MacDonald's Farm

Vital Statistics

Owner Name:	Patrick McConville
Date Built:		Status:	Complete
Module Type:
Length:	4 ft.	Width:	2 ft.
Passing Sidings:	No	Additional Lines:	No
Industrial Spurs:	No	Yard Tracks:	No
Engine Servicing:	No	Crossovers:	No

Gallery

Here's the namesake farm, nestled in the hills of somewhere quiet...
Photograph by Bill Rutherford

Here's the module in situ at Fairfax Museum.
Photograph by Bill Rutherford

Here's Patrick, builder and owner of MacDonald's Farm, at our recent mall show in Spottsylvania, Virginia.
Photograph by Patrick's friend.

Description

by Pat McConville

After 15 years of storage, and the departure of two children from the nest, a spare room opened up in the old house leaving me with an itching desire to reassemble a home layout. I soon found Granddad's hobby shop off Port Royal Road in Springfield, and in association with Northern Virginia Ntrak, they were planning a 5-Sunday module construction project leading upto the Thanksgiving holiday so I quickly signed up for the class. I started creating my home empire slowly, using my newly acquired skills I learned at the clinics. At the same time I checked into the club which was the only N-scale club in Northern Virginia. I attended a few of their monthly backshops in Springfield and in January 2000 I officially joined the club. My first module, titled Old MacDonald's Farm started off slowly with construction of a 2x4 frame with fixed legs, which I later changed to fold-up legs. A piece of 3/8ths plywood was added to the top and pink insulation was affixed to that with Liquid Nails. By early February track and electrical work was complete and I hauled the "Still Under Construction" module off to Fairfax Station to have a club 'electrician' check it over for correct polarity before their regularly scheduled monthly show. It checked out ok and I started to set it aside and watch the guys run some trains when another club member showed up with a module making an odd number of modules available. Needing another module to complete the setup someone yelled out that we should test crash mine and it was quickly added to the club setup as a staging module. The module ran 3 hours without a hitch and I even got in a one-hour session of running my own equipment I had brought along. My Con-Cor S2 which hadn't seen daylight in 15 years was quickly lubed and thrown to the rails... she ran without a hitch!!!

In March the mountain was added, the farm laid out, track ballasted, trees planted, and animals started appearing. Again I toted the module off to Fairfax Station. It was another successful 3-hour showing and I was now confidently ready to tackle my first major show. Spotsylvania Mall provided just that opportunity on April 8/9. Saturday morning we crashed the mall at 7:30 a.m. We assembled the 24 modules in a little over 2 hours and were up and running at 10 a.m. By shows end on Sunday, a total of 20+ running hours later, no problems arose on any club members modules, mine included.

The Farm had passed with flying colors!!! More good news came later when John Cook got word that the mall wants us back next year and has promised us a spot on the main concourse. Ah, the big time!!