Each winter, volunteers from the Railroad Museum of Long Island perform maintenance on the buildings and exhibits. All efforts focus on opening the Museums to the public on the Saturday following Easter.
To our Gentle Forum Members, who are primarily interested in our “O” gauge happenings, I am happy to report the Historic Lionel Layout from Chesterfield, MI is nearly ready to begin operations again for season two. All trains began running at Riverhead, NY this afternoon in conventional mode and in Lionel TMCC.
Beginning in January, three BIG upgrades and many smaller, maintenance projects were undertaken on the layout by a crew of eight to ten volunteers each Tuesday morning.
We began with finish painting the walls and trim in the Ron Freeman, North Exhibit Hall, home of the Historic Lionel Layout. By the end of January everything was coordinated with pleasing railroad station colors of cream and green.
Our retired Vice President and chairman of the layout committee, George Faeth, spent many hours during summer 2011 replacing the small plastic buttons that activated the accessories around the layout. With the volume of traffic at the Museum, they just couldn’t hold up to the use. This winter volunteers replaced all fifty-five interactive buttons with heavy duty 10 amp push buttons. We relocated the switches to the side of the layout, closer to tiny hands with hopes of keeping them from wandering up and over the edge of the layout!
Finally, the historic control center got a "Celebrity Make-Over!" After much committee discussion, it was decided we should standardize "The Tower" with Classic Lionel ZW transformers and add modern circuit breakers and transient voltage suppression to each track.
The Historic Lionel Layout at Riverhead, NY opens for the season on Saturday, April 14 at 10:00 AM. If you are a neighbor or visiting Long Island during a summer weekend, do stop in and see us!
