"Friendly Fridays... the Garden State RPM."

The third annual Garden State RPM was held this past weekend right here in bucolic Scotch Plains. A few of us north Jerseyans help Ted DiIorio each year with organizing and staging the event. Ted is an instructor at the county vocational school where the meet is held. In return for getting the venue for the day, Ted donates some proceeds back to a couple of student organizations, so everybody wins. It's a neat two-day meet with about a dozen clinics, model displays and vendor tables on Saturday and about a dozen layout tours Sunday.


Serious motive power was the order of the day! James Auriemma had two tables of beautifully weathered diesels and rolling stock for attendees to drool over. The number of models on display increased dramatically this year which is a welcome trend for the event.



NYSME member Fred Wadleigh displayed several dozen prototypical trackside structures that he scratch-built in HO scale. This freight house was in fact built three times depicting three different time periods during the 20th century. Here, the all-wood model shows the most recent version and the ravages of time per the photograph.



Any clinician's worst nightmare is a technological snafu prior to presenting. Dave Ramos (seated) came to first-timer Dave Olesen's rescue by switching out laptops and some wires to get the venue's projection system to cooperate. It was deja vu for me as I had the same problem in the same classroom last year. Dave rode in on his white horse then, too.



South Jersey's Ralph DeBlasi gave a very informative Power Point presentation on weathering rolling stock and then devoted several more hours to small-groups in a hands-on clinic stressing three key points: 1- Always work from photographs; 2 - Weather in layers; 3 - Fading is not about what you put on, but what you take off.  See The Weathering Shop link on my sidebar under References & Resources for amazing work and techniques.



Travers Stavac (right) of the Layout Design SIG was available to critique track plans throughout the day. Here he and attendee John McCluskey  discuss some ideas. Travers and group founder Doug Gurin have traveled from the Baltimore/DC area each year to help out.



RPMs are great places to find research materials. Jay Held and son Nick do a tremendous job promoting the Erie Lackawanna Historical Society  schlepping an endless supply of magazines, maps, manuals, timetables, etc. to these types of meets throughout the year.



Daylene Wolf and her main squeeze Alfred, let hubby Norm tag along from Fredericksburg, VA where Norm coordinates the very popular Mid-Atlantic RPM each September. They cheerfully peddled Scotty Mason's products in his absence, while Alfred chilled out all day.

 

By all accounts, the 100+ attendees had a great time and the student organizations made a killing selling coffee and doughnuts throughout the day, not to mention pizza and drinks at lunch. Imagine? I do regret not getting a photo of the exceedingly long line of modelers anxiously awaiting their slices as the pizza boxes depleted at a furious pace. I would've enjoyed putting a caption to it.

If you've followed this blog, you'll understand why I chose not to open my bench work or do my Old Main Line Power Point detailing the conversion from single deck to multi-deck. As Roseanne Roseannadana used to say, "Never mind!"

-30-

 

   BONUS:  RHETORICAL  QUESTION  OF  THE  DAY...  

 

He may not have gotten the Iwata airbrush or PanPastels kit, but who has two thumbs and parlayed $40 in raffle tickets into this $35 B&O Wagontop, generously donated to the meet by ExactRail?

 

 

...This guy!