On July 13th and 14th 2019, the Pacific Northwest On30 Modular Group, participated in the “Clamshell Days” event at the Pacific Columbia Heritage Museum in Ilwaco on the Long Beach peninsula. 

Bay Lumber No 2 rumbling past the Camp 4 freight house with a load of logs.

  This was our 7th year participating in this event and it is one of our favorites as the museum provides a great gallery space for our layout.  Since this is one of the less known “trainshows” there is considerably less spectator traffic than the big shows around Puget Sound.  This allows us to focus more on operations and having fun with our layout and equipment.

Eric Sitiko as conductor and Alan Murray as engineer operating on the east end of the layout.
Cliff Aaker and Byron Osborn working the Willapa Cranberry module.
Paul Vaughn running the layout as Dispatcher. The separate room for the dispatcher was a nice location.

  We ran two days of TTTO operations and are now sporting a new station stop semaphore built by Cliff Aaker that is controlled by an Arduino CPU board and a servo.  The dispatcher also acting as station operator can now use a TV remote control to operate the semaphore to indicate stop for orders at the station.  It really adds a prototypical element to our operations.

The 23 Extra West stopped at Wye Tank to collect a set of train orders. Note the tower and semaphore indicating “stop” signal. This active signalling feature is raised and lowered with a TV remote control by the dispatcher. The tower was designed and built by Cliff Aaker and uses an Arduino micro computer to control the servo logic and infrared sensor.

  The group also had the good fortune through Paul Vaughn’s efforts of gathering a large donation of structures from George Chambers of Issaquah.  He graciously donated the items due to a downsize in living arrangements with the only caveat that the structures be displayed for all to enjoy.  We have several spots for these finely detailed structures and they really add a lot of visual interest and operational opportunities.  Thanks George!!!  

Nice Barber Shop and Power Plant structure donated to the group by George Chambers.
Small station with figures along with other small items donated by George Chambers.

Everybody had fun and enjoyed a nice relaxing weekend.  This event runs every year on the 2nd weekend in July so start planning now and maybe we will see you next year.