[PRR-talk] Cocoa Beach Report?

[Bruce Smith]

On Jan 6, 2008, at 7:33 PM, Jerry Britton wrote:

> Anyone go to the Cocoa Beach RPM? Let's hear about it!

Jerry, Folks,

Cocoa was, as usual a blast!  I guess the weather sucked, but I  
realized as I left the hotel yesterday that I hadn't been outside  
since I arrived Thursday night!!  A good number of the PRR "faithful"  
were there, including Dick Flock, who gave a clinic on PRR flat cars  
(which I missed!), Greg Martin, Steve Hoxie and several others. In  
addition to my 3 A-line boxes of cars and locos, there were a  
significant number of other PRR models.  Greg Martin's "shake and  
take" clinic of last year was an ex-FGE, NX reefer leased to Kahn's  
and I counted somewhere around 10-12 of those models (or nearly 50%  
of the clinic models) back on the display table.  Greg's clinic this  
year was a PRR boxcar, so next year should be a good PRR year!  I  
think Dick's clinic was the only one with a specific PRR theme, but  
there was a lot of very useful information, as always.  I enjoyed  
clinics by Bill Darnaby, on what to do with all those freight car  
models, Greg Komar on building their new layout room, "Uncle Joe"  
Oates on ACL baggage cars, Mark Vaughn on LCL traffic, Bill Welch on  
FGE/BRE/WFE steel reefers (even if 90% was irrelevant to my modeled  
era), Andy Sperandeo on steam loco details (I did have to inform Andy  
about markers vs class lights on PRR steam locos <G>) and Jim Murrie  
on building the Dixie Flagler.

That last talk from Jim was very interesting as he confirmed that  
Union Station (IIRC) will be releasing sides for the PRR P85 coach  
(Budd, 1940) very shortly and that Laser Horizon's has the window  
band patterns to create window band inserts for most of the ACL  
Champion car, including 250/251 the tail car.  The PCM I1s test shots  
were there with Matt Williamson from BLI/PCM, along with many of  
their recent products such as the "hybrid" and brass versions of the  
New Haven I-5 (VERY NICE!).  Ted Culotta had some new FGE and WFE  
decals specifically for the Intermountain HO kit (post war rebuilds)  
and was selling undec kits with decals.  He indicated that he will  
produce a complete FGE decal sheet that will cover almost all the  
models out there within the next year.  There were lots of other  
vendors, including Westerfield, F&C, Intermountain, and a number of  
hobby shops, as well as the usual photo dealers.  Look for some new  
PRR kits from F&C this year... perhaps as many as FOUR for the  
convention!!

So, as usual, Prototype Rails was an excellent event and I highly  
recommend marking your calendars for January 8-11, 2009.

Regards
Bruce

Bruce F. Smith
Auburn, AL
http://www.vetmed.auburn.edu/index.pl/bruce_f._smith2

"Some days you are the bug, some days you are the windshield."
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