Touring the Northside - Part 2

Our second stop yesterday was at Ron P's home where this impressive cabinet held a number of very highly detailed models. Those wall plaques are impressive so well, hey, I made them! They go back to the good old days of me silkscreening them on 1/4 inch Masonite panels.

 

Ron's layout is divided into 2 rooms which this one is the largest with a rail yard holding locos, cabooses, (what are they?) and rolling stock from Ron's favorite railroads. See plaques!

 

What impresses me the most were the islands of highly detailed areas. Ron explained that he builds them on 1/4 inch plywood and installs them complete into a place designated and his layout. Smart!

 

If I remember correctly Ron has 35 buildings of craftsman quality on the layout and I don't doubt it.

 

Sticks and stones never looked better!

 

Dozens of places the buildings are a thing of amazement! If I lived closer to Ron I would be over there helping him with connecting the locations with scenery and ground cover. But he lives 20 miles away!

 

A very impressive mountain scene and Ron matched the mountain with a photo mural from the Colorado Rockies. Without the plywood you would think it is a real photo of a real spot in Colorado. I wonder if he was rooting the the Denver Broncos?

 

The loco and the bridge is impressive but look at the water! I love it!

 

Touring the Northside of Spokane - Part 1

A group of Evergreen members decided to take a tour of 2 impressive layouts located on the Northside of Spokane and the first was the "famous" portable On3 layout called the Hangman Valley Lumber Company. It was the hit at the narrow gauge convention in Seattle last year. They got a football team, we have a masterpiece!

 

It represents the backwoods scene of logging in the Northwest in the 1930's. This portable layout comes apart in sections and is about 10 feet wide by 28 feet.

 

It barely fit into a section of home owned by Jess Dozier, one of 4 members of a group that spent almost 2 years in its construction. A permanent location is in the works.

 

The scenes cover the cutting of the timbers, moving them by rail to a mill, turning them into usable lumber so America could build homes, baseball bats and pianos.

 

 

Three locos worked the 2 lines while we were there including this 2 truck Shay with geared wheels to handle rough track and sharp curves, The craftsmanship is impressive!

 

How do you move logs in the forest?  Use a steam donkey on skids to lift the logs onto the flats to move to the mill.

 

Below the steam donkey are these unuseable logs that did not meet standards. What the workers are doing is beyond my pay grade.

 

Every scene is a work of art and each tells a story of what it took to make a living in the forest. The detail is awesome... look at the shingles, cans, oil tank, workers doing something to make it all happen. Thank you Jess and Stan for the opportunity to visit the layout.

 

 

Upcoming events for the club - Revise

Several members said last night that they did not get this important e-mail so I am sending it again. Jerry

 

 

THURSDAY, FEB 20th   1 to 9 pm run trains, do weathering clinic, etc.

SATURDAY, FEB 22nd  11 am  Tour of Northside layouts. See e-mail.

 

TUESDAY FEB 25th  1 to 6 pm – club activities, work on port district, clean track, ballast.

THURSDAY FEB 27th 1 to 9 pm –run trains, etc.

WEEKDAY?  FEB ?    Dismantle Liberty Lake home layout for resale. Who wants to help?

SATURDAY, MARCH 1st - 1 pm – ? Move sections from Liberty Lake to Don's house?

                                                  Kent will allow us to use his trailer.

 

TUESDAY MARCH 4th - 1 to 6 pm – Clean train club room

THURSDAY MARCH 6th – Get club ready for open house.

SATURDAY MARCH 8th – 12 noon? Move inventory to train show building and set up.

                                            5 pm to 9 pm – Open House at club. media notified.

SUNDAY MARCH 9th   –    Breakfast at 7 am at IHOP.

                                           8 am - Get tables ready for customers.

 

TUESDAY, MARCH 11th  –  Club activities, etc.

THURSDAY, MARCH 13th – Business Meeting, discuss finances, new member approvals, future.

 

 

Visiting the Lackawanna station at Hoboken, NJ

The official name of the railroad was the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western as this emblem shows.

 

Built in 1890 as a grand edifice for departing New Jersey to the west like far away Chicago, Buffalo, and heaven forbid Montana!

 

The roof even got a lot of attention in this stained glass roof. It is on the scale of European styles.

 

This east side of the waiting room goes to the Hudson River where in the old days ferry boats made the trip back and forth. Look at the work in those seats!

 

The doors to the west went to the trains waiting for customers.

 

A policeman pointed out the high water mark as you can see the dirtier look about 5 feet from the floor. That's what happened when Hurricane Sandy stopped by last year and knocked out service.

 

Upon arrival to the station you can buy a ticket for the subway that goes under the Hudson River and drops you off under the old World Trade Center on the New York side.

 

The reader board tells the riders which track is the train you want depending on where you are heading.

