Before and After... front of Mount Whitney

 

 

 

BEFORE

The Evergreen club started on its great journey on Sept 1, 2008, just about the time the world was talking about crashing if

we didn't spend a trillion dollars we borrowed from China. Let's start a train club! We took a chance and I think we won.

This photo shows where we were on November 2009 at the rear of the layout. We called it Mount Whitney as Burt was the main

builder of it.

 

TODAY

It hardly looks like the same place but it is! We re-did the top tracks to include a loop with the Heimerdinger bridge as the

focal point. That altered the mountain rocks that I needed to make better with more rock and change the colors. Trees also helps

the look of the scene. We used smaller tress to force the perspective to make it look further away.  Clouds and backdrop as well.

Before and After

BEFORE

Burt and Terry watch a Great Northern passenger train pass through the backside of the Evergreen train layout back 6 years ago.

This is the time where this layout could qualify as the Plywood Central.

 

TODAY

Looks a lot better with a finished roadbed, mountain and building fill the scene.  When people ask how much have we invested

in the layout our best guess is around $30,000 dollars. Another number to consider that there are 30,000 hours of effort put

forward by the 28 members over those years. Maybe if we invested those hours into golf we would all be golf pros by now!

Saturday Afternoon Delight

We got the fishing village repair shop finished thanks to Burt and so I honored him with the name

of the place. ( Besides Burt rhymes with Boats! ) He allowed me to weather it a bit as it is on the ocean!

Now the deck of the dock looks too clean?

Now all we need is customers. Looks like we are going to need a crew?

 

The main feature on Saturday was a surprise visit ( at least by me ) by Jim Bowden who brought in 2 sets

of F units in Northern Pacific and Great Northern railroads.  Here I took away the edge of the earth

so it looks like the scenery goes all the way to the floor just like John Allan did with the Gory & Defeated

Railroad back in the late 50s. The walkways were the river bottoms. I used the rubber stamp icon

to add the rocks and tree in the Photo Shop program.

 

Here is Jim's NP train pulling a healthy freight train.

 

Many times I saw this type of train being pulled by the freight black Fs as I came west in 1963, 1966

and 1967 on the NP to visit Spokane. The Burlington Northern took care of these images with BN Green.

 

Perhaps the second best color scheme ever on freight locos was the GN orange and Empire Builder Green.

These models that Jim has are nearly perfect in detail and performance!

 

 

Visitors seemed impressed with the Evergreen?

These kids returned to the club yesterday and mom said all they could talk about from last weeks'

visit of when were they going back! That gets them a photo in our e-mails!

 

My SP&S C-636s were given a roll by with the club's log train.  Love that chug, chug, chug!

 

Burt goes "modern" with a set of Union Pacific F units. Modern means anything past the 1930s

on the Camas Prairie Railroad out of Lewiston, Idaho.

 

Coming back from dinner we were treated by this 7 loco train set of Great Northern power. I said

whos trains are these? Tom Kirk said, Jerry they are yours!  Tom gathered them up from the yard and made

them into a train set.  It's like getting new trains when you forgot what you own!

 

Mystery Joe showed up again last night pulling the set of club passenger cars....and the colors matched.

There's talk of stripping it and give it a proper paint job that includes orange!

 

There is a God in this world! Mr. Steve Weslowski showed up with a gift last night in the form

of a free bottle of that fabulous Floquil RUST!  It's the wonder color I use to make my equipment look

realisric. Plus grimy black, primer and a few others. The company stopped making it a year or two ago.

A mystery Little Joe?

 

This critter showed up at the train club yesterday and it looked somewhat familiar.

Upon closer inspection it turned out to be a Little Joe like when they ran thru Montana to Avery, Idaho.

It is in the color scheme that was on the Joes in Brazil when they acquired a few from GE They

had the embargo on them so they could not be shipped to Joe Stalin back in 1948 during the cold war.

 

Here is what a good old American Little Joe looks like and Don promises to redo it in Milwaukee Road colors.

 

Ji, Bowden showed up with this set of NP F units. Ah, the good old days!

 

Marvin went modern on us yesterday with two lease units running a BN train over Beaver Canyon.

I think I remember 34 cars were in tow as it made its way up the canyon.

 

The NP F units worked their final miles in the Spokane region where repairs and parts could be found

for the fleet.

 

 

Another YouTube video from Weso

It's amazing how a cell phone can produce a quality video such as this one.

It is also apparent to me that the Inshome modular club here in Spokane needs

a guy to help with members modules to set a standard for the club. Too many

rough spots in the scenery it seems.  Jerry

 

From: wesolowski4@comcast.net

Sent: Sunday, January 31, 2016 5:01 AM

To: Quinn, Jerry

Subject: another YouTube video

 

Jerry,

 

I've posted another video.

This time I put together 40+ clips taken with my cell phone.

The first 15 are from my days at INSHOME.

The rest are shot at Evergreen.

There are no special sounds effects in this one, just the sound of our models trains and members chatting it up in the background.

It's nearly 30 minutes long so grab some popcorn and you favorite beverage!

Oh yeah, share with the masses please.

 

Steve Weso

 

 

click on this here link ----->   https://youtu.be/wq1s5hdIOOY

 

 

 

 

Photo comes in over the internet.

