Some of you may have received an email recently purporting to come on behalf of one of the 4D or PNR officers or board members. The email tries to persuade you to buy gift cards or send money electronically to help someone in distress. THESE ARE SCAMS. No one from the 4D Board or any PNR leader will be asking for money to be handled in a manner in which the funds cannot be traced.
Lots of folks at home right now, so these types of scam are common. Delete the email.
“I haven’t got time!” I hear that a lot.But now, many of us have a lot more free time than we planned. So, I’m asking everyone who now has time to share with the rest of us some of your current model railroading projects. It can be a model, a wiring project, decoder install or some part of your layout.
Larry Sloan has answered my call to member to share your current projects with this, a new control panel for one of his HO modules. Larry is a member of our HO modular group, the Seattle Pacific & Eastern, headed by Mike Slease. Larry is also one of the leaders of the new HO Free-Mo modular group now joining the 4th Division. This is a group that was formerly located in the Tacoma Freight House, now the Amtrak station. They lost their permanent layout, so they went mobile.
Here is another shot of a demonstration Larry built to show at clinics which shows the various capabilities of DCC. He unveiled it at our recent Pacific Science Center Show.
Well done Larry. Let’s hope others will pitch in and share some of their work with the rest of us.
I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling a little shut in by the news. My wife, Susan, and I have plenty of supplies and are not venturing out for awhile. So, what to do? Susan has her knitting and we are both brushing up on our cooking skills.
I have decided to really get serious about finishing my MMR. So, time to build those four scratch built cars. It is also time to finish some detail work on structures and scenes that I hurried through when building my layout. Speaking of the layout, I really miss the time we had planned to share with the recent Sound Rails visit by model railroaders from out of our area. I also will miss our local layout tour in Tacoma.
The one other thing I am doing is preparation of a video presentation describing my layout and how it operates. This will let me share with those visitors who had planned to be here for Sound Rails and who will not get to see my layout. I am suggesting that many of you who have layouts also prepare presentations of your layouts to share by means of our 4D website.
This is an opportunity to share with all in the 4D what you are doing on your projects as well. How about a three to five minute video or a short article with photos? Just send the link to your youtube video and a summary description to gi_editor@4dpnr.com.
I have posted some short segments on YouTube which will be a part of the larger presentation. Search for Coal Creek Lumber Company.
The Clinics for the week of March 16 are cancelled due to the situation with the COVID-19 virus. As the situation changes day to day, the events calendar is being updated as needed.
Clinics cancelled this week:
Mount Vernon Clinic, Monday March 16th
Eastside Clinic, Wednesday March 18th
Olympia Clinic, Friday March 20th
If you have a question about the status of an event, you can check the events calendar or contact the clinic organizer who can be found on the clinics page.
In communication with our gracious venue host – Summerhill Assisted Living Facility – we have cancelled our March 12th clinic due to risk to residents and visitors during this time of the COVID-19 Coronavirus outbreak. In accordance with the Washington State Department of Health guidelines related to the outbreak emergency, Summerhill will be enforcing a “no-visitor” policy until further notice. SV&W respects and understands this decision.
We are still planning to have our regular clinic on the 8th of April at the Summerhill venue provided we have better news in a few weeks on this epidemic. In mean-time we are advising all model railroaders to be safe and observe good preventative measures.
Why I signed up several years ago to serve as Superintendent.
Serving as your 4D Superintendent is a privilege. I get to act on behalf of all members in trying to enhance the experience of model railroading. So, I have tried to meet as many members as possible, ask them what their interests in the hobby are and what skills they were interested in sharing. I have learned a lot that helps me in my modeling and I am constantly surprised and challenged to do better in my model building. There are a lot of you out there who do share and teach others.
Recruiting remains the biggest challenge, trying to get others to share experience and expertise. Many have been willing to do so. That’s why we have such a successful schedule of local clinics and modular layouts. There are also very strong regional efforts such as Oly-Ops and the annual Tacoma Layout Tours.
The benefits to me include working with you and others on the Board and at the events such as MOHAI and Pacific Science Center shows. So, I thank all of you who do give time to the hobby through 4D activities.
