▲ This scene is on Howard Dwyer's HO scale Island Central Railroad. The layout will be open for operating sessions and layout tours during the convention. You can learn more about Howard's layout in the email below. | |
The Early Registration Discount Ends Tuesday!
Have you registered?
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We extended the registration discount for the Cannonball Express NER Convention to Tuesday, August 15 and now it is down to the final days. Have you registered for the convention yet?
The Sunrise Trail Division is looking forward to being your host during the convention. The convention is being held on October 5-8, 2023 in Uniondale, NY, on Long Island.
Once you have registered, don't forget to book your hotel, too. You need to book your hotel room by September 4 to receive the discounted rate, which is $100 less than comparable rooms in other hotels.
Convention registration and hotel registration information is included in the email below.
Don't wait any longer! Register and get a discount today!
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August 15 is the last day to save money when registering for the Cannonball Express NER Convention.
The best values for the convention are the Combo packages, which include the convention registration, Thursday welcome reception, Saturday night banquet, and Sunday morning Awards breakfast. For the menus, click here.
Combo Packages:
- Members: $190 ($200 beginning Aug 16)
- Significant other and/or family members: $145
à la carte options:
- Convention Registration (no food): $85 ($95 beginning Aug 16)
- Significant other and/or family members (no food): $20
- Welcome Reception Thursday evening: $25
- Dinner Banquet Saturday night: $80
- Awards Breakfast Sunday morning: $45
Please read the NER Convention Refund Policy before registering.
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Register Online
Click on the button or here to register online by credit card or PayPal.
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The Convention Hotel is the Long Island Marriott.
The room rate is $199 per night for single or double occupancy. The rate is available through September 4 and is $100 less than comparable hotels in the area!
Hotel registrations are handled through the hotel website so you must register for the convention and your hotel room separately.
Please note that when you use the link, it defaults to four nights. Adjust your reservation to the number of nights you wish to stay.
Click here to reserve your hotel room.
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Tour Grand Central Terminal in New York City! | |
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The featured prototype tour for the Cannonball Express Convention is a visit to the magnificent Grand Central Terminal in midtown Manhattan on Friday October 6.This world famous structure on East 42nd Street was opened to the public by the New York and Harlem Railroad on February 1, 1912. The building continues to serve New York City bound commuters to this day, and is now controlled by the Metro North Railroad.
On October 6, you can be one of those commuters. For $45, your tour package will include a tour of Grand Central Terminal by a professional tour company and roundtrip tickets between the Minneola Station on Long Island and Grand Central Terminal.
The tour company providing the only official tour of Grand Central Terminal is Walks and they will be our guides for our tour. You will have the opportunity to
- Visit lesser-known areas of this famous building—from an old movie theater to the former office of a 1920s railroad tycoon—with an expert official guide.
- Hear the stories of historical characters like Cornelius Vanderbilt or Paul "Tick Tock" Kugler, who made Grand Central what it is today.
- Take an intimate look at the daily routine of one of the world’s biggest and busiest travel hubs.
- See all the major sites, including the Grand Central Market, Transit Museum, Grand Central Clock, Vanderbilt Hall, the Whispering Gallery, and the Main Concourse.
The tour group will depart at the same time from the Long Island Railroad's Minneola Station on Long Island. The trip will travel over the newly opened Long Island Rail Road East Side Access trackage to the new Grand Central Madison.
Participants will be required to provide their own transportation between the hotel and the Mineola railroad station (paid parking available).
After the tour, all participants are free to explore New York City and return to the Minneola station at their leisure with the return ticket they have in hand. More information on some of the things to do in the city are included in this email.
More information about the tour is on the convention website.
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The Island Central Railroad by Howard Dwyer | |
▲The tugboat "Diana" is busy working the waterfront in Port Richmond on Howard Dwyer's Island Central Railroad. | |
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The HO scale Island Central Railroad built by Howard Dwyer will be open for operating sessions and layout tours during the Cannonball Express. The 21x29 foot layout has an urban setting during the steam to diesel transition era. However, most switching is performed by diesel road switchers.
Operating sessions on the Island Central feature passenger, freight, coal hauling, yard operations and branch line operations and is NCE DCC equipped. The ICRR is freelanced and scenery is 100% complete.
