The National Model Rail Road Association Fourth Division of the Pacific Northwest Region (NMRA 4dPNR) Redmond Clinic for September was held Thursday evening at the Redmond Community Center, Alex Brikoff presiding. After a brief social interlude, the gathering was brought to focus around 7:15 PM. Notable attendees were introduced and upcoming events of interest were announced. The 4D Grab-Iron newsletter and Events Calendar are a great resource to keep you abreast of activities.
As we reminisced our train-themed vacation trip activities over the summer, several of the group gave short presentations about new layouts being designed, planned and built. Due to the great interest we ran over the allotted meeting time. It’ll be very interesting to hear the progress reports on these new layouts as time goes on.
East Side Clinic Attendees
For the model of the month and photo if the month, Russ Segner showed two brass locomotive purchases, an Sn3 consolidation and an HOn3 consolidation. Bob Rorabaugh showed an article on massive northwest tree stumps and the stories they hold. Syd Schofield showed a picture of the Bear River bridge and trestle on the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad in northern California obtained at their museum in Grass Valley, CA.
Bob Rorabaugh brought his usual “For Sale” items as an opportunity available to all attendees. Due to the clinic running late, the door prize portion of the clinic was very abbreviated with a promise to return to the regular door prize give away next month. The meeting concluded at 9:15 PM.
The September 2019 Eastside Get Together Clinic will resume its monthly meetings for the 2019/2020 Clinic Season on September 19, 2019.
The Clinic will meet at the: Redmond Community Center at Marymoor Village 6505 176TH AVE NE, Rm. 202 REDMOND WA 98052-4930
Doors open at 7:00 PM and meeting starts promptly at 7:15 PM
We will kick off this year’s Eastside Get Together Clinic season by bringing everyone up to date on the noteworthy model railroad and railfan events coming up in the area for the fall months ahead. We’ll also have our Model of the Month contest and Rail Photo of the Month contest. So, please bring your models and photos for the contests! Winners will have first choice of many fine items from our Door Prize table.
This month’s clinic will be “What I did on my Summer Vacation, Railroad-wise” and moderated by Alex. This will be a round robin where everyone in the room will have a few minutes to tell the rest of the group what they did over the summer months in terms of model building, railfanning, conventions or any combination of the above that has to do with railroading. I encourage everyone to bring a flash drive with photos to go along with your talk since we will have a projector there. Also, please try to limit your talks to 5-10 minutes to allow as many folks as possible to share their summer vacations with us. Participation is optional but encouraged!
We will have refreshments and snacks available as always. We’ll also have a great selection of Door Prizes to give away at the end of the clinic.
Tuesday Sept 10th: The Westside Clinic meets Tuesday evening. The program will be “NMRA Gauge, How to use it” presented by Jack Hamilton. Event Details
Wednesday Sept 11th: The Skagit Valley and Whidbey Island Clinic meets Wednesday evening. The program will be “Scratch building techniques, tools and materials” presented by Cliff Aaker. Event Details
Thursday Sept 12th: The Tacoma Clinic meets Thursday evening. The program will be “Weathering techniques using Pan Pastels” presented by Kurt Laidlaw. Event Details
Thursday Sept 12th: The Mount Vernon Model Railroad Clinic resumes Thursday evening. The program will be “What I did this summer.” Event Details
Full event details can be found on the Events page.
I was trying to find a more inviting way of starting this, maybe, ‘Free Ice Cream’ but that would not be true. So what is it? I NEED VOLUNTEERS for the Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI) train show at Thanksgiving. This will be the second year for this show, a larger event and a little more income for us in 4D.
What is required:
Set-up on Wednesday afternoon/evening November 27th – someone to control the show traffic outside of the museum. One vehicle at a time to unload, once unloaded the vehicle must go and park to keep the loading dock free.
Set-up on Wednesday afternoon/evening November 27th – several volunteers to assist one man displays in setting up.
Show time Friday November 29th thru Sunday December 1st – several volunteers to assist one-man displays.
Tear down on Sunday evening December 1st – someone to control the show traffic outside of the museum. One vehicle at a time loading and when loaded to leave to allow others to load.
Tear down on Sunday evening December 1st – assist one man displays loading out.
In addition to the load in and load out there will be five displays operated by a lone person. That person will need a break from time to time and a volunteer to fill in for him or her. Your assistance is needed for a couple of hours upwards to all three full days, or whatever you can offer. A crew lounge will be available for your breaks as well as free snacks and refreshments provided by MOHAI. Be aware these events will crumble without sufficient volunteer effort in running the shows. If everyone chips in the show will run smooth and be a great success.
The first Seattle North clinic of the 2019-20 year is this coming Thursday, September 5, at 7:00pm.
