Trainmeister Ruben MacBlue at the Fillmore Station

Rock City Railroad News!

January 1998
It was a wonderful Christmas. I got a new small IHC 2-8-0 steam engine, a 4-8-8-4 Rivarossi Big Boy, which is absolutely unbelievable, a Kato Southern Pacific switcher engine, which runs great as well, and a whole bunch of Hot Wheels and Micro Machines cars! What else could a train buff ask for?

The Rivarossi, the coolest Christmas present I ever got, was a gift from Mark Dawson of Phantom Blue and DRZ Entertainment. He bought if for our grand opening openhouse just before Christmas. In honor of the gift, we will be painting the roof blue and naming the beast the "Blue Phantom."

The openhouse, by the way, was quite successfull, with a few friends standing around watching the trains and getting drunk. All the trains ran perfect all day, which gave us time to party and move around the train room freely.

Since the openhouse, which took an entire week to prepare for, I've got the N gauge yard up and running, which took longer than expected due to the Peco "electrofrog" turnouts, as opposed to the Peco "insulfrog" turnouts which I used on the HO scale layout.

Now I'm working on the control panel, trying to get it completely moved from the old Atlas switches to the new improved "double pole double throw" track switches and Kato pushbutton turnout switches.