Al Lowe
We just added Kevin Klettke’s Washington Northern Railroad to the Layouts page of www.4dpnr.com joining the other 11 to make an even dozen great, local model railroads featured.
If you’re a 4D member with a layout and a web site and you’d like the world to see your work, just email me its URL (see address at bottom of any page on the site). I’ll get it posted ASAP.
At the national convention in Milwaukee this past summer, the NMRA created a new position, Vice President of Special Projects. Bill Kaufman, a well-known modeler in the San Francisco Bay area, is the first holder of this position.
In a recent interview with The Model Railway Show, Bill spoke to co-host Trevor Marshall about his plans to use this position to strengthen the ties between the national organization and its Divisions and Regions, including the creation of a “best-practices” manual. It’s well worth a listen.
The Model Railway Show is a free Internet-based newsmagazine show about our hobby, delivered twice monthly as a podcast on iTunes or by direct download. Each show includes two interviews on a broad range of topics and runs about 20 minutes. Bill’s interview appears in Episode 2, which is now available. For more information, including how to listen, click The Model Railway Show.
The next meeting of the Seattle-North clinic will be December 2nd. See the end of this article for directions. Two topics are planned. First, Al Lowe will be on hand to regale us with tales of the Digital Grab Iron. This is your chance to get a firsthand look at the direction the 4th Division is going for its communications, publications, and documentation. Plus Al has been known to tell the occasional joke or two (or two hundred).
Second, we’ll continue our exploration of modules. See the summary of last month’s discussion below. We plan to have at least one example of a T-TRAK module to show folks, plus maybe a guest presenter on the topic.
November’s meeting started with a recap of our October discussion of what we wanted from the clinic. There was general consensus that we wanted to build something (or some things), and that we wanted to run trains, and that we wanted to have something to advertise ourselves to other modelers and especially to youth. That is a lot of things to do, but modules were mentioned as a potential way to fulfill the whole wish list.
Modules still seemed like a good avenue to pursue, but what module standards and in what scale(s)? We reviewed the model railroad module schemes we knew about: NMRA, NTRAK, oNeTRAK (a sort of branch line for NTRAK), Free-mo, and T-TRAK. Most attendees were familiar with NMRA and NTRAK, since the 4th division has groups who use these standards. Free-mo was sort of familiar since we had a presentation on it last year.
T-TRAK was the biggest unknown, but it was mentioned that the United Northwest club was using it as a means to get kids involved in the hobby through 4H. T-TRAK modules are pretty small (about 8 by 12 inches in N scale) and simple. They are made to sit on a tabletop.
It seemed to boil down to this. They might be too simple and toy like for some modelers. And we do not have much experience with these modules locally. But the simplicity also makes them easier to construct, set up, and (most importantly) run trains. Plus there are standards for both N and HO, the primary interests of the clinic attendees.
It was agreed that T-TRAK was something that should be explored further. Jeff, Chris, and Dennis agreed to try and build a T-TRAK demo module by the next meeting.
Show and tell was an eclectic mix. Jeff had a copy of the basic T-TRAK specifications. There were some Milwaukee Road plans and articles. Rob showed another of his many N scale sets – a Great Northern steam locomotive and a string of matching insulated box cars from Con-Cor.
There were some recently-picked hydrangeas, which sparked a discussion of whether it was better to trim them down to the branches right away or let them dry first. There was no conclusion to this debate, but everyone agreed that they made excellent scale tree armatures. And lastly Roger showed a couple of bare generic frames from the early 4th Division module builds
John’s mystery clinic was about calculating the dropping resister values needed for LED lighting. He got the idea when a couple of clinics at the recent regional convention referred people to web-based tables for the calculations. That makes it appear much more complex than it actually is. John’s handout and explanation made it look simple. One thing I didn’t know was that different color LEDs require different amperages. It is always a good idea to get the LED data sheet when you obtain your LEDs.
I made this offer last month, but still do not have a winner. I have a little prize for the first Seattle-North Clinic attendee that can show me documented proof of who first came up with this quote: “The human brain is like a railroad freight car — guaranteed to have a certain capacity but often running empty.” Some of the attendees thought this might be an appropriate unofficial slogan for the Seattle-North clinic.
Next meeting is December 2 and the one after that January 6. The Mart should be there and don’t forget to bring something for show and tell. And, speaking of the Mart, I bet you didn’t know that the economy is so bad that Santa’s off season job is helping out at the Mart.
We meet at the Ronald United Methodist Church, 17839 Aurora Avenue North, Shoreline, WA. That is on the west side of Aurora (State Route 99) just north of 175th Street, between the Cadillac dealer and Deseret Industries. Meetings are the first Thursday of each month, except July and August. Enter the lower level of the church from the parking lot at the rear. Doors open around 7:00 PM, announcements at 7:15, and the program starts about 7:30. Hope to see you there or at least sometime on down the line.