PLEASE NOTE: We are meeting in a NEW location. The new location is a bit south of our other meeting place. It is at:
United Church 1420 NW 80th Street Seattle, WA 98117
The building is at the corner of 80th and Mary Ave in the north Ballard area of Seattle. It is one block east of 15th Avenue. There is a parking lot accessible from Mary Ave. There will be signage around the building to let you know what doors to enter. I am excited about our new meeting place since we will have a lot more space. And, since I attend the church, I know where things are located.
The program for Thursday is Train Adventures of Summer 2019. Some of us went to the national NMRA convention in SLC in July (it was amazing!) and/or did other train-related things this summer. Please bring photos and/or souvenirs from your adventures to share with the crowd. Think of this as one big show-and-tell session! We will have tables set up for displays/show and tell, as well as for the marketplace.
“Write a piece for the Grab Iron on the construction of layout modules”, they said, like there was only one. Each modular group in 4D have their own module standards and there is at last count five modular groups in 4D; two N gauge; one HO, one On30 and the O gauge Hi-Railer’s. I’m with the latter.
Why modular? – Modular layouts are a way of attending events, in plain view of the public, displaying our craft and hopefully encouraging new membership. This is something your very fine layout in the basement has difficulty doing. Within as little as four weeks you could have a basic module suitable for using at the next train show. The module can be transported in the trunk of the average car or the back of an SUV with plenty of room to bring you favorite trains to run. The added benefit is you’ll make friends both within your group and between groups. It can be a very social activity.
The ‘basic’ Hi-Rail module is a table 50 inches wide, 30 inches deep and a nominal 36 inches height with +/- 1″ adjustment. The table top is made of 1 x 4’s on edge for all four sides. The top is plywood 5 mm thick or upwards. Remember the thicker the plywood, the heavier this thing gets. The table sits on four legs, one close to each corner. The legs, either 1 x 2 or 2 x 2 wood may be permanently attached with locking hinges or removeable set in sockets. I prefer the former as you can’t get the, ‘Oh Gosh’ moment on set up at a show realizing that you brought the module and left the legs at home. This would not have been the first time for this to happen. The aim is that any module may connect to any other module using standard ‘C’ clamps.
Track – We use the O gauge tubular (not O27) or Gargrave’s flex track set on cork roadbed 4 inches and 7 1/2 inches in from the front edge in the table for a double track. The track and roadbed to terminate 5 inches in from each end. Ballasting the track is a teaser. One can use the commercial packets of O gaugeballast and buy several packets or an alternative. We use the latter; roofing grit, the stuff they use on wet tar roofing. It comes in a variety of colors. I bought some grey which in the event was more blue than grey. The ‘group’ was highly critical of this ‘grey’ so I have the best part of 100 pounds of this stuff to lose, somewhere. The second choice was builder’s sand, not play sand, screened using an old flour sieve. This yields a nice quantity of suitable gravel but makes for a heavy module. Remember, these modules are mobile and have to be lifted and carried. The last try is to use ground walnut shells as used for grit blasting paint removal. The color and size is good but the drawback is the minimum quantity to buy is 100 pounds. I’ve used this stuff for a good fifteen years and still have three quarters of it left. If you speak to me nicely I’ll let you have some.
Electrically we use two power busses, one for each track. Color coding the wiring is imperative. Since we use three rail track, a red 14 AWG feeder wire is used for the center rail of the outside track; yellow 14 AWG wire for the center rail of the inside track and all running rails to have white 14 AWG feeder wires. Power drops from the rails to the feeder to also be color coded the same as the feeders and be 16 AWG. All wiring to be stranded. Modules are electrically connected together using rectangular six pin trailer plugs.
Hi-Railer Modules on display
Scenery is your choice and shall be complete within your module or modules if you produce more than one.
NOW THE WARNING LABEL – Belonging to a module group is addictive (and fun).
Like most things module building can get out of hand. I started with one locomotive and ten freight cars with a need to run someplace other than on track on the living room floor. I could easily transport this all in a cardboard box. I started with one module carried in the trunk of the car, then needing a truck, then a trailer behind the truck, then a full size van to pull the trailer. All this because I now have at last count 26 mostly customized modules for specific use, more in various stages of build and of course numerous trains.
We will be “Baby sitting” the layouts Monday the 19th
and Tuesday the 20th from 8:00 a.m. until about 10:00 p.m. During this time, we will be making small tweaks
and repairs to the layout and running some long trains which, we don’t normally
operate during a show. Feel free to visit us then.
The Fair’s daily hours of operation are:
Wednesday Aug 21st – 12 p.m. – 10 p.m.
Thursday Aug 22nd – Saturday Aug 24th – 10 a.m. – 10 p.m.
Sunday Aug 25th – 10 a.m. – 7 p.m.