Officers of 4D such as Superintendent are elected every two years. Several years ago, I ran successfully for Assistant Superintendent and then became Superintendent. After many years now, I became concerned that others might want to put their views forward and lead us to greater success. That’s why I said I would like to step away to give someone else the opportunity. So, I have recommended to the Board that we will extend the nominating period one more month to see.
If you want to serve or nominate someone else, contact Lisa Murray, Nominating Committee Chair, mattinata@outlook.com.
The Fourth Division is pleased to announce that this year’s Spring Meet will be held on May 16–17, 2020. Saturday the 16th will be filled with great clinic sessions at Everett Community College. Sunday the 17th will be Layout Tour Open Houses, where you’ll get to see the great layouts of some local model railroaders.
Full details will be coming soon. For right now, mark the weekend of May 16-17 on your calendar. You won’t want to miss it!
George Bogatiuk, Director of Sales and Support for Soundtraxx will be at the Northwest Railway Archives in Burien this Sunday evening for a special presentation and clinic on Soundtraxx decoders.
Bring all your questions about installations and programing decoders for your specific locomotives.
The meeting will start at 6:30 at the Archives located at:
There will be a Tacoma/Puyallup area Model Railroad tour on Saturday and Sunday April 18 & 19, 2020, from 9:00am – 4:00pm. There will be multiple layouts which will be open to Model Railroad fans. Some will be open Saturday only, others on Sunday only.
Maps to, and descriptions of, each of the layouts will be available starting at 8:00 am on the 18th, at Rob’s Trains and Hobbies. He will be opening his store early and will be offering a 10% discount to those requesting a tour map.
This is a great opportunity to see some excellent modeling in all stages of completion, and save on your hobby needs!
Rob’s Trains and Hobbies
5423 South Tacoma Way
Tacoma, WA 98409
253-472-7732
Twenty-three gathered at
Summer Hill in Oak Harbor for February’s SV&W NMRA Clinic, welcomed by
Clinic Chair Rich Blake. After reviewing the calendar, Rich to
everyone’s delight showed some photos of Al
Frasch’s new N-scale layout that he’s nearly completed in his new home near
Tucson, AZ. Al, a former long-time
member, newsletter editor, and tireless booster of our clinic as well as model
railroad operations in the area, built his new layout in less than two years. Not unexpected from this energetic
modeler—good work, Al!
For Show-and-Tell, Alan Murray brought in his O-scale road overpass (Fig 1).
Fig 1 – Alan Murray’s Road Overpass (WIP)
This is a work-in-progress and Alan will describe the overpass construction in detail at our March meeting. He brought it this evening to show the details of the bents and stringers that will (by next month!) be hidden by roadway decking. The overpass has a home: it will feature in one town on Jon Bentz’s in progress On30 layout in Freeland, joining many other scratch structures already in place. Your reporter visited Jon’s layout recently and it will be a welcome addition to our clinic area’s operations-focused layouts. Beta-testing will start this Spring; no pressure, Jon!
Fig 2 – Another View of Alan’s Overpass
The main subject matter at the meeting was “The World’s Last Woodburners” presented by your Grab Iron reporter. That’s a rather sweeping title, because woodburning steam locos were scattered around the world here and there, on preserved railroads, in museums and so forth, but only in a very few places did entire fleets of motive power in everyday, workaday use still burn wood. Your reporter visited two such places in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. The first was the Philippines.
Fig 3 – Victorias Millyard, Philippines
The Philippine woodburners were found on the island of Negros, one of the country’s 7,000-plus islands. Here were the majority of the Philippines’ Sugar Centrals, 45 of which were founded by American companies, most between 1912 and 1927. Victorias Milling Company (Fig 3) was the largest of them all, at its peak grinding over 16,000 tons of cane each day during the milling season. All of the motive power—in this case 0-8-0’s—burned wood. Combined, the sugar railroads had over 1,000 miles of track fanning out like a spider web from the coast into the cane fields, on several gauges. Victorias had the most unusual: 600mm, which at 1 foot 11 and 5/8 inches was essentially 2 foot gauge—but not quite!
