Train thoughts by the members

Steve Welton ponders what he might have in the future! Imagine a passenger train called the "Welton Special".

 

Two SD45s from the good old days of GN making its way through the wilds of the Northwest.  Jim Bowden gave the lead SD45 to one of our new members so he would have good equipment to run.

 

Keith Wiles ponders the good old days when his SP&S E7 hauled the southern leg of the Empire Builder past his home in Wishram, WA along the Columbia River.

 

Steve Welton does have a beautiful passenger train of his own and this Rio Grande has 12 cars in tow in the form of the California Zephyr.

 

I don't know what these two guys were saying but I took a shot, maybe they were talking about me?

 

 

The edge of the earth has been banned from the Evergreen Railroad!

Lloyd Peacock came by on Saturday and trotted out 3 of his 6 Dash 9 units to run his coal train around the Blue Main. I got him to stop the train at  different locations by the edge of the earth was showing in the first 2 shots and that was not appropriate so Mr. Photoshop was employed to help!

 

His 100 plus ( I think it really was only 10 cars ) coal cars, but just like the big guys, it needs this pusher in the rear of the train to keep it on schedule so it does not slow down Amtrak's Empire Builder in getting to Seattle on time. Imagine that!

 

Coal trains keep our trade balance from getting out of hand so move those coal trains to the coast! Notice you can't see its only 10 cars!

 

Moving the camera with the speed of the train has the cab numbers almost in focus as opposed to stopping and shooting at 1/30 of a second.

 

Just so it is not all BNSF on this e-mail, I added the Burlington Route Zephyr with a little Photoshop adding a little smoke and rust to make it not all shiny and new as the background has a UP Gas Turbine so it is not 1935 anymore. More like 1955.

Looks like its a Milwaukee Day on the Evergreen!

New member Don Carnegie ran his GP Milwaukee Road unit with little regard to the environmental impact of the need for a ring job.

 

Chad Giessler ran his beautiful steam engine with natural gas and left no smoke! Now that's what I call a good American!  Don's GP unit must have ran out of fuel?

Once that GE unit gets going there will be no clear skies in Evergreen Railroad territory!

 

Chad's SP 4-8-4 Northern puts out only clean H2O as it burns a little electric to get going.

 

Allan added another building to the gas plant and if he can get the switches then the track crew will come in! The unpainted panel will hold a clear plastic

barrier.

 

Remember the company that "brings good things to life"? Good old GE burns up the fuel and makes for a grey sky. They are going to love GE in China!

 

I watched a passing BNSF freight the other day when I spotted this unusual 4 dome tank car I never saw before. That means it has 4 containers inside?

The SP&S rides again ....in smaller scale!

When Keith showed up Tuesday for the evening run session he hauled out his 2 brand new Baldwin switchers and I knew I had 3 a kind to beat 2 of a kind!

 

While his 2 Baldwins made it around the layout my 3 SP&S RS-1s did a smokin good job of catching up.

 

My Alcos made good time to catch up to the Baldwins so it would not be long before the two sets met.

 

Wait a minute? They were running in opposite directions. He was going west to Wishram and I was going east to Spokane. Funny I didn't see the Columbia

River to my right but never mind. It was all in my mind anyway.

 

The final shot is my caboose putting out a fair amount of smoke as the Photoshop God intended.

 

 

 

 

 

Something old...something new!

It's 1967 all over again, especially in model railroading when you can get models like these that represent the way the real railroads looked back then when I moved out to Spokane. One of my photos I took back then was of the GN Hustle Muscle #400 that was published in one of the GN photo books.

 

The new model on the scene is this war baby 4-8-4 Daylight without the skirts and colors because of the war needs.  Chad brought it in Thursday and had the smoke unit working on it as well.

 

New member Tom Kirk took my Big Boy and UP Gas Turbine out for a spin pulling his own freight train.

Look what I found!

I knew there was something at Airway Heights near Fairchild Air Force base in the way of locomotives but didn't know how much was there.  This modern Canadian National caboose caught my eye first with its 2 smoke stacks. Does it get that cold up there to need 2 stoves?

 

Most of it was second generation stuff with railroad names on them that I never heard of. There were only EMD locos, no Baldwins, no Alcos.