 

The locomotive is on the other end as all trains have the power heading west. Upon returning to Hoboken the engineer sits in this end of the car and operates the train with the loco now in push operation.

 

 

We visit Hoboken terminal built by the Lackawanna Railroad, now NJ Transit.

One of many diesel powered units that work the North Bergen line that does not have overhead wires.

 

The control tower that my nephew Kevin works in is where we are headed this morning. The infrastructure of towers and wires is impressive.

 

Plenty of equipment is still around even through it is 11 am and most of the trains have brought in the commuters by now. Around 3 pm the flow starts going north and west and south.

 

The view from the tower is impressive as we can see the Liberty tower heads above all the other buildings.  The tower at the edge of the river is the Lincoln or Holland tunnel venting system from New Jersey to New York City.

 

A power set moves through the complex of switches in the yard and they must be a real nightmare to keep in good order.

 

Kent, Burt and my brother Ed head for the train station itself. The power unit is a French built machine that Kevin says are unreliable because the computer systems can't take the pounding they get working the lines.

 

 

3 guys from Spokane go to New Jersey to see a football game in February?

Sleeping with the enemy...well sort of!

Random shots of travelers in the Denver airport on Thursday 1/30. Peace and harmony were everywhere!  It turns out that the 3 point underdog could have spotted the Broncos 34 points

and still could have won the bets!

After all we landed in Denver and they had 100% more Bronco shirts than we did. I have been watching old TV shows now that I am home and everything was picking Denver over Seattle by as much as 10 points!

.

 

Newark Airport has a monorail system to get us from the terminals to the car rental place. The adventure begins!

 

A fair and balanced bus graphic...imagine that in New York City! Or is it New Jersey where the game was played!

 

We found a motel room in New York State about 40 miles from the stadium and Burt poses with a CSXT police car at our place. I wonder how they knew where I was staying?

 

Our first stop when we got our car out of Newark Airport was at my favorite pizza place in the whole world was Pizza Town. I made two converts with Burt and Kent as to the flavor and taste of the place. Cleanliness was not in the judging!

 

 

 

 

Road trip

Keith Wiles, Burt Whitney and I decided to go on a road trip to sunny Pasco, Washington this past Friday. On the way we went through Lynd,Washington where the old NP line (BNSF) went under a little known railroad called the Milwaukee Road. This is the remains of the bridge that spanned the valley on the south end of Lynd. BNSF is making lots of effort to double track this line from Spokane and Pasco.

They are having trouble removing the concrete base that goes under the BNSF tracks that connects those two abutments.

 

One one train we saw on the way down south was this one at top of the grade.

 

This is a relatively new model that Union Pacific apparently got rid of and now it is in lease service to the BNSF.  Look how neat the employee put on the owners innitials!

 

I don't know if this is the largest crane in the world but it must be close! Lampson in the Pasco Industrial park is putting together this monster and compare the size of it to a shipping container or a truck.

 

A close up of the hook area further shows the size of this thing. We guessed that it will be shipped out of here on a barge and not a railcar. Water is 500 yards away so it would work...in parts!

 

You aren't going to find this hinge at Home Depot.

Leftovers from Thursday night!

This must be the Midwest, Dorothy!  KCS and Canadian Pacific power sets show up in some Midwestern yard, we even have a Milwaukee Road switcher in the shot!

 

A lone SD40-2 Milwaukee Road engine in on the road doing local service as I never saw a single unit out here in the west on the mainline.

 

The foreground is the port district where we continue to make it more and more complete. I started to rust the rails so when Scotty gets all the wiring done underneath

we can then start the ballasting process. Those KFC, er KCS units move an intermodel down the line.

 

Don keeps adding more Milwaukee Road coal cars to his collection and it it getting very impressive!

 

 

Evergreen Railroad is back in business!

After almost one month of being in construction we now have the layout back for operations. The roof was sagging and they needed to lift the middle up about 5 inches to be sure it did not come down with a heavy snowfall. They needed to protect the layout with wood contruction and plastics tarps to keep the concrete dust off the layout ( and to kkep the beam from crashing the layout. I have been off line for 3 weeks as I had computer problems but I am back now! 

 

This is the front part of the layout where you can see 3 different railroads in one view. The front set of tracks is what we call the Blue main, the second track is where the steam engine is we call the Red Main or our secondary main line. The wood trestle is for the Green Branch and it is for smaller engines as the radius curves are smaller. It's like having a second level but without the overhang issues on double deck  layouts.

 

Mount Whitney was remodeled from a poor job done by me back in the start of the layout some 5 years ago. We revised the track plan from a Wye system to a loop a track that crossed over the trolley line so the trolley line needed a tunnel portal to allow this to happen. I am planning a scenery clinic in the near future to explain how a created the rock formations. Evergreen club is open on Tuesdays from1 pm to 6 pm. We are there on Thursdays from 1 pm to 9 pm with a break for dinner from 5 to 6 pm.