On Thursday, we agreed to video the complete 2008 Digitrax Users Forum - an almost two hour event. You can watch the video for free here in MRH Theater.

Zana Ireland, President of Digitrax, first spoke of some noteworthy Digitrax news: they're moving from Atlanta, Georgia to Panama City, Florida in the next few months. Zana gave lots of reasons, not the least of which is they're growing and the Florida Panhandle has a better quality of life, along with a more business-friendly environment than the Atlanta area. (Click on the left hand photo to enlarge.)

Next Zana moved into new product announcements, at which point she handed the mike to AJ Ireland, the engineering mastermind behind Digitrax. AJ described the new PR3 programmer, some new Z-scale decoders, and the big new item - their partnership with SoundTraxx that uses transponding to make the new SurroundTraxx layout sound system work. AJ invited Nancy Workman of SoundTraxx to come up and briefly describe how the new SurroundTraxx system works.

Layouts! Every layout has something about it the owner does well or distinctively, and for the Layout Design SIG layout tour, I find this to be especially true.  I'm delighted to report that for the Wednesday LD SIG layout tours here at the 2008 NMRA National Convention in Anahiem, this remains as true as ever!

Mike Kresen's HO freelanced western Pennsylvania layout

We carpooled with Rob Hinkle driving (who as it turned out, has already been to some of the layouts on previous nights as a guest operator - so he drove right to them). We departed the hotel just after 10 am to begin our trek. We stopped first at Mike Kresen's HO scale steam-diesel era freelanced western Pennsylvania layout set in the early 1950s.

The fully scenicked 14x20' layout immediately impressed me - with the level of detail being well above average - although Mike claimed the layout needed still more details (what layout couldn't use more detailing work?)

For instance, the details in the central city scene really dazzled me and caught my eye. I've included a scene here on the left (click the image to enlarge). Notice the realistic street lights, the building billboard light, and the animated neon dental supply sign that plays through a realistic sequence of squeezing the toothpaste out onto the brush. And that wasn't all - Mike also included traffic signals that change, a spinning barber shop pole, and other realistic eye candy. Very nicely done, Mike!

As expected, Day 3 of the NMRA National in Anaheim turned out to be especially busy for me. I had three (count them, THREE) clinics to give - all back to back. And as if that wasn't enough to make life interesting, we also videoed all three! Talk about a major hardware and setup scramble ...

I started my day 2 by wandering around the Layout Design SIG/OP SIG room. You can view interesting layout design examples in this room - here's one that's near-and-dear to my heart: a mushroom club layout design! (click image to enlarge)

As expected, day 1 of the 2008 NMRA Convention was fairly slow, with a few clinics in the evening, and the Layout Design SIG's traditional Meet and Greet. This is my sixth National Convention, and I've been a past editor of the LD SIG's Journal publication, plus I now serve as the LD SIG's webmaster.

It's Sunday, July 13th, and I'm sitting in my 2008 Convention Hotel room, using my very fast (but not very free) wireless internet connection to post this blog entry. We're fully registered for the convention, have our convention packets (lots of little goodies like free McHenry couplers) and we're flipping through the convention program checking out the coming week's events.

Sunday is pretty slow, mostly just registration - so there's not much happening yet. However, we will be videoing a couple of JMRI clinics this evening! I've included a page from the program on the left - click on it to see a full sized version you can read. I've marked the two clinics we will be videoing in yellow.

Tomorrow is when things really get rolling, with a full day of tours, clinics, and other events. I'll be walking around the convention hall taking photos and be posting more in the days ahead "live" from the convention in my blog!

If you've never been to an NMRA National Convention before, you may be wondering what they're all about. What can you do at one?

The National Convention has become a major annual week-long event loaded with informative, educational and inspiring hobby activities. The convention features prototype tours, tours of local layouts, op sessions on prominent layouts, educational clinics, contests, model displays ... the list goes on and on. There are so many activities it's impossibe to do it all!

My first NMRA National Convention was 1987, when it was in my home stomping grounds: Eugene, Oregon.

One of the highlights of that convention for me was meeting Andy Sperandeo (Model Railroader editor) and Doug Gurin (founder of the Layout Design Special Interest Group) - suddenly these names became real people! I found the train show to be interesting, about like a glorified swap meet with vendors, but nothing to write home about.