As I continued to search for information about our past, I began to realize that 1993 was definitely the beginning of a change for our club. We were well pleased with our “Compressed Layout Concept”, but considered it more for shows than for the main club layout there at Terrell Plaza. We now had more time to come in and run trains on a pre-assembled layout, but this soon led to boredom for a few of our members. We began to look at our modules from the standpoint of operating flexibility and found that they were sadly lacking. This discovery, of course, led to some spirited discussions about how we could improve our modules and the resulting club layout as well as the show layout.

Some years before, David Coates had constructed an extensive yard layout involving engine facilities, a freight yard, passenger station and passenger car yard. However, less than ideal storage facilities, coupled with the Texas heat, had taken a stiff toll on those modules by the time we moved into the building at Terrell Plaza. Consequently, we had no way to set up additional trains other than to stop one train, remove it from the layout, then set up a different train on the recently vacated tracks. This was very time consuming and soon led to discussions about the need for one or two set-up tracks with access to at least one main line. We also began to discuss the need for more crossovers between the three standard lines along with the possibility of constructing light weight three foot corners to replace the heavy four foot corners. This latter discussion eventually led to the construction of two three foot corner/bridge type modules by Carl Lawson and David Coates.

It was in the early summer of 1993 when Marshall and I got busy and made up his eight foot yard module with set-up tracks plus my crossover module with extensions to his setup tracks. We had no idea, at that time, of ever expanding beyond that ten feet or so of setup track. It only took us a year or two to realize the error of our short term planning.  The construction of those two modules occurred in my back yard, so this would indicate that we had been evicted from the Terrell Plaza location by this time.

I believe it was during the construction of the eight foot yard that Marshall and I decided to take a layout up to the mid-September Temple Show. The big problem was how to find enough people to transport the modules necessary for a decent layout, and stay for a two day show. A discussion of this problem soon led to the possibility of a U-Haul Trailer, and finally to the possibility of removable racks to fit into the trailer. I had some wood, so I made the racks after taking many measurements of several trailers. The resulting racks are quite heavy because of the 3/4 inch plywood that I used, but they serve the purpose very well. The racks are ideal for carrying nine, four foot modules plus a couple of narrow, four foot bridges along with the eight foot yard module on the floor of the trailer. This allowed us to transport a good sized layout in one compact package. We received about as many compliments on the trailer arrangement as we did on our layout at the next few shows.