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Call for Clinicians – Surrey Excursion 2024 PNR Convention

By Bill Messecar

Hello members of the 4th Division—my name is William Messecar the Superintendent of 4D, and I am planning to attend the 2024 PNR convention next year in Surrey, BC.

The PNR convention Surrey Excursion 2024 is the annual convention of the Pacific Northwest Region of the NMRA.  This year the 7th Division of the PNR is hosting the convention in lieu of the Railway Modelers Meet of BC.  The Convention will take place May 22nd to 26th, 2024 and will have clinics, layout tours, operating sessions, displays and much more.

2024 Surrey Excursion PNR Convention

The 7th Division is looking for clinicians as speakers at next year’s convention. Marc Simpson is the Clinic Coordinator for the upcoming 2024 Surrey Excursion PNR Regional Convention.  They have had an excellent response to their request for clinicians, however they wanted to spread the word that they are looking for clinicians for the program. They are looking for a broad range of topics that will appeal to convention attendees.  Whether you are an experienced presenter or a new clinician, it doesn’t matter.  All you need is an interesting topic that clinicians are interested in sharing with others.

In addition to the regular clinics, we are looking for people interested in presenting a tabletop clinic. This is a shorter time frame, more hands-on type of presentation for those who don’t want to prepare a full clinic presentation. Any assistance in making the Surrey Excursion clinic program a “can’t miss” event is greatly appreciated.  If you have any questions, please contact Marc Simpson, his contact information is listed below.  

Marc Simpson
surreyexcursionclinics@gmail.com
Surrey Excursion Clinic Coordinator

Bill

Carpool to Bellingham’s 3 Open House Layouts?

By Bob Rorabaugh

If there’s anyone out there who would like to carpool to Bellingham on Saturday, November the 4th, contact Bob Rorabaugh (Bothell & I-405), at 206-948-9511.  The three layouts are:

  1. Dale Bearden/Karl Kleeman, On30, Prototype of Main 2-foot, Alger Church, 1475 Silver Run Lane, Bellingham
  2. BK Blackketter, On30, White Pass, Alaska, 4918 Columbus Av, Bellingham
  3. Alex Coleman, On30, based on Colorado D&RGW (726′ of track, 67 turnouts, two levels), 4357 King Mountain Rd, Bellingham.

I will leave the Canyon Park area of I-405 about 8:30 a.m., and return back to Bothell, ETA, 4:00 p.m.  My email is: rorabaugh@msn.com

Bob

Hi-Railer’s Attended the Longview, Kelso & Rainier Model Railroad Club Fall Swap Meet & Train Show

By Ed Ives

Well that was a mouthful, forever now to be known as the Kelso show. 

This, the fall show, was a one day affair and not our preferred event, spending as much time setting up and tearing down as the actual show itself. Our reasoning for attending this time was to assess the event and the facilities as to whether we might attend their two day show next May.

The show was held in Kelso’s Three Rivers Mall, in the former Macy’s store, providing ample space, lighting and flat and level flooring. The organizers were very helpful and saw to it that we were in need of nothing for the show. To be honest, the show was more of a very good swapmeet than a train show with few layouts but plenty of space for more. The 9 am Saturday opening did not start with a rush but more of a dribble but steadily built up during the morning to form a good crowd. We met members of the public attending this show from as far away as Oregon to the south and Olympia to the north. 

For this writer I would give two thumbs up for this show in the future as an opening event to the train show season. 

Ed

Hi-Railers Support Of The Northwest Railway Museum

Article & Photos By Gordon Sandell

When the Bellingham Railway Museum closed a few years ago, among the items that the Northwest Railway Museum in Snoqualmie acquired was a Lionel O gauge layout, which sat unused for some time.

Over the last few years, the 4-D O Gauge Hi-Railers Modular Group (with a modest financial contribution from 4-D) has been helping the Museum get it back into running order. Members of the Group have got all three tracks operational, repaired some of the locomotives and rolling stock that came with the layout, and restored many of the accessories to running order, although sadly it has since suffered from an attack of vandalism.

Members of the Group have also supported the Museum by running the layout on days when the layout is operating. The layout is mostly used by the Museum in conjunction with the Days Out with Thomas that they run several times a year, and Group Members have also provided suitable Lionel “Thomas the Tank Engine” locomotives and cars to run on those occasions.

For the Days Out with Thomas, the train, with Thomas at the front (and a diesel locomotive at the rear), leaves the Snoqualmie Depot, and arrives at the Museum a few minutes later. The families can then go through a number of Thomas-related activities (of which the layout is one), and then return on the next train to the Snoqualmie Depot.

As you can see in the pictures, we had quite a few interested children. Many of them were very knowledgeable about the Thomas stories, and could recognize the locomotives and cars by name. Hopefully some proportion of them will go on to run Thomas models and eventually become railroad modelers. Maybe there are even a few future MMRs amongst them!

Gordon

Why I Appreciate Tinplate

By Ed Ives

My earliest memories of trains were as a very, very, small child being carried into a room and on the floor was an oval of shiny 0 gauge tin track with a colorful train running around on it. Wow, I was set for life but with a few branchlines.

