By Ken Liesse
On Thursday, February 16th, attendees of the Eastside Get-Together were treated to a two-for-one clinic at the Bellevue Four Square Church. Dave Hikel gave two great presentations, one on lighting the interiors of passenger cars with LEDs, the other with an update on the building of Peter Hambling’s layout in Medina. More on those in a minute.
JJ Johnston opened the meeting at 7:30 with his usual introductions. In the announcements portion of the program, JJ mentioned that Railroad Model Craftsman has a nice write-up of area layouts that will be open during the upcoming Narrow Gauge Convention in September. He then read a couple of thank you notes written by women of the church. Eastside members take a collection every year before Christmas to help needy families in the church where we hold our meetings. This is our way of “paying” for the space that the church allows us to use every month for our clinics. These women were the recipients of this year’s collection and were very grateful for the outpouring of support we provided. JJ thanked everyone for their contributions to the fund.
In other announcements:
Bob Biese said the 4D HO modular group would be appearing at the World’s Greatest Hobby show in Portland.
Elections for Region offices are coming up; both President and Vice-President are open. Contact Dave Faussett (PNR Nominations Chair) if you are interested in running.
4D elections are also coming up and we need someone to spearhead both finding folks interested in running and actually putting the election materials out. If you’re interested in doing either (or both) of these, contact Supt. Ken Liesse.
Ken also stated that the Northwest Railway Museum had used a gift from 4D to place interpretive signs on three pieces of equipment that will be staying at the depot in Snoqualmie.
Frank Dekker gave a preliminary report on the Pacific Science Center show, which did not turn out as well as we had hoped, mainly because of the weather in the region that weekend. About 12,000 people showed up, most of them on Saturday. PSC helped out significantly this year by reserving parking space on the street outside the Center for our use.
Roger Ferris had a new collection in the Mart, mostly of Athearn blue box equipment. Roger also stated that he has acquired all of the old, wood baggage carts from Amtrak at King Street Station and is making them available to anyone who would like to purchase one. Cost depends on condition, but generally runs between $200-300. Roger will provide delivery in the greater Seattle area.
Ed Liesse gave an update on the PNR convention in Medford and said the tour of Train Mountain was on. Tickets are available from the website. Ed also showed a map of the track at Train Mountain.
Finally, Ron Cole attended a kick-off meeting in Kent of a group hoping to save the former Northern Pacific depot along the BNSF right-of-way. BNSF wants to tear down the structure in preparation for laying the third mainline through town. Anyone with knowledge of preserving old railroad buildings is encouraged to contact Ron, so he may put you in touch with the folks who are trying to make this happen.
We had five entries in the Model of the Month competition, including Ed Ives’ Hornby pre-war O scale 2009 Convention car; David Yadock’s packet of UP baggage car pictures from ACF; Jim Easley’s snow pictures of his outdoor layout; and Michael Posner’s railroad pocket watch, which belonged to his grandfather, a Seattle Streetcar Conductor. Jim Bainbridge won the contest with a Signals Department Repair Shed, which will be a commercially available kit starting next month.
After the break, Dave Hikel gave a wonderful PowerPoint presentation on lighting the interior of passenger cars using LEDs. Dave pointed out how far LEDs have come over the years and it is now possible to purchase them with various light outputs to simulate different kinds of lighting used throughout the years in passenger cars. Part of the presentation included a comparison of the different types of lights used, starting with candle power back when lights were first added to equipment, up to modern day cars with their very blue fluorescent lights. There are many advantages to using LEDs, especially in this day of DCC-controlled layouts, the most important being their low power consumption. Dave also showed how adding a capacitor to the circuit will prevent cars from flickering when crossing bad sections of track. This can all be avoided by the use of batteries for the lights, another topic Dave touched on. He brought two examples of lighted cars for everyone to see, and they did look great with the room lights turned down.
Dave concluded the presentation with an update on the layout he and his team are building for Peter Hambling, founder and owner of Digital Control Incorporated. The O Scale layout is located in a 3,200 sq. ft. space excavated from under Peter’s home in Medina, WA. The theme of the layout is basically the Western United States, with an emphasis placed on modeling specific scenes. Dave told us about several “field trips” taken during construction to make sure the scenes were recognizable and dirt samples were even brought back to make sure the ground cover was correct. The layout has over 4,000′ of track and runs from the Spiral Tunnels of British Columbia to Abo Canyon in New Mexico. This ambitious project has been underway for several years and has resulted in several new techniques in modeling. One such advancement is in the use of computers to actually run the layout, so it can be shown without the need for a big crew. It was very interesting to see the use of computer panels (iPads) for yard control and other operations functions. Although the layout can be run by computer, it also has the ability to be operated by a full crew and preliminary operating sessions have been held at the layout. As a surprise to the group, Dave and JJ announced that our end of year field trip may be to Peter’s layout for a show and tell. More information about this will be forthcoming.
That’s it for this month. See you all in March, third Thursday in Bellevue. (Sorry, no pictures this month – operator error.)