As most of you know we have a model train club in the Spokane Valley but some of you may not know we

used to have a real railroad across Appleway Road. You can see the Greenacres Shopping Center sign on the extreme left of

the photo where our club storefront is located. I want to thank whoever sent it to me as I don't know who W. Gregor is. Photo taken 1979.

( copy below ) Milwaukee Road pulled out of the Northwest in 1980.  CDA Patrol refers to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Tracks are now a bike path.

 

H i Jerry. I thought you and your fellow modelers might enjoy this image of the Milwaukee Road CDA Patrol heading back toward Dishman.

It appears this image was taken right across E Appleway Ave and N Greenacres Rd from your club house. MP-15AC 471 is pulling a healthy

train of lumber products for 1979. ENJOY!

Forgotten model photos from long ago...as much as 3 months I think!

John Smith had his big time Southern Pacific engines riding the rails in what was their last paint scheme

before the UP/SP merger.  Merger? The UP ate the SP.

 

Eras conflict here as Milwaukee Road passenger trains with E8 power were long gone before

the BN showed up in history or anywhere else.

 

The Rio Grande still lives but only at the Evergreen Railroad as it wound up in the Southern Pacific

merger just a few years before the UP did it to SP.

 

The miniature version ( 1/87 scale ) of the real Northern Pacific North Coast Limited glides through

the Northwest. I rode it 3 times coming out west in 1963, 1966 and moved out here in 1967.

What a wonderful train ride it was as I had my nose to the vista dome glass very chance I could.

 

Gas turbines were only on the Union Pacific and they worked well when fuel was 29 cents a gallon.

When fuel cost rose in the 1.00 a gallon then they were not very efficient. There's a jet engine in there,

they made a lot of noise just to made the electricity for the traction motors. I saw one in 1969 in Ogden!

 

Finally, I didn't know Marvin worked for the Santa Fe?

I think the Los Angeles Police gave him a ticket for illegal parking.

Let's say you are an N scaler....with lots of time on hands.

Let's say you have a lot of model railroad spare parts that you don't know what to do with them?

 

Rod figured out he can use them in different combinations to create one of a kind models.

I think he succeeded!

 

This one even had blinking red lights!!!!  The girl must be a hobo making her way to Spokane?

 

The tail car must be for the President. It looks like one he deserves for all his good work?

 

 

Fw: Railfaning by drone?

 

 

 

I don't normally get this high up to get a shot of the Beaver Canyon area

where Canadian Pacific and BN locos parallel each other.

 

Different members bring the club layout up to date with modern BNSF power passing each other.

Mr. Buffet would be proud?

 

Bob Gadsby has his his own set of modern power but for Uncle Pete ( Union Pacific).

His first car shows 2 Oscar Meyer weiner cars on their way to parades and people pointing fingers at them.

Anthony Weiner would be proud?

 

Marvin's NP F units ran smoothly on Thursday this time on the Red Line which is our secondary line

on the club layout. It has 32 inch radius where the Blue main has 36 inch radius.

 

Watch out! Near disaster was averted when 2 trains showed up on the same track but going in different

directions. I guess someone shut off the sensors or this should not have happened!

The tale of two U Boats!

About a year ago a model manufacturer came out with a terrific model of the General Electric U25 (2500 horsepower) which had a bright yellow nose. It looks pretty good except I thought that the yellow was too yellow. Now the same manufacturer came out with a very similar version of the U28 but this time the yellow is this dark mustard yellow that by itself looked pretty good. When I put the models together the colors do not look right. What's a rivet counter to do?

 

This is what I found in my photo collection tonight of a relatively new U25 ( the number tells you that) and the color seems to be about in the middle of the 2 choices the manufacturer gave us.  Do I repaint both?

 

Going by the yellow used on F units would confuse the modeler enough that he may switch to N scale!

 

Better yet a fella could switch to Santa Fe or BN.  Say, how come the BN locos are a different green than the boxcar? Maybe I better switch to radio controlled airplanes or tanks or Barbie Dolls?

 

One of our deranged members put up these characters mooning the passenger trains and railroad crews in the back of the layout as well.  At least we got the colors right.

 

I traveled to work the other day along Trent Avenue in the hopes of seeing something out of the ordinary and the BNSF did not let me down. I have seen track inspection trucks and railcars before but this heavy duty truck was a new one on me. It is crossing Pines Road in the Valley and was headed east. It sends an electronic signal through the track and it detects cracks before they go boom!

Thomas makes a comeback!

No, I don't mean Ralph Thomas, although that would be nice, I mean Thomas the Tank Engine of British television fame!  This time Jim Bowden installed sound and it sounds terrific like a real live American engine.

 

Worthy of a little Photoshop, I added a little smoke to Jim's magnificent Santa Fe 4-8-4 departing the Blue Yard in search of mountains to climb and rivers to cross.

 

Jim's third train he ran on Saturday was his 3 unit Union Pacific F3 EMD set pulling his all UP freight.

 

Northern Pacific was also represented with this 2 unit GP9 set but I don't remember who locos they were?

 

Spike Gorley usually runs Canadian power but Saturday his BNSF units took the center stage.