Howard's layout was featured in the May 2012 edition of Model Railroader magazine. You can find the trackplan from this article and photos of the Island Central on the operations.com website. Howard's layout is also part of the Central Suffolk Operations Group where additional photos can be found.
The convention website has additional photos of the layout, too.
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The New York and Atlantic by Dave Barraza | |
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Dave Barraza's HO scale New York & Atlantic focuses on New York & Atlantic freight operations threading through the regular, heavy commuter passenger service of the Long Island Railroad. The Long Island Railroad passenger trains keep the freight crews on their toes.
Dave's 3-deck layout is open for operating sessions and layout tours during the convention.
Areas modeled include Long Island City to Fresh Pond, Jamaica to Floral Park, and Westbury to Greenport. There are 34 freight customers in 16 locations. The railroad is well under construction with the main line complete while scenery and signaling are making progress.
Two Train Directors control train movements overseen by the Dispatcher. Communication is by telephone and radio. Verbal authority is used in some areas during the signal installation. CTC signals protect single track from Farmingdale to Ronkonkoma. East of Ronkonkoma the line is operated TT&TO along with Manual Block rules, as on the prototype.
If you are planning to visit or operate on Dave's layout, in addition to the information found on the convention website, he has provided a handout with track schematics on the convention website. He also published the current operational paperwork on his blog, used for his operating sessions.
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Grasse River Railroad by Andy Estep | |
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The Grasse River Railroad was associated with the Emporium Forestry Company in the far northwestern edge of the Adirondacks. Andy's family owns the former saw mill office. As teachers, his wife's family spent all summer there working on restoring the building. The area is extremely remote and there was never much development in the area outside of the lumber company which has been gone for well over 60 years. Andy was introduced to the building without much information. He could tell there was something unusual about it and has spent the last 25 years worth of summers exploring the house and the woods, researching, and interviewing former workers. With this information, Andy has been piecing together what the history of this specific place was. He has also been able to track down all of the surviving items for this railroad and continues to find more.
The railroad was very much run like a model railroad because it rostered over 30 steam engines and a diesel, way more than needed for a line that was well under 100 miles long at any time. The railroad rostered rod, geared engines, and even geared steam of their own design. The railroad shops area was a place of experimentation with several homemade critters and self powered passenger cars.
This presentation summarizes this research, a general history of the railroad and company as well as some of the finds that he has made, even his attempt at 1:1 scale modeling on the site of the prototype.
To get a flavor of the railroad, visit RailCityMuseum.com where they have a page dedicated to the Grasse River.
You can also find a few more photos from Andy's presentation on the convention website.
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Creating a Believable Fall Season Forest by Bill Brown, MMR® | |
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Bill will take you through several techniques using natural inexpensive materials to create a believable vibrant forest in peak fall color.
Bio: Bill Brown has been an NMRA Master Model Railroader since 2006 and his home layouts and modules have appeared in several issues of Model Railroader Magazine, Railroad Model Craftsman, and The Narrow Gauge and Short Line Gazette. Bill is a past division Superintendant, is the National Contest Chairman at NMRA National Conventions, and has been the Achievement Program Chair for the Northeastern Region for the past 8 years. Bill’s models have won several modeling awards over the years including the Gold Award for Best of Show at The Detroit National Convention, and had numerous photos win awards including the Best of Show at a National Convention in Cleveland. Bill has given clinics at several national, region and division conventions.
More information is on the convention website.
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You're invited to join a M·A·C Cosmetics Masterclass during the convention at the convention hotel! Learn how to transform your makeup day to night!
This class gives exclusive makeup insight from professional M·A·C Artists on applying makeup, popular trends, and ways to take your look to the next level.
Each attendee will receive a M·A·C goodie bag filled with our favorites.
Come learn all our M.A.C. tips and tricks from our professional artists!
More information is on the convention website.
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Downtown Manhattan is the southernmost part of Manhattan, the central borough for business, culture, and government in New York City.
Wall Street is located downtown and is a world-leading global center for commerce, housing Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and other major financial institutions. Downtown also has some of New York City's most iconic buildings (including One World Trade Center, the tallest skyscraper in the United States and Western Hemisphere) and Trinity Church.
