Arduino (https://arduino.cc), the maker of a collection of microcontroller hardware, is marking its 21 year anniversary from its founding in 2005 with its annual worldwide event, this year being Arduino Days 2026, officially happening worldwide this year on March 27 and 28. At the time I’m typing this, the afternoon of March 25, the world map at https://days.arduino.cc/events shows 335 planned events.

One of those events, already on the map, is an Arduino Days 2026 event I am putting together, titled Arduinos and Model Railroads. It will be a demonstration of a variety of my personal applications of Arduino-type processors being designed for applications in model railroads, as described extensively in this blog. The location will take place in the Crossing Courtyard in the northeast corner of the North Ashland Shopping Plaza in Ashland, Virginia, at the intersection of N Washington Highway (US 1) and England St. Ashland is just north of Richmond, Virginia and just west of Interstate 95. The courtyard is in front of the club spaces of the Richmond Area NTRAK and the Virginia Piedmont and Central HO Model Railroaders, N and HO scale respectively, which are SIGs (special interest groups) of the Richmond Freelance & Prototype Model Railroaders. The event will run from 12 noon until at least 4 PM.

Unfortunately… Old Man Winter is storming back into the area in a few days to shout, “Oh, and other thing…!” The weather forecast leading into this weekend says we will get plenty of rain Friday, which could linger into Saturday. The forecast high temperature for Saturday is around 50°F with winds blowing into the courtyard at around 12 miles per hour… much like it did in 2025. So I’m moving this year’s Arduino Days event two weeks later to Saturday, April 11, again from 12 noon to 4 PM EDT. This also just happens <wink/> to be the same day both RANTRAK and VP&C have their monthly meetings for April.

The official address of the location is 233 N Washington Hwy, Ashland, VA 23005. Enter from the main parking lot, and there should be a sign (assuming wind isn’t an issue again) leading you into the courtyard.

Hope to see you there!