Bremerton Northern Model Railroad has entered into an agreement with the Kitsap Mall for a one-year lease for a store. The store front is next door to Kohl’s. We are hoping to have the lease in place so we can move in right after the Kitsap County Fair.
We are excited to have a permanent home where we can setup, work on and display our layouts to the public. We will be displaying at least 3 layouts. HO Kitsap Western, N-TRAK, and HO junior engineers’ layout. Plans include: Expansion our HO Kitsap Western layout and creating attachments to run operation/switching exercises. Finishing existing and building new N-TRAK modules. And refurbishing several other donated layouts.
Currently we plan be open to the public for operations most Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. We will be maintaining our current show schedule so we will miss a few Saturdays. One advantage to this arrangement is work parties may occur every day. Our agreement with the Mall allows us to work on the layouts without being open to the public.
Every year the National Model Railroad Association presents several different types of awards. This year, as announced at the NMRA National Convention in Salt Lake City, the Fourth Division had three winners!
The President’s Award for Division Service was awarded to Gene Swanson, MMR. This Award is awarded by the NMRA President to one individual in a Division in each Region per year, who had done outstanding “beyond-the-call-of-duty” work to make his or her local division effective, engaging, and welcoming to Members. As we already know, Gene was presented with his award at the Spring Meet.
President’s Award for Division Service awarded to Gene Swanson (left). Photo by Ken Liesse.
The President’s Award was awarded to Di Voss, MMR, for service as the Manager of the Standards & Conformance Department. This award is given by the NMRA President for outstanding service to the NMRA. Di was in this position for about 10 or 12 years.
The Meritorious Service Award was awarded to Ken Liesse by the NMRA Marketing Department in recognition of the work he has done and continues to do administering the NMRA Facebook presence on the Internet. Ken has been doing this function for 10 years.
Di Voss (left) with President’s Award, and Ken Liesse (right) with Meritorious Service Award. Photo by BLiessePhoto.
Congratulations on your well-deserved awards Gene, Di, and Ken!
Having attended the National Model Railroad convention in Salt Lake City July 7-13 I thought I’d share some of the fun stuff you can do at this once a year event. My friend and I arrived by car Sunday afternoon July 7 in time to register and attended an excellent clinic by Bruce DeYoung about “Blending Backgrounds and Foregrounds”. His key message in placing back drops behind the foreground scene is to “Blend It’, Bend It or Hide It”.
There were five clinic tracks with up to eight a day per track so 40 clinics each day. The challenge was choosing a clinic among so many good choices including history, scenery, and many others. Another of my favorites was Tools, Tools, Tools by Doug Geiger MMR. On Wednesday I joined the Layout Design folks to tour 25 layouts throughout the great SLC area. I choose to travel north to Ogden to visit Rob Spangler’s excellent Western Pacific double deck layout set in the 70s. Rob hosts regular operating sessions using car cards and way bills with Digitrax DCC. I’m attaching a photo from that visit.
Rob Spangler’s Western Pacific layout
Another beautiful layout I visited was set in the 1880s built by Steve Blodgett called the Bear River Railroad. You can see Steve in my attached photo. This layout is only run by Steve and runs beautifully with long passenger and freight equipment built by Steve.
Steve Blodgett and Bear River Railroad
After attending more clinics Thursday I traveled to Alpine, UT about 30 miles south of SLC to operate on Ted York’s famous Santa Fe Cajon Pass layout. Ted hosted almost 20 operators in various jobs that kept us all busy the entire night using real Santa Fe switch lists and train orders. I’ve attached a photo of the San Bernardino yard where I operated a switch job.
Ted York’s Sante Fe Cajon Pass layout
Friday morning was the National Train Show, always a highlight that attendees get in free. This is a wonderful opportunity to see the latest products offered by hobby manufacturers, people selling their model RR stock and many excellent modular layouts. The NMRA convention will be in St. Louis next summer so plan to attend.
Some weeks ago I read in the times about a new writer Christy Karras who was looking for general interest stories “in things that make life worth living” so I emailed her about the wonders of model railroading. She wrote back the idea was interesting and asked me to send more info. I sent her two dates which were an open house at Dave Woodrell’s home and the 4th Division Spring Meet at Tacoma Community College. She ended up attending the Tacoma Spring Meet“Make-And-Take” clinic. Then she emailed me and wanted to know if CJ Riley was C.J. or CJ like JJ with no periods. I checked with CJ and let her know. I asked when the story might appear and she said perhaps on July 21, 2019. So today in the Seattle Times her story appeared in the Pacific NW Magazine. Also interesting in the publication on the back page in Now & Then is a short story about Seattle’s Pacific Coast Railway. Be sure to pick up a copy of today’s paper to share with friends and family.
The article is also available in the online edition of the paper:
