Well, I hit the invisible corporate-webspace-phonebox wall.

We’re building a traveling layout for our club, a space-aged module effort that puts our creaky old N-trak clunkers to shame. Sets up quick. Breaks down quick. Moves easy. No duckunders. Fun to run.

And we’re doing REAL modeling of real places (specifically the run from Jacksonville to Folkston). We’ve got the river area in at Jacksonville, the CSX building, the convention center, the Acosta bridge. While I’m working south towards the Aetna building, we’ll also need to cross under the I-95 double-span bridge and model the TTX shops.

See, TTX has a car repair facility there, a tin building with four tracks running though it. There is an idea to model it without a roof, showing people doing car repair things. How cool, right?

The thing is, I’m not sure what goes on in there. I went onto the TTX site and tried to contact them. Posted email inquiring about a tour. Nothing. Then I called their HR office and got shoveled into a phone message loop. Nothing. Everyone in the 21st century knows this bit – it’s where a company pastes a nice website over their craggy battlements, showing pictures of smiling office workers and stalwart maintenance guys, chock full of mission statements and commitments to service and all that.

But unless you’ve got a boxcar with a broken coupler, you ain’t getting in.

I still have hopes that TTX will at least give me the courtesy of the former century and return my inquiry. Even “no” would work. Otherwise, we’re left with two options – model it with the roof on (just a lot of dull tin) or make up the inside of the facility. So, what do you think? A chop shop? A meth lab? An S&M dungeon?

How about a callback, TTX?