You can find downtown sites in addition to Federal Hall to visit on the convention website. Just click on these links to learn more:
General Interest
Museums
Historical
Parks
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Federal Hall
Federal Hall is the birthplace of American government. Here on Wall Street, George Washington took the oath of office as our first President, and this site was home to the first Congress, Supreme Court, and Executive Branch offices.
The current structure, a Customs House, later served as part of the US Sub-Treasury. Now, the building serves as a museum and memorial to our first President and the beginnings of the United States of America.
Your visit to Federal Hall is free. To learn more, visit its page on the National Park Service website.
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Midtown Manhattan is the central portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan and serves as the city's primary central business district. Midtown is home to some of the city's most prominent buildings, including the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the Hudson Yards Redevelopment Project, the headquarters of the United Nations, Grand Central Terminal, and Rockefeller Center, as well as several prominent tourist destinations including Broadway, Times Square, and Koreatown. Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan is the busiest transportation hub in the Western Hemisphere.
You can find midtown sites in addition to the Paley Center to visit on the convention website. Just click on these links to learn more:
General Interest
Museums
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The Paley Center for Media
Formerly known as the Museum of Television & Radio (MT&R) and the Museum of Broadcasting, the Paley Center is an American cultural institution dedicated to the discussion of the cultural, creative, and social significance of television, radio, and emerging platforms for the professional community and media-interested public. The general public can participate in Paley programs that explore and celebrate the creativity, the innovations, the personalities, and the leaders who are shaping media.
At the heart of the Paley Center sits the Paley Archive, which represents the largest public collection of its kind and is often cited as a national treasure, with over 160,000 television and radio programs spanning more than 100 years.
For more information, visit the Paley Center's website.
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The term Uptown can refer to Upper Manhattan, but is often used more generally for neighborhoods above 59th Street; in the broader definition, Uptown encompasses Upper Manhattan.
There are many museums located in Uptown. In addition to the Metropolitan Museum of Art highlighted here, you can find links to other museums on the convention website.
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Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art ("the Met") in New York City is the largest art museum in the Americas. In 2022 it welcomed 3,208,832 visitors, ranking it the third most visited U.S museum, and eighth on the list of most-visited art museums in the world. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 Fifth Avenue, along the Museum Mile on the eastern edge of Central Park on Manhattan's Upper East Side, is by area one of the world's largest art museums.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 with its mission to bring art and art education to the American people. The museum's permanent collection consists of works of art from classical antiquity and ancient Egypt, paintings, and sculptures from nearly all the European Old Masters, and an extensive collection of American and modern art. The Met maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanian, Byzantine, and Islamic art. The museum is home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments, costumes, and accessories, as well as antique weapons and armor from around the world. Several notable interiors, ranging from 1st-century Rome through modern American design, are installed in its galleries.
To learn more about the Met, visit the museum's website.
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The West Side of Manhattan refers to the side of Manhattan Island that abuts the Hudson River and faces the U.S. state of New Jersey. The West Side is home to several famed New York City locations, including Fifth Avenue, Central Park, and lower Broadway.
You can go to a show on Broadway or visit some of the other sites on the West Side. You can find links to other West Side sites on the convention website.
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Broadway
"See a show" while in New York! One way to purchase tickets is through Broadway.com.
Broadway.com features online theater ticketing and phone sales through 1.800.BROADWAY for all Broadway shows and most off-Broadway shows.
The site also contains the most complete editorial coverage of theater on the web, including the latest news, interviews with actors and playwrights, opening-night coverage, original theater reviews and video features. Broadway.com also offers current box office results, show synopses, credits and biographies and in-depth Tony Awards coverage. Whether it’s your first-time visiting Broadway or you’re a Broadway regular, the Broadway Guide helps customers find the best show for their Broadway experience, provides insider tips for choosing seats and prepares them for enjoying the Times Square area before and after the theater.
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Do you have model railroad friends that may be interested in the convention?
We have made it easy for them to receive future news about the convention. Just forward this email to your friends and tell them to subscribe to future convention emails by clicking on the "Subscribe Now" button.
That's all there is to it!
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See you in October in Uniondale! | | | | |