Tabooma County is moving North to Mount Vernon. Nona and I have put our house up for sale and have bought a new house in Mount Vernon, so the Tabooma County Railway, as we know it today, will be dismantled, and eventually rebuilt in its new location. This has been a great location for it for the past 11 years and we have enjoyed the Friday night group showing up to work on the layout and also the several open houses and tours we have hosted over the years.
If anyone is interested in taking a piece of the layout, please contact me via e-mail (tabooma@msn.com. The dismantling will occur on the Saturday/Sunday after Thanksgiving, November 27/28. I will be saving my structures, of course (my favorite part of the hobby!), but several sections that are fully sceniced are available if anyone is interested. Most of those sections are narrow shelf-type construction and removal will not be too difficult; there is the new large center section that might be a challenge to take out in one piece; however, it could be sectioned into smaller pieces. This center section is essentially just foam with streets and trackage laid out and installed – again, no structures. I will be keeping the harbor scene and the Eagle Falls scene has been spoken for.
MMR Gene Swanson opened the meeting at our Veterans Day location at the All Nations Church in Parkland with a moment of silence for the fallen Veterans. He then asked for all that had served in the various branches of the Armed Forces to stand up and be recognized. We had a total of 37 attendees two of which were newcomers; Jeff Kuhns who models HO BNSF and UP present era and Paul Nolten who models the Monon RR, Roger is also a newly minted MMR. Mike Shaw presented the Video Library and said he would have the library available for the next couple of month.
What’s new at the hobby shop was presented by Tacoma Trains which included a new release from Athearn of a Genesis SD-70, PGE wide vision caboose and tank car, a Bowser Baldwin VO-1000 switcher, Accurail NP gondola, Woodland Scenics ready built Megawatts Transformer power station building and N Scale Station buildings, BLMA equipment shed and metal wheel sets. Kato N scale SD-45, Portland Car & Foundry Everett & Monte Christo box car.
In the Model of the month Jim Murry presented two Ambroid Caboose Kits built by his father one of them was rebuild by Jim. Dave Faucett with a Builders in Scale bait shop, one of three buildings in that kit. Paul DeMuth with a HO Grain Elevator partly scratch build and kit bashed. It was built in various locations during his AF tours mostly in Italy with materials from local shops.
The winner was Paul DeMuth with his grain elevator. Photos of the models can be seen in the digital Grab Iron submitted by one of the attendees.
The clinic for this month was a Power Point presentation on the Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg Germany by Al Babinsky. Al visited the largest model rail road in the world while on his trip to Germany. At the present time the rail road covers a 10,000 square foot area with a little over 7 miles of track. 830 trains operated on the rail road along with several thousand cars, trucks and a couple of ships which operate on real water. The operation is handled by 40 computers and is completely automatic watched by 3 operators.
Next month clinic is Gene Swanson “Dirty Santa” along with a feast, please bring a wrapped gift up to $ 15.00 and mark it as to what scale. The clinic will be at our usual place at the Pierce County Library Office Bldg at the corner of Waller Rd and 112th Street at 7:30 PM, hope to see you there.
There were 27 people gathered at the Summer Hill Retirement Community conference room on November 10th. The meeting featured Roger Ferris conducting a Make ‘n Take session and Bobj Berger with an interesting array of estate sale items. But the start of the program was delayed because both of these gentlemen were caught in a traffic snarl due to a collision on Interstate 5.
John White opened the meeting, calling our attention to a very worthwhile program called “Heartbeat, Serving Wounded Warriors”. It was started a few years ago by Janice Buckley of Snohomish, Washington, to provide support for the spouses and families of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The scope of the effort was recently expanded to help wounded veterans cope with their long recovery periods in veterans’ hospitals. At our last meeting the suggestion was made to furnish kits of railroad cars or structures to give them something interesting to do. At this meeting a further suggestion involved also supplying them with simple tool kits. These ideas were well received.
Steve Jaffrey presenting a finalized set rules for the upcoming scratch built Dilapidated Building Competition. Judging will take place at the June meeting next year.
Jack Tingstad spoke briefly about his annual Open House. Saturday and Sunday, November 27th and 28th, Jack will have his 10th annual Open House for the public at his Cloud City and Western HO layout in Coupeville at 508 Broadway. Admission is a can or two of food for the local food bank. Jack asked for volunteers to assist him with the many visitors that are expected.
Roger Ferris led a repeat of the very successful Make ‘n Take program he conducted in a clinic at the recent PNR convention in Lynnwood. There were many active participants painting cutting and gluing a small trestle for use over a culvert.
We will next meet on Wednesday, December 8th at the home of John White for “Wassail and Other Delights” on the Skagit Valley Eastern Railroad, an On30 layout serving logging and mining interests in a 1920s setting.
Here’s what’s been going on at HQ recently:
A lot of the credit for that retention goes to everyone in our Regions and Divisions. You’re making new members feel welcome, and you’re showing them the benefits of NMRA membership. So … THANKS!
We’re finding out that our archives are even more vast than we thought! So if you or your members haven’t made a donation yet, please do so so we can get these railroad treasures on the web … and eventually into your hands.
