of The Dispatch - the magazine of the NASG). The layout will also include of of our two four-foot long train turntables.

Paul’s module is an engine terminal with a turntable. The point-to-point running does a fine job of engaging the viewers’ interest, as proven at last year’s show. The Cobourg show is Saturday only so we are hoping Paul and John will have enough energy to join us for the Sunday show at Copetown.

We didn’t plan to do two shows the same weekend, but John organizes the Cobourg show and was obviously locked in when the Copetown show moved from February to March. Nevertheless it demonstrates the versatility of our Free-mo format.

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This is also a special weekend for the group: our 10th and 20th anniversaries.

In March 1996 we first displayed as the Southern Ontario S Scale Workshop in Brantford, Ontario. We shuffled trains back and forth on the four unfinished front sections of our first layout, the Ridgehill Central.

In March 2006 at Copetown, we first displayed our new Free-mo modules as the S Scale Workshop. We made enough of an impression on Trevor that he wrote nice things about us in the June, 2006 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman magazine*.

(Jim Martin's Port Dover in its first public appearance - Copetown 2006)

(Oliver Clubine's Grandview Co-op returns to Copetown 10 years after it made this "in-progress" appearance)

We expect other S scalers from southern Ontario to drop by and we will be raising our glasses later to our late founder Oliver Clubine and another fine S scale modeller who passed only days ago, Tom Spaulding.

We hope to see you there. Or there.

- Jim

(*Yeah, and look at where that got me! - Trevor)