A Day with MERG

Today was a get together day with a number of interested people to gather for the first MERG meeting in Brisbane.  I was invited by a workmate and fellow club member and MERG member Greg, whom also attended.  There were two other members from our Club in attendance as well. I also new about a half dozen others that were there as well.

The day was at the Banyo Library meeting room and started with arrivals from 9:00am for a 9:30am start.  We were very lucky to have a presentation by Davy Dick who was out here from Scotland on a one month holiday.   Davy is the technical person behind a lot of Pocket Money Projects that the MERG organisation publish in their quarterly journal. 

The presentation was on forms of detection, in both DC and DCC.  It covered quite a few from the very simple to the very complex, i.e. RFID and barcodes.  My layout is quite complex now with truck loads of wire and it certainly doesn't need RFID or barcode detectors installed.  However, I do need to incorporate some forms of detection in the near future for a number of level crossings.  There will be about three (3) that I think will be operated by some form of track detection.

Davy's presentation was a very informative meeting with plenty of input from the approximately 30 people present.  There were also plenty of humorous outbursts during the presentation.  Following the presentation we had what could be called the inaugural meeting of the South East Queensland Chapter of MERG.  A few people were elected to various positions and a basic outline of when meetings will occur was agreed at a high level.  There was also agreement that there will be a few basic training sessions for attendees initially followed by other types of presentations.

I think I will be logging onto the MERG website and joining the organisation in the next few weeks when I get around to it.

Later in the afternoon, I thought about heading to the shed but it was just too hot to get motivated.  maybe next week.  Tuesday night happens to be meeting night at my place.  I hope it is not going to be too hot.