Cocoa Beach 2025

Yes, it’s a new year, and for freight car enthusiasts like myself, the year begins on a high note with the annual Prototype Rails meeting in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Originated and long directed by the late Mike Brock, it’s now ably directed by Mike’s long-time second in command, Marty Magregian. 

And as has always been the case, the meeting was well organized and ran smoothly throughout. This year the heavy snows in the Midwest and Northeast did lead to a whole bunch of last-minute cancellations for obvious reasons, but otherwise attendance was typical of this meeting at around 200, and every one appeared to be having a great time.

I always focus on the clinic program at a meeting like this. There is rarely a clinic time slot when I’m not sitting in one, and have presented one or more clinics at every one of these meetings I’ve attended (out of 24 of these meetings, I’ve just missed two). 

This year’s program, organized by Jeff Aley, was as usual, nicely varied and of uniform high quality. My talk this year was entitled “Creating Realistic Operation on a Small Layout,” and you can view the handout if you wish (it‘s at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/01/handout-for-realistic-operation-clinic.html ).

One clinic I enjoyed was Mont Switzer’s talk about freight cars associated with Muncie, Indiana. He opened his talk with a variation on a slide he often uses at this meeting, which includes an HO scale surf board:

For those not familiar with Cocoa Beach, the huge Ron Jon surf shop is a local landmark. Mont also brought along all the freight cars described in the clinic, and exhibited them in the ballroom’s display area.

Speaking of the ballroom, as always it was the location for model displays, manufacturer's tables, and hobby sellers, with many interesting things on view. Here’s an overall photo:

As he always does, Eric Thur brought some interesting freight cars, including several with very well-done loads. I will just show a single example, a load of Allis-Chalmers transformers. The loads are S scale transformers 3D-printed by Multi-Scale Digital. They were shown loaded on a hybrid model, a Funaro & Camerlengo Pennsylvania Class FM flat car body with Sunshine resin sides. A prototype photo of a very similar load of transformers was also displayed. 

For John Armstrong fans, it was fun to see exhibited a 3D-printed, O scale model of his “imagineered” 200-ton articulated cement car, called a “Cementipede,” built by Jim King of Smoky Mountain Model Works for David Vaughn’s Wit & Wisdom LLC (I understand kits are available; you can email to witandwisdommodels@gmail.com ). As you see below, there was also exhibited an O scale version of Armstrong’s famous re-creation of the diner in the Edward Hopper painting, Nighthawks.

There weren’t large numbers of relatively modern models exhibited, but I liked a Canadian National aluminum-ingot flat car by Bob De Stefano. The car, CN 618226, is from the early 2000s, as shown in the upper photo, and as evident in the model photo below, the load is removable. Impressive modeling.

Lastly, I liked a model that Fenton Wells displayed. To some passers-by, it may have looked like “simply” an Accurail 8500-series plug-door reefer, with a 1953 reweigh date and almost-new paint. But look again, and note the upgrades: the free-standing grab irons, sill steps, ladder, ice hatch latch bars, roof corner grabs, and door hardware. This is nice work.

All in all, another typically enjoyable and fun Cocoa Beach meeting. I always look forward to each one, and invariably find it just as good as I expected. Reminders for it are already blocked in on my calendar for the event in 2026.

Tony Thompson