The carpeted club! Plus the skirted club as well.

We have been at our club location for almost 6 years (Sept 1  2008) and we finally got new carpet installed! Kevin the carpet guy is shown finishing up the back side of the layout. No he's not a plumber!

Matching the design straight wise and angle wise was a challenge for Kevin but he came through. That red thing is a roller weight to get out any air bubbles and lumps. We have under-layout lights so when one of us needs to do maintenance we can see what we are doing! The skirting was removed for the carpet install.

So now it's all running trains and stuff as Calvin runs his beautiful 4-6-6-4 Challenger past Keith's new C-425 SP&S units.

They ran nicely but sound is in the future.

The yards were full of foreign power as this Western Pacific F unit set was in need of fuel or something.

Marvin loaded up some of my locos into the roundhouse as they were hanging around looking for their welfare checks.....those bums!

 

Tunnel vision!

Being in the right place at the right time works real well for railroad photography but when you are working with models you can place them where ever you want! A little headlight helped as well.

 

John Smith acquired these beauties recently and they ran as well as looked.

Calvin had this little critter for some 25 years and it ran with both characters moving up and down as it ran around the layout. No DCC chip is going to fit into this guy so it ran straight DC.

 

Spike had his Canadian Pacific units working a long double stack.

 

This little guy's name is Nic and he showed up on Thursday with his dad and sis and he seemed pretty happy about what he saw.

 

Marvin put my ice reefers into the port ard and I think it now looks pretty neat.

Wearing out the rails on the Evergreen Railroad; time for new welded rail!

This little engine changed everything. I thought I was finished with old time railroading until this beauty showed up with sound and perfection. So when you have an old engine you also need lots of box cars to pull behind it.

 

Typical of the 80s were SD60s and trailer trains like Mike Baker had running a while back.

Modern locos such as these monster SD 90 diesels in combined service such as we see here in Spokane on the old SI railroad, now the Union Pacific to Canada.

 

You don't know Jack! Well you should as he is our club mascot as he was born to one of our club member's wife and that is the first one I can recall ever.

Jack is checking out the new skirting so no more running under the layout! 

 

The Alaska Railroad is well represented by Jim Bowden who spent his adult life in Alaska selling electronic do-dads to the citizens of that great state.

 

Jim fixed my Big Boy so now it runs proudly on the layout especially when we have visitors and we want to impress them with the actions and the sounds.

Another shot of Tom Kirk's fancy Rio Grande passenger train...what no smoke...but it's an Alco!

Disaster on the Evergreen!

Jim Bowden took his beautiful Alaska Railroad passenger train out for a run when he realized a switch was not brought back to straight so he started to back it up when the automatic switch was out of time and turned under Jim's train. No damage was reported and no one was hurt! OSHA was notified!

 

Off it goes into the sunset and everything is right again with the world!

 

Chad showed up with his SP steam engine with real smoke but I added a little for the photo.

 

Tom Kirk had the Rio Grande Prospector traveling  towards Denver and it looked very nice.

 

Traffic jam on the Autumn section as Northern Pacific and Union Pacific gather heading south.

 

Yikes! I was waiting for the light at Argonne and Trent and who pulls up in the next lane but Mr. Taliban himself but he wasn't looking for me. It seems to me that he is trespassing on public lands?

 

Hoping I was on public lands at Trent and Fancher I saw this GP30 waiting its turn to get on the main line on the balloon track at Parkwater. The sun was about to come out when he started to move, oh well.

 

The location is Sullivan Road overpass on the UP (ex-SI) as this Canadian Pacific loco leads a northbound but waits under the bridge and sat on the main line with his train stopped on the Trentwood Bridge. Why? I don't know why.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The trains of Evergreen County.

My little NP steamer got put on the Green Branch to stretch its legs by getting a head of steam up to deliver boxcars loaded with new toys for the kids in the train club.