As a six year old for Christmas 1948 I was introduced to 00 gauge, a Hornby Dublo goods (freight) set that when in use was done so with adult supervision and when out of use was stored in my parents closet. This way it survives to this day although much added to over the years in its glorious three rail, tin printing and not a piece of plastic in sight. Yes you read it correctly, three rail 00 or H0 track!

As a young adult I had a hankering for ‘model’ trains as opposed to those compromised ‘toy’ trains and started down the track (excuse the pun) of scale British outline model trains in two rail 00 gauge. It was there that I realized 00 is not quite a scale gauge. The superstructure of the 00 gauge trains are 4mm to the foot whereas the track is H0 16.5 mm gauge or 3.5 mm to the foot and not 18.9 mm gauge. I felt a need for more precise modelling and investigated EM gauge or 18 mm gauge track, as well as P4 and S4 that were emerging with precise 18.9 mm gauge track and components.

I soon settled on EM gauge and would now need to make my own track as no EM gauge track was commercially available. I had grand plans for a large layout in the garage and decided to start building some simple stock like an 0-6-0 tank engine with no external valve gear and three passenger coaches, all from kits. With the interest in precision I purchased a book by David Jenkinson of British LMS passenger coaches. I started with the construction of the locomotive, a cast while metal kit of an LMS 0-6-0 Jinty. Hum, the kit left a lot to be desired as the two halves of the mold were not quite registered correctly which resulted in the need for a lot of filing and filling to get the boiler circular etc. I also discovered that with the wheels at the wider EM gauge then fouled the running plates on the side of the boiler and more metal removal would be required.

OK, putting that aside for a while, I started work on the coaches. Nothing could be simpler, or so I thought, as the kits comprised three basic components; a one piece plastic body, a metal underframe and a metal roof. Added to this were white metal castings of the trucks and truss rodding. Nothing much more than shake the box and all is assembled, or so it would appear. The plastic bodies lacked the hand rails and door handles as indicated on the drawings in David’s book. These were made from piano wire and installed. Oh, I need high frequency interior lighting for the coaches, or so I again thought, this of course being prior to DCC. Effective lighting was made using 1/8″ thick perspex, a grain of wheat bulb and some aluminum kitchen foil as a reflector. An old black and white TV was collected as a source of components for the construction of the high frequency lighting generator until a friend enquired about a license for it? License, what license? It seems that the generator might broadcast a signal and a broadcasting license might be required. Well I put that aside for a while wondering if even applying for a license would be a good idea or not.

Still on a roll I set to work on the coach roofs. Hum, a problem here as the supplied roofs were a little too short, of the wrong curvature and otherwise of no use. I will have to make new ones but how? Drape forming plastic came to mind. A mold was constructed using sheet metal and plaster. Plastic sheets from the model store were carefully placed on the mold and gently heated in the kitchen oven. Oh disaster! The plastic instead of draping over the mold would shrink and curl up, a total failure. Obviously the plastic had a memory that could not be easily overcome. A backup plan materialized making the roofs from galvanized sheet heating duct and proved to be quite easy to do. Now to add cast white metal ventilators and rainstrips made from piano wire. These were soldered to the roofs and the assemblies placed on the coach bodies. Hum these are looking quite good. Now for the underframe and trucks. Stepboards needed to be added to the trucks and were made from wood. The castings of the trucks and the truss rods needed some fettling to clean them up. The underframes lacked a lot of the details such as battery boxes and generators etc. that would be slung below. All this stuff was made using scrap materials available on the worktable and added. The plastic buffing gear on the coaches were cut off and sprung metal buffing gear added. The wheelsets that came with the kits were regauged to EM standards. Finally a length of track was made and the coaches were placed thereon. I say finally as this had only taken me three years to produce to this stage and I hadn’t begun to paint the coaches yet.

I was unhappy with the glazing of the windows due to the overly thick plastic body sides. I read that one could make individual windows from glass microscope slides. A count of the number of windows to be treated gave me a sickening feeling in my stomach with something like 120 windows to be made of two different sizes. I agonized over the guards (conductor) duckets on the sides of the brake coaches. These in the kits were solid bumps on the molded coach bodies. In the 12″ to the foot coaches these were hollow with small windows facing forward and aft that the guard could look out of and verify the signal aspects and the precise location of the train along the track. No window openings were provided on the model and how should I make them; hollowing out the plastic?, or removing the plastic ducket and making new hollow ones to be added? I finally decided to leave it alone for another time, our model guard would have nothing to look out of. The nail in the coffin or very nearly so, came when I tried to paint the coaches with Floquil primer. I thought I had the darkroom come laundry adequately ventilated with a box fan in the open window and my improvised cardboard paint booth, but not so, and I was quite unwell for a few days following the painting attempt. I also noted that the Floquil vapors apart from attacking my lungs attacked the plastic coach bodies but not fatally so in either case.

Much as I was pleased with the results so far, life would not be long enough to achieve my aims of a large working train layout, especially so, since children started to be added to the family. For the next twenty years the trains were put away due to family constraints.

When I resumed with trains in my late 50’s I could appreciate the advantages of colorful, noisy, ready to run, 00 and 0 gauge tinplate from so many years ago. Those collections resumed for the Hornby Dublo or began for 0 gauge, three rail of course. The Hornby Dublo collection is now assembled as a large layout in the spare/train room and the 0 gauge runs with the Hi-Rail modular group. 

Life is good.
Yours,
Ed Ives

Hi-Railers Schedules Steam Train Ride

By Dan Peters

As everybody by now knows, 2023 is being celebrated as the 150th Anniversary of the completion of the Northern Pacific Railroad. The first of the “Northern Transcontinentals”, they held their “Completion Ceremony” on Sept. 8, 1883 at Gold Creek, MT.

There was no “Gold Spike” like there was at the completion of the Union Pacific / Central Pacific line in 1869. Instead, they used the same exact iron spike that had been driven at the start of construction. The “Last Spike” was driven in place by Henry C. Davis, who had driven in the “First Spike” in Minnesota in 1870. Other dignitaries were NP President Henry Villard, Chairman Of The Board Frederick Billings, and former President Of The United States Ulysses S. Grant.

2023 also marks the 30th anniversary of the Fourth Division Hi-Railers module group. We don’t have a “Golden Track Pin” to celebrate. But we do have an anniversary celebration, and you can participate.

The Hi-Railers have reserved seating on the Steam Train pulled by Northern Pacific steam engine 924. The trip will take place Saturday June 17, 2023, at 10:00 am.

Northern Pacific 924 was built by Rogers Locomotive Works in 1899. It worked in Minnesota for many years, and later worked in Seattle and Tacoma. It was later sold to the Inland Empire Paper Co. Retired in 1969, it was on static display exposed to the weather until 2014. A major rebuilding project involving thousands of volunteer hours and plenty of money, fully restored this engine in 2020. At the same time, it was converted to run on wood fuel instead of dirty, messy coal. There are dozens of steam engines preserved in Washington, but as of now this is the last one that still operates.

Spokane Portland & Seattle coach 213 was built by Barney & Smith in 1912. ( As I’m told, the same year as The Titanic. ) Of wood construction, there is no air conditioning other than “opening the window”. We have reserved seating on this coach, which runs right behind the steam engine, which should provide plenty of opportunity for audio recording.

The Northwest Railway Museum Steam Train only runs half-a-dozen times a year. We’ve scheduled our summer get-together for Fathers Day Weekend. And because of the Northern Pacific anniversary, we’re inviting our Fourth Division fellows to participate, too.

If you want to join our group train ride, you will need to buy a ticket at the Museum web site. Membership passes are not honored, since Steam Train rides are considered a “special event” and not a “regular train”.

To get a ticket to ride this special train ride :

  • go to web site https://www.trainmuseum.org
  • click on “Programs”
  • click on “Steam Train Ride”
  • click on “Buy Tickets for North Bend Depot”
  • right arrow to “June 2023”
  • select “June 17”
  • select “10:30 am”
  • complete your purchase

Your email confirmation is your ticket. Print it out, or save it to your phone to show to the ticket agent.

Our trip will begin and end at the Railway History Museum Campus. NOT at the North Bend Depot.

Northwest Railway Museum
9320 Stone Quarry Road
Snoqualmie, WA 98065

On Highway 202, go east from the Snoqualmie Depot about 1 mile. East of Meadowbrook Way, near the Junior High School, turn south on Stone Quarry Road ( the sign is small ) about 1/3 mile to the museum parking lot. We will board at the yard outside the museum building before the first “public” departure. Boarding time ( from the Employee Timetable only ) is 10:00. Don’t be late.

There should be plenty of photo opportunities before train time, as the steam engine switches the passenger cars into the train consist, starting at 8:30. Our train ride will complete around 11:30 or 11:45, followed by additional time to view the exhibits inside the museum building, a group picnic at the picnic grove, and viewing of train run-by’s that afternoon.

Hope to see you then.
Dan

Tacoma Events

By Kurt Laidlaw

The PNR 2023 Convention is just around the corner, but as part of the larger celebrations of Tacoma’s 150th anniversary and the Northern Pacific Railroad 150th anniversary, the Tacoma Historical Society is putting on a series of events throughout the year. I wanted to share some of these with you, especially if you live in Tacoma or nearby cities.

First is the free ongoing exhibit at the society’s building highlighting 150 years of the NP in Tacoma.
The exhibit is filled with railroad memorabilia and looks at the impact the railroad had on the various groups of people living in the area.

The second item is a special event, which also is a major fund raiser for the Tacoma Historical Society—Dinner with Teddy Roosevelt ($150 per person) on April 29th. While not to everyone’s taste (pun intended) or within everyone’s budget, it should be an exciting evening if you can make it.

For more upcoming events tied to this year’s celebrations check the website WWW.NP150.ORG.

Kurt