Clinic On July 20, 2026
The Franklin Southern Backstory: What? Why? When? Where? How?
Mark Shifter Biography
Mark Shifter is a person with Midwestern roots and Front Range experience. Born in the St. Louis area, raised in Missouri, Iowa and Nebraska, Mark received a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the mid-80’s. He spent 13 years in the Kansas City area before relocating to Colorado 25 years ago. Mark has been a licensed architect since 1991 and has his own practice designing residential and commercial projects. While architecture is a passion and his livelihood; he is also a musician and songwriter and dabbles as an artist as well.
Let Mark lead you through the development of his Franklin Southern Layout. This layout has many Carolina scenes and hosts a number of operating sessions.
Clinic On June 15, 2026
Arduinos and AI for Developing a Train Order Signal System, and Other Projects
Bill Lund Biography
Bill has had a lifelong passion for model railroading. Right after high school, he began his career working for the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad. After college, he spent the next 25 years in healthcare technology sales, focusing on hospital Clinical Decision Support systems. He concluded his professional career on the commercial pricing technology team at OmniTRAX, where he worked extensively with SQL databases.
He is now retired and enjoys modeling the D&RGW Fourth Division narrow gauge.
Bill Lund and Rich Gibson
This clinic focuses on a joint project to develop an Arduino-driven train order signal system for Rich Gibson’s Maine Central layout. They will discuss project motivation, system development using ESP-32 boards, the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for programming; and layout implementation. Since this was a new experience for both of them, they will focus on the key things learned in the process, especially concerning the use of ESP-32s and AI in model railroad applications. They will close with a live demonstration of using AI to program an ESP-32 to simulate a working scale track.
Clinic On Hold – Waiting on Date
History of the Denver Tramway Streetcar .04
Wally Weart will present the above-mentioned Clinic. This was the last streetcar to operate in revenue in Denver, and it had several narrow escapes during its life. One of its escapes was the conversion from standard gauge to a narrow-gauge electric streetcar. Wally will add some history of the Denver Tramway network along with some additional pictures he has accumulated. Wally is a long-time member of the Front Range Division and the NMRA.