 

It's prior owner was the famous Santa Fe. Who is Billy?  Billy Carter?

 

#324 is ready to put your name on the side of this loco and drive it away. All of these units are for sale or lease. Bring your checkbook.

 

Never heard of the Oregon Pacific but I do now.  WRIX initials were on most equipment.

 

Some 30 years ago the big railroads started to shed many of their branch lines and that created all these short lines without unions to run them. If the unions were included I would guess the railroads would have failed on financial issues.

Thursday Night Rumbles

Mr. California, John Smith had his SP Daylight making the rounds with a model of the only saved E8-9 at the Old Sacramento train museum.

 

Here is his stretched out passenger train set crossing Beaver Canyon.

 

A newcomer to Evergreen RR Modelers is Scotty Smith who brought in his years old purchase and finally ran it on something other than a 3 foot piece

of track in his home. He has a bunch of brand new UP hopper cars looking for something to haul.

 

Most of you might remember Scotty as one of us ex-River City members some 10 years ago. Scott is Mike Applegate size and a terrific addition to our club.

 

Brock showed up to the train club Thursday as his work schedule fin ally allowed him to be with us for the evening. He had these beautiful BNSF units pulling

a string of container/trailer flats at a prototype speed.

The new wall

Father Philippi Pesek is giving a blessing to the new wall at the Evergreen Railroad. Phil is not an official pastor but it looks like he is preaching to the followers when I took this photo of the new display. We took down the train cabinet as it was not being used and reset the photos and maps.

 

Three of the 4 different railroads that are shown and they all feature orange in their color scheme! This scene happens by accident and got the members to redo it for the photo!

 

New member Don Carnegie does a bit of switching in the Bakersville yard with his Milwaukee Geep. Don is the one who owns the Model T car I showed few months back that has the Milwaukee Road logo on the hood.

 

We can safely say Don is a Milwaukee Road fan.

 

The new branch line in front of the club got one step closer as Allan glued down the cork roadbed to hold them in place where the glue dried.

Club news

One man works while the other "officials" look on. Let's see... we have legal council and the safety director looking on as Burt adds ballast to the Blue Mains.  Once the far reaching stuff is done then the other guys can come in and do the track work and the installation of the buildings  to the port district.

 

The train club is loaded with a bunch a AIco-haulics!  I brought in a collection of Alco locomotives to see how they would work and lined them up for posterity. The real American Locomotive Company went out of business in the US back in 1969. I still like the looks of the PA models. What's that E unit doing here? 

 

Our track cleaning train moved up on notch to completion when I finished painting the track car that actually cleans track. Our 3rd loco for this club set is now in the paint shop as the 2nd one had too many mechanical problems like the motor burning out the chip and cracked gears.

 

Our new addition was added by Allan this week to give us another industry to the club's layout. This is right by the front door and Al plans to photograph the Spokane Valley from Mica Peak on a sunny day and use the Spokane Valley as his backdrop to the scenery. Stay tuned. Better than a coat rack!

Video! Evergreen Layout Video from 2010

This was put together by my youngest son James.

 

The layout still has work needed to be done but it's worth seeing.

Steaming Mad or Diesel Obsessed

Steam engines seem to generate more passion than a modern diesel with most Evergreen  members but no survey has been taken to prove that. This 4-8-4 used to be a pristine SP&S locomotive but now it has joined the ranks of the Northern Pacific roster in a weathered format! I need to work on that depth of field issue Phil.

Just so we don't leave out the mighty Great Northern I added an emblem on top of our engine house just like they had up there in Hillyard. The real one must have been 8 feet in diameter!

Just so we don't leave out the Union Pacific or its little brother Western Pacific here is Pete's new addition to the inventory. The lead unit is one of those heritage units that they did a few years ago.

We may have a new sheriff in town now that Pete has showed off his new interest in weathering his equipment.

Pete is now using chalks in many colors to make his equipment look prototypical.

He has also gone with a lot of graffiti with markers that is sees real ones and tries to emulate them on his equipment. Maybe someone can talk Pete into doing a clinic for the club one night soon! That's Fearless Frank in the background!