Jim, it's not a formal group, we had 8 folks at one point, down to 3, I do the engines. Most of what I work on for charity is Life Life (not P2K), mostly the SF GP38s that are very inexpensive and available everywhere. It's been a couple years since I had Tyco to give away, they were just awful to work on and repair, that truck/drive system was far to complicated and unreliable, repair parts were impossible to get. I cannibalized 2/3 of them to get maybe 1/3 to be usable to give away.
She does ride with me when we are in the same place at the same time, eventually will get her own! I am in Blue Knights, grew up outside Sturgis and family still in that area so I always have free space for folks to stay during the Rally. Definately don't hang with the folks that blur the cop/outlaw line, most are almost too tame (had a friend go up with me a couple years ago with his wife and she said she was not impressed by how women were 'objectified' and some were 'inappropriately dressed'...at Sturgis...hmmm...go figure).
I really prefer the Blue Box Athearn, don't believe in the Athearn vs. All Others arguments(kinda like the Ford vs. Chevy or Harley vs. Ainta...as in Ainta Harley). Have and run what you enjoy. With a little time and patience, an Athearn can look and run like any other maker's units, but that's the difference for me. I enjoy spending hours getting things right and don't enjoy pulling something out of a box that takes no effort to detail, prototype, etc...I get enough excitement at work, home time is for relaxing and super-detailing out engines and rolling stock. Even the older BB Athearn can be put to prototype accuracy with patience and work. But in order to get engines that Athearn doesn't do, I still find them from other manufacturers and still can find things to keep me busy with them (just finished a Kato SD9043MAC in UP that still had 3 days worth of proto-fixing to do).
Thanks again for the welcome, sounds like a really good group of folks here!
Now I need to find the "shoulder to cry on when you fry an NCE decoder, the second decoder you ever installed, less than a week after you FINALLY got DCC" forum.
Jay