OK, minutes from the P:48 meeting.
First up, the discussion was on 3d Printing. A straw poll was given as to the interest in modern models. Given the preponderance of grey hair and no hair (or colored hair like mine) there wasn't too many hands raised (but those who did were enthusiastic). Sorry Alan, no shelf couplers. Some very good 3d printed examples of modern P:48 conversion bolsters for Atlas roller bearing trucks as well as a modern brake wheel with geared handbrake and a very nice waffle side box car prototype were shown. A modern steel fabricated "signal bungalow" was also passed around.
Jon Cagle of Southern Car and Foundry mentioned that his next project, the Standard Tank Car 6000 and 8000 gallon tank cars.
jimmy Booth then discussed the soon to arrive logging Mallet as well as his SP gon. He has a few projects in the works including some extension sides (sugar beet?) for the SP gons as well as eventually a steel version. He also mentioned another loco prototype but the road escapes me.
Next was Norm Buckhart who mentioned that his newest Erie/NKP/C&O 1937 box cars were in (and that SP was next up in a few months) as well as some new truck projects in the pipeline (almost all steam era). He and Jimmy Booth mentioned that there are a shortage of pattern makers offshore so this limits the speed of some projects such as trucks. Norm mentioned that he was including a PRR coil/elliptic spring truck but was shelving the X31 boxcar project due to a lack of PRR modelers. It seems that PRR has dropped in popularity and he's not sure the sales of this model would be sufficient. A straw poll was taken and perhaps 10 or so expressed interest out of maybe 40 people in the room.
Rich Yoder then took the stage to mention that he has been importing since the late 1990's and that he also has a PRR coil-elliptical truck and that should arrive very soon. He indicated that his Mather project is continuing and that further research continues to improve the final product. It's noteworthy that the surviving examples are few and it seems that there were MANY variations in the various cars that Mather produced.
The P:48 meeting ended with more discussion on 3d printing. Seems that there are a few freeware 3d modeling software such as Sketchup but high cost of product such as Solidworks keeps folks away (though there are educational discounts as well as military discounts nudge nudge wink wink). The discussion centered around using Shapeways to do the 3d printing and the uses of different materials (metal versus nylon).
All in all a lot of fun so far.