Just visited Tomar Industries

I just installed the lighted switchstand on my michigan city module, but I only have ONE switchstand, and I need to fill the rest of the turnouts, Tomar wasn’t very far from me and I knew it, but my transportation priorities always sent me the other way. Tomar makes a large variety of stuff like passenger train lit end logos, signals, and the switchstand. I decided well, I needed the switchstand quick since I was hightailing it on my module construction and wanted more stands ASAP so I decided to go to the source.

I walked into the shop and a lady was outa site looking for something so I kinda “HI” and she got up and introduced myself, you got some of the lit switchstands, she said yeh, and opened a drawer and asked which kind I wanted, lamp or LED, and I said LED is fine, since mine was lamp they upped to an LED illumination, she mentioned the club layout thru some of the half sentences going on, and I said, uh, hey, could I see this layout? I think it was her husband called on the tele-communicator (Star Trek is here to stay) he was busy working on a plastic machine some debris fell in cleaning it out and had to take it completely apart to clean it, she asked if he had time to show the layout, he said, well, uh, oh yeh, so I bought the stands, and he showed me down to his club layout.

Impressive, double decked, based on Michigan Central going from Detroit to Fort Wayne connections and on and on, showing some interchanges, staging yards, he had a Car Ferry with interchangeable ferries, about 3 with cars on them, we went down one corridor on my left was the major layout, on the right was a narrow 1 track shelf, and it too was double decked, with a unique feature. Both had a moveable bridge, you picked up the entire bridge from one end, angle it over to the main layout and it makes an interchange connection to the main layout, and he was litterally “bending the iron” actually made slip track connections so the whole arrangment bent the flex track into a curve without breaking tr

I have no doubt that you have good intentions by inviting everyone to drop in and say hello, but I don’t think Tomar would appreciate the interruptions. From the sound of it, they were not really happy about having to stop their work and show you the layout.

pfft, the owner invited me to the club run sessions, he’s just another train nut like the rest of us.

Their door was open walkin and I made a purchase. They had a problem with a machine the owner was working it but obligated to show me around, nice guy.

They are one of only 2 companies I know of that sell decent looking HO replicas of the B&O signature Color-Position Light (CPL) signals with the LEDs and wires already in place. I hope to accumulate a few dozen of those as extra money becomes available. Did you see if they actually do their own manufacturing there, or farm it out to China?

They do their own work, I peeked in a box and it had some bad castings of some signals, that happens in runs, they prolley remelt the metal and do it again.

I didnt see the manufacturing stuff, prolley in the basement where I was. The actual manufacturing place is in a converted house, their home is off aways, I walked to that to the club layout when he gave me the tour.

There is another new signal making company, South Bend Signal.

http://www.sbsignal.com/

Makes sense to have a model railroad which allows you to test drive the work you do…

I commented on how filled of locos the roundhouse was and he said the roundhouse operator complained…“No more no more!” Ha. I recalled running one of the yards in the club layout I was in and I would get jammed with trains coming in…hardehar…“WAITAMINUTE…TOO MANY TRAINS!!!”

I bet his run sessions are pretty fun. He had a lot of industry and interchange goodness going on, and he had a lot of trains set up ready on the getgo to move when the run session resumes.

He has a list of trains that run and they just go down the line of the list and run them as they move them, when the session is done they stop on the list and carry on the next run session. They had car cards like I did on our club. I will be doing that on my pike as well. Tomar was one of my stops that day to get materials for my module so I can finish it further and I visited 2 hobbyshops today and got more-ordered more stuff.

This was probably the layout

http://clinchfieldcountry.com/mr_layouts/sister_lakes_southern.htm

Duane Henry (owner) is a super nice guy and a great modeler. He has regular ops sessions, fun layout. Good group on yahoo for this, note link on ClinchfieldCountry web site.

Larry

I think thats the guy, It was a pretty quick tour , he had a hat on and I was sucking in data everywhere, and we were chattering modeling like train nuts.

He was in the middle of fixing his plastic machine so it was better to quicken the visit and I had to move on to other things but a fun quick tour.