This past Saturday, August 12th the city of Collierville TN had its annual Train Heritage day. Several activities took place on the town square, in the old Southern Depot and in the Morton Museum. An N scale layout was set up in the old depot, a G scale layout was set up in a tent on the town square, and the Casey Jones Chapter TCA set up our Ron Williams memorial layout in the air conditioned comfort of the Morton Museum. The number of 700 + has been kicked around as a attendance number. The crowds around the Ron Williams layout were enormous the entire day.
We did have to stop the show for about 30 minutes - We actually "Smoked" a Post War ZW transformer. Apparently running two trains, one of which was a premier MTH Southern engine and 5 MTH scale aluminum passenger cars was a bit too much for the 60+ year old ZW. The ZW over heated and was smoking like a PW 681 Turbine. One of our members made a mad dash to his house that was not far from the museum and brought back a KW to use during the rest of the show. Thanks Mike for saving the day!
Here are a few pictures and videos. The accessories are set to switches on the side of the layout in order to allow the kids to operate the accessories. As you can see, the kids had a blast and really gave the accessories a work out.
Here are the videos. the MTH Premier Southern engine with the 5 passenger cars is the train that killed our ZW.
Hats off to the Collierville Morton Museum for planning and sponsoring Train Heritage Day and thanks to all the Casey Jones Chapter TCA members who loaded up the layout Thursday, set the layout up on Friday, ran trains all day Saturday, then disassembled the layout Saturday afternoon and moved it back to our storage facility. It was a fun day for all of us, and the weather cooperated, it was not as hot as a normal southern day in August.
Thanks for looking at the pictures and videos. Our layout will be set up again at the October 7th Casey Jones Chapter TCA Train Show in Germantown, TN.
Richard
