Wabash Second District
(Formerly the Operations
Road Show)

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The ORS Team hands over the ORS name, title and domain name to the
N Scale Event Group at Novi, Michigan

January 3, 2026

The last few years have been interesting. The layout is now officially known as "The Second District of the Montpelier Division of the Wabash Railroad" or as we call it, the "Wabash Second District".

We are no longer known as the "Operations Road Show" team, as effective 2:00pm Friday, July 18, 2025 we turned over the "Operations Road Show" name to the N Scale Events Group. This is the rather loose-knit group of N scalers who provided the N scale layouts for us to hold Operations Road Show sessions at the St. Louis NMRA National Convention in 2022, the Grapevine, Texas Convention in 2023 and the Novi, Michigan Convention in 2025. The primary movers and shakers of this group are known best for their enormous biennial Free-MoN setups at Evanston, Wyoming. We turned over our fast clocks, our fascia-mounted trainorder stations and the laptop that controlled them.

We have lost two of our regular session members, with the passing of Walt Trancygier in 2024 and Dennis Ludwig in late summer 2025. Walt was always game to participate in our operating sessions and to help with our setups and by joining up with us, even he acknowledged that he was diving into the deep end of complicated model railroading. Dennis offered his own years of expertise from the Southern Michigan and the various Adrian and Blissfield lines. Both men will be sorely missed.

In addition to that rather major change, over the past two years, we have accomplished a number of things:

• We have converted from using the LogicRail Technologies LNFC Loconet Fast Clocks we had been using to using analog clock faces spread around the room and run at "fast" speed by a central controller. We had no problem with the LogicRail fast clocks and they have served us well over the 20+ years that we have used them. Analog clocks are much more in keeping with our 1964-era, however. We purchased inexpensive analog clocks and added our own blue LED as a PM indicator.
• We have added a few new locomotives. We have been experimenting with a Walthers MainLine F7A and find that it works well in MU consists with both Kato-powered and P2K-powered locomotives.
• Among the new locomotives, some have been added which have sound. While we have been hesitant to use sound-equipped locomotives in the past, we have turned down the volume on those that we have so it is not distracting. Since sound-equipped locomotives do not begin to accelerate as quickly as non-sound locomotives, they tend to be MUed with each other.
• Our Walthers Proto1000 RS-2s in Monon transfer service at Lafayette have had their mechanisms replaced with ones taken from Kato RS-2s. We could have kept the Proto 1000 RS-2s in service using their original mechanisms, if we actually had a routine service program that would have regularly lubricated all of the bearing surfaces. We did not and finally are looking at such a program as some of our Kato-powered locomotives are starting to sound as if they would appreciate attention.
• Scenery work has moved ahead with a couple of farms starting to take shape just west of Colburn and east of Rockfield.
• The trailer park east of Buck Creek has taken on permanent scenery.
• We held numerous operating sessions throughout the year, including a special operating session for members of the Ann Arbor and the Wabash Historical Societies on Sunday, September 21, 2025.

News and progress reports for years prior to July 18, 2025
are found on the next pages.

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