Al Pomeroy is the shop foreman for the Railroad Museum of New England / Naugatuck Railroad in Thomaston, CT. Last summer at TrainOps we go talking about making a custom drum head for their Christmas trains. A few weeks ago Al contacted me with a design and asked for some help. I had planned on donating the sign acrylic and cut vinyl. When I asked my boss at the sign shop he offered to donate the labor and materials to make a custom shape sign panel and Al had a very nice .125" welded aluminum cabinet fabricated.
Today we met at the RMNE Shops to marry the custom panel to the custom cabinet and install lighting. We cursed a bit at the rubber gasket, but after three attempts we got it installed and it looked great. While I was there I got a behind the scenes look at the Christmas train being decorated. Here are a few pics - First gasket being installed between the aluminum box and acrylic face…
LEDs were installed directly to the back cover to make servicing easy. Power is from a 12V/1500MA wall wart…
Closed and lit up 
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The back…
Al poses with his new drum head…
New Haven FL-9 2019 will lead the Northern Lights Limited. All decorated up with volunteers working on decorating passenger cars in the background…
Their beautiful Rutland Combine all decorated up and will be the First Class service car and is already sold out…
I’ll be going back after Thanksgiving when the trains are running for some action shots!
