more patent stupids

http://righttocreate.blogspot.com/2006/04/model-railroading-patents-update.htm

This was forwarded to me, and I found it interesting.

I gather, because I didn’t read all the links, that there is some program that let’s you control model trains with a computer.

I’ll tell you what got me into computers: wanting to do exactly that. I was perhaps 8 or 9. I had a model railroad. I saw an issue of Model Railroader where they had a TRASH-80 as the block controller for a large model railroad. That was cool.

http://www.modelrailroader.com has back issue index. Hmm. Net is too slow to bother with their http://trains.com login, etc.

The pages are like: http://index.mrmag.com/tm.exe?opt=I&MAG=MR&MO=0&YR=1979

The site is frustratingly slow. What do you expect for “tm.exe”, clearly this Windows ‘server’ box isn’t optimized for “server” applications.

I looked through 1978,1979, and 1980. I didn’t find what I was looking for. It was a big, perhaps Chicago based club that had this.

Sheesh, the MIT Tech-Model railroad club ought to have tons of prior art. Question is: did they actually publish something.