Hello,
We are looking to form a HO Modular Club here in Milwaukee WI
Club Members Will build
2x4 foot layouts with Dual Tracks HO 83
Club will maintain corners and DCC and Power for Layout
email SSTrains at silverspringhobby dot com
if interested or stop by
SIlver Spring Hobby (Glendale WI) any Tuesday or Wednesday Noon-7 where we be meeting
Good Luck! A few suggestions: Go to a few trainshows that feature modular layouts and check out the different concepts. The old 2X4 domino format is really restrictive and many new clubs do things very differently now. Get in touch with your local FREMO group ( you can probably find them via the FREMO web site after a Google search) . When you get down to planning, resist the urge to go with the cheapest track and switches. Starting with good quality equipment avoids a lot of headaches down the road. Build all the modules jointly rather then having each guy freelance his own. After a while a lot of individualy built modules become “orphans” as guys loose inerest, move away, or pass on to the big layout up in the sky. Joint construction will also allow you to achieve uniform visual quality. Strive to design your modules as light as possible. Heavy modules wear you out and discourage older members from participating in shows and set ups. All of these suggestions come from twenty-five years of experience with modular railroading and I have truly “been there and done that”!
I don’t know that FREMO is ruling the modular world yet. Though it certainly is up and coming.
My modular club is a little looser. Our requirement is Code100 mains, don’t care on the rest and generally, Peco switches, though that is not a strict requirement.
Our club policy is Run what you brung and we have a lot of members with older rolling stock. So we support DC and DCC and the Code 100 allows older flanges. It also makes running Thomas easier.
I live nearby and I gather you are either a new hobby shop and/or have not had a model train department before now. I suggest that you should be targeting this to the local NMRA division’s newsletter, the owl car.
WISE Division website: http://www.wisedivision.org/
Kurt Wamser is the Owl Car editor and his phone number and email can be found in the PDFs of the most recent issues on the website
Dave Nelson
Thanks for the input, keep it coming
at this time just looking for a few people to get it started with me on Wednesday Nights
Yes we are just starting to bring in more HO, which will be our 1st focus
where can we find more info on FREMO
FREMO (a non-English acronym) is a European modular standard.
Free-mo (for Free Modular) is a North American modular standard that has both some similarities and some major differences to FREMO. A quick search on Free-mo brings up http://free-mo.org/. There is also an active Yahoo Free-mo group.
Free-mo modular standards were developed to bring greater realism to modular model railroading, and to learn from the experiences of earlier modular standards. Free-mo defines the mating faces of a module set. Internal to the module set tends to have very few restrictions. Module lengths are totally optional, and modules are generally reversible end for end. As a result Free-mo layouts are point to point or loop to loop, and with or without branches. Very seldom will you see a Free-mo racetrack layout. If the standards are fully adhered to any Free-mo module will mate with any other Free-mo module from anywhere in North America at a setup. There are Free-mo groups in many areas of the country.
Free-Mo concepts and practices have been adopted into versions for several different scales and gauges. On30, Sn2, HOn3, and N are the established Free-mo variants I know of personally - I’m sure there are others I don’t know about.
There is another up and coming HO modular standard - S&SS (Sipping & Switching Society). See http://gugliotta.home.mindspring.com/. Their standard has also learned from the past of other standards. There was a combined S&SS and Free-mo layout at the Detroit National Train Show a couple of years ago.
my thoughts, your choices
Fred W