t’s getting so the “Old Sweats” in the club are outnumbered. At one point, we were the club and when one of us passed on, there would be a full mob at the service. Now we are increasingly irrelevant. With Don Ziesig’s passage, only four of his oldest friends were there.

Anyway, so Don did pass and the club received an invite to the service. We were also asked if we could bring a model train thing since it was such a part of Don’s life. We could have brought a sectional layout piece but (a) we couldn’t fit it into Steve’s car and (b) it would have just sat there. So we brought the Tuscarora instead.

All the guests got the idea that Don wasn’t just into Christmas Tree trains (Photo: Bill W)

I set up a four-car train behind my Broadway Limited SW-7. It seemed to be running well enough but after ten minutes of operations, it just conked out. Worse, it showed a track fault when it was on the rails (I’ll add this – the chip read “OOP5” at the club. Yeah, I think the chip took a dump (I’ve really had a lot of problems with that engine)). Fortunately I have been burned before so I had my backup RS-11 in my back pocket (so to speak). Swapped him out and my new engine worked like a charm.

I left it running through the guest arrivals, through the service (I’d wished I’d had a second to shut it down – those metal wheels sound like rain on a roof, rattling through the turnouts). Every so often, I’d check to see it rolling past, counting the cars, four freight cars, one caboose, check.

At the end of the service, the family got up and spoke. Eventually I was invited up and I told my favorite Shelfton Local/Don story, which got a laugh from the crowd and was a nice arc to go out on. All together, that RS-11 ran for 2.5 hours, so it’s well run in by now.

So that’s another first for the Tuscarora – it was a centerpiece at a funeral. This layout keeps surprising me.

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