The yards were filled with a variety of power and it looks like the boys in the caboose want to keep warm on this cool spring evening.

 

It was Canadian Pacific night at the club as Spike Gorley added another big unit to his collection and with sound they looked real good.

 

There's Spike now in this candid shot of him looking over his long container train at Beaver Canyon. By the way he is Jack's dad!

 

Calvin added a heritage unit to his UP train and that had great sounds as well.

 

Steve Welton added to the pool power with CP and UP big units on his long grain train. What, no smoke?

 

The Evergreen layout is so big we don't even have an edge to it. How do the scenery guys do it?

 

Mike baker showed up with his BN and GN locos pulling a nicely weathered grain train. How did he learn to do those cars so well?

Skirting the issue!

We approved the concept to get the layout skirt installed on the layout a few months ago and now it is happening! John and Lucille Smith started the install today and it looks fantastic! The gap at Beaver Canyon is a custom cut so measurements were taken to fill in the gap.

 

This really helps clean up the visual clutter of 2x4 legs and storage boxes from the estate sale we have going to help with income for the club. New carpet is also ready to install thanks to member Kent Clausen so we will not have the carpet gap that was left from the install of the support pipe to the ceiling.

 

Here we have Lucille doing the install with Velcro and the panels she has sewn to make them fit. Thanks to both Smiths for a terrific job.

 

Calvin's new model of UP 842, a little brother of the famous UP 844 that still runs as an historic relic from the past when steam was king. Photoshop helps the picture but weathering would be nice!

The tide is in as Marvin's 5 NP locos team up to get the bacon to market. By the way water is tough to do!

The Port District never had so much water as Marvin's train fills up the entire section. The record is 70 cars so the layout can do it with no problem...including container trains! In a perfect world there would be an horizon at our club. A bigger building would help.

Remember this loco?

Calvin had this Katy loco at the club this past week and I showed it as what Union Pacific is doing to keep the heritage logos in their corporate structure. A friend of mine sent this photo of the real one to me yesterday.

 

The model seems to be a bit cleaner but it also has not run off a million miles and made Calvin a millionaire either. P.S. Calvin the real loco has a black horn!  I've got to change my meds!

 

I overlooked Spike's new CP engine on the last e-mail so I fixed it up with headlights a little rust and got rid of the Kadee uncoupling wire that hangs down to the tracks.

 

Tom Kirk took on the job of cleaning the rails by pulling around the club's tank car that puts cleaning liquid of the rails and wipes it of any oils and dirt. Do we have dirt on our tracks?

 

A better shot of Bob's camera car shows it aiming the camera away from the aisles and into the scenery.  I think it's black magic!

 

Clearance was a problem in one place on the Green Branch and I had to push the angle of the camera down a 1/4 inch to clear this tunnel portal. Looking forward to the results!

The 3 Smiths and 4 Mikes club

Tom Smith, yes we have 3 Smiths in the club, stopped by last night to run his equipment on the layout that we never saw before. Spike keeps his eye on the photographer! ( Actually he is a Mike!)

 

Tom had Norfolk Southern power with a container train on the Blue line while Don had a Milwaukee Road train with Bi-Centennial #156 on the point.

 

The trailing equipment were Road Railers that are truck trailers equipped with railroad wheels that drop down to make them work as a boxcar would. Tom did the work himself to make it look like the real thing!

 

Burt been working on the apron lift on the port and secured everything in place. I did the weathering! I even rusted up the chain that holds the weights that keeps the apron aligned to the barge.

 

A wider view of the dock area shows we have another barge in place that will carry bulk products such as logs, grain, sand, just like the Evergreen barges that work the mighty Columbia River.

 

Looking for a train display? I have 2 of them I could sell. They are made from exterior plywood (T-111) with the 4 inch spacing for the models. I then added 1/4" plywood for shelving, tapped it into the groves and painted them with the ends cut and added as end pieces.  Make me an offer I can't refuse!