The East Penn Traction Club is a nonprofit organization for people who are "interested in the history and modeling of electric powered rail transit vehicles, known more affectionately as trolley cars," according to their charter. It’s a group of people who really love their trolley cars. It boasts some 230 plus members from all across the country. And these people take their modeling seriously.

Their models work by using electrical current off of miniature overhead wire, just as the real ones did. They have a set of standards that each model must fit, and standards for modular layouts. Their standards allow for the trolleys to make sharp turns, and they allow for the trolley to move easier. And they have real scenery, typical of what things would have looked like when the trolley was in use many years ago.

"In the spring of odd numbered years, the club sponsors the largest trolley-only model meet in the country." That’s where premier modelers from all over the country attend for a weekend of sharing their ideas with others. They have "films, photos, slides, model contests, and ’how to’ clinics on subjects ranging from hanging trolley wire to modeling subway cars."

And this year, X10 made it’s debut as the "Trolley-Cam."

This photo shows how one of the hobbyists, John, set up an XCam2 and battery pack to his trolley so that he could get video of the camera as it made its way down the track and around through the small setting that he set up. He set it up on a flat car that was pushed by one of the trolley cars. And if you want to see the scene as the other club goers saw it, then take a look at this 22 second streaming video (Windows Media Player .avi file type 1.2Mb). NOTE: The video was digitized with only 256 colors and at 5 frames per second to keep the file size small. This accounts for the blocky look of the footage and is not a function of the video camera.

Another club-goer, Gary Reighn weighed in with his own version of the "Trolley-Cam."

This car "creeps along at a nice slow pace and does not suffer the potential tracking problems of being on a flat car pushed by a locomotive." In other words, this car is "attached to the lead power truck. As a result, it swivels with the truck, providing a better view down the track when the car is rounding a curve."

Club-goers also say that the feedback from everyone that attended was that "this is a big improvement over mounting the camera rigidly to the car frame."

So that’s what a real hobby really looks like. And, as you can see, X10 is taking hobbies down a whole new track.

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