Playing on the railroad.

A little known fact is that the Milwaukee Road sold one of their 4-8-4s to the Rio Grande back in the 1940s to see how it could deal with the grades

in the Rocky Mountains. It least it happened on Janis Ledum's HO scale Rio Grande. The sounds were terrific as it pulled a passenger train around.

Tommy Frank's auto rack train wakes up the slumbering cattle waiting for their chance to visit a McDonald's

location near you.

Rod picked up this operating maintenance vehicle and I stuck one of my SI flat cars for the picture.

Rod has plans for this critter so still in tune.

2 Union Pacific GP9s hustle a local freight into the tunnel system on the Blue main.

Steve Weso had this SP&S FA2 set in the original paint scheme pulling a decent mixed freight.

Everything is right with the world!

Woops! Something did go wrong and lots of cars went flying on the Red main. Steve shows his frustration

to the camera as a NP freight pulls up behind. It's the same look for Steve if Hillary gets elected!

Jimmy Bowden gets all steamed up!

When Jim Bowden joined the Evergreen club some 7 years ago he was a Lionel guy with a storage room with lots of good looking O scale stuff.  Now everything Jim does is first class including

today's running session with 2 magnificent HO scale steam engines, both with sound!

 

His Northern Pacific steam engine is a good looking copy of their passenger power that pulled the

North Coast Limited or the Mainstreeter in the 1940s and 50s. Today is is practicing with freight cars.

 

The other engine is a jewel of a model in HO scale of a Great Northern 4-8-4 steam engine that

pulled the Empire Builder or the Western Star from St. Paul to Seattle with a stop here in little old Spokane.

 

There was more action on the club layout with opposing sets of Spokane, Portland & Seattle freight

engines passing each other from time to time as I looked to see where they would meet.

 

As I was setting up for another shot of the 2 sets of SP&S power this Great Northern freight past by. The era

was still valid so no harm, no foul, besides it gave me something to say!

 

Both SP&S freights had cabooses but they are not prototype as you expert rivet counters are going to spot

that the SP&S did not have steel bay window cabooses and the other caboose did not have the right sheathing.

After all it's not like I called them B-26s or something evil.

Steve Weso record shattered by upstart Jim Bowden!

The world record for train length at the Evergreen club was shattered Thursday my Jim Bowden with

his 7 Northern Pacific locos. Jim started out with a 75 car train set to prove the engines could handle it

and continued to add cars.

The long train was impressive enough but it soon was going to get better.

Jim kept adding as the power was sufficient to keep pulling the longer and longer train..

And here it is folks....126 cars including a caboose! You can see the caboose going the other way just above the silver car on the front of the train. It loops

around the entire Mt. Whitney mountain, port district, Old Town and past Blue Main yard. And it stayed on the rails!

Marvin had 3 of his modern power pulling a freight train but not as long as Jim's.

Burt had his only "modern" locomotives running the main as Burt prefers the 1930 era with little steam engines.

Looking for love in all the right places.

 

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I'm always looking for a new angle when I get my hands on my Canon camera to shoot the Evergreen layout so my viewers don't get bored with the same old thing.

On Tuesday I had Marvin running his NP freight with 4 first generation diesels that I remember the real thing so well when I moved to the Northwest.

 

So I asked Marvin to stop his train at various spots so I can get the train without any motion to ruin the shot.

This one is at the middle of the layout and I don't usually crawl under the layout to get to this spot.

 

The Titanic ice plant is usually shot from the other side so this gives me a new look for this area.

Ice reefers were so important to the railroads to keep produce fresh for the long journey back east.

 

The Evergreen layout is rich with tunnels and bridges that it even amazes me after 7 plus years at

this location to have so many photo opportunities for taking these pictures for you.

 

They named a building after me and it is the red one on the left of the train. I missed out on the GN tower

so this one will have to do.

 

On Monday I visited the Greenwood Cemetery with the wife to visit her dad's gravesite and as we

were leaving I saw this sign and I thought how appropriate for them to have a special place for

model railroaders to be interned together so they can discuss the advantages of different scales.

What's a Rebekah?