When’s the last time you heard model railroading discussed on a late-night talk show?
First, I must apologize for no write-up last month. My computer and my wireless home network have declared war on each other. I am not sure it will last, but we are currently in a state of cease fire.
The big news from September’s meeting was that I would be taking over as conductor of the Seattle-North “train.” For the record, I distinctly said that this was not “forever,” like many of the 4D volunteer jobs seem to be these days. Dennis Terpstra graciously volunteered to be the assistant conductor and the rest of the crew were willing to continue their assignments.
We talked a bit about what we did this summer, railroad-wise, that is. There were several museum and convention trips; and one bike trip over an old roadbed that seemed to be more detour than regular right of way. Roger regaled us with tales from the NMRA national convention in Milwaukee.
To prove that DCC is really getting quite easy Roger brought the components of HO DCC layout in a cardboard box about 16 by 16 by 4 inches! When you opened the box there were a couple of turnouts, a few pieces of straight track, a DCC equipped diesel switcher, a DCC controller, and precious few instructions except for the controller. As technically challenged as the Seattle-North crew can be at times it only took about 10 minutes to have things running. Now that is pretty easy! By the way, all the components in the box were from Bachmann.
Here’s what happened at the October meeting. After the usual announcements and introductions we discussed the recent Regional Convention in Lynnwood. All those that attended thought it was a worthwhile experience. I have run into a couple of modelers who skipped the banquet because they had no interest in concrete ties. To many that presentation was the highlight of the convention.
Next was a mystery contest in which three groups were given random pieces of plastic and asked to come up with a good use for them on a model railroad. Most of these “parts” came from packaging for HP commercial printer toner cartridges. The group led by CJ Riley won for their rather fanciful mail crane. Although the plastic disposable bridge abutments was in the running.
There was some interesting stuff on display for show and tell. Jim Bainbridge, owner of Sound and Northwestern LLC, showed us the firm’s first kit. It is a HO scale kit for a Sears catalog home called the Rodessa. Many attendees didn’t know that Sears sold these homes as 12 inch to the foot scale kits via their catalog in the early part of the last century. They offered lots of different designs. The buyer could order supplemental kits for luxuries, like indoor plumbing or electricity. Jim’s kit has over 200 pieces and looks pretty interesting. The only local retailer currently carrying it is North End Trains.
Next up was Chris Fife who showed some partially painted UP passenger equipment. Chris’ point was that there doesn’t appear to be a standard UP yellow. Even the prototype exhibits different shades, especially if it has been out in the weather for some time. Model-wise the shade is dependent on the primer color, plus the brand and thickness of the color coat. All agreed that the primer versus final shade ‘thing’ could be the subject for a nifty future clinic.
CJ Riley, MMR, brought along his “Two Stumps” diorama, which won awards at the recent Regional convention. Since we meet in a church, we were not subjected to the authentic outhouse odor CJ used at the convention, but he did show us how he did it. He did explain how this diorama was his attempt to do a model with scratch built everything, except (maybe) the odor.
Rob Jones completed this part of the meeting with a bunch of 30 year old color photos of railroading around Tacoma and the Northwest. My, how things have changed!
Lastly, we discussed what we’d like to see happened in future meetings. The group was open to having a couple of mini-clinics each month instead of one bigger presentation, although the latter remains an option. The group also wants to continue the practice of visiting layouts for the June meeting, but maybe not stay out so late.
There was a considerable amount of rhetoric around doing something physical at the meetings, as well as trying to recruit new members (especially young folks) into the hobby. Both ideas were deemed worthwhile, but there was no consensus on how they could be accomplished.
Modules were proposed as a way to work on something at the meetings, which could also be used as a display to assist recruitment. So, we are going to explore that at the next meeting. Are modules something the group should pursue? If so, what are the options? Which scale and standards best met the group’s goals?
If you have strong feeling on the module approach and/or want to persuade us to use a particular scheme, come to our November meeting.
I ran across the following quote, but it was not attributed to anyone. I have a little prize for the first Seattle-North Clinic attendee that can show me documented proof of who first came up with it. “The human brain is like a railroad freight car — guaranteed to have a certain capacity but often running empty.”
Next meeting is November 4 and the one after that is December 2. In November one of our attendees has promised us a mystery mini-clinic. Our other mini-clinic will be an exploration of various module types and whether they might serve as the basis for a group project. The Mart should be there and don’t forget to bring something for show and tell.
We meet at the Ronald United Methodist Church, 17839 Aurora Avenue North, Shoreline, WA. That is on the west side of Aurora (State Route 99) just north of 175th Street, between the Cadillac dealer and Deseret Industries. Meetings are the first Thursday of each month, except July and August. Enter the lower level of the church from the parking lot at the rear. Doors open around 7:00 PM, announcements at 7:15, and the program starts about 7:30. Hope to see you there or at least sometime on down the line.
Here are a few tips from Sandy Webster concerning decoder selection and use.
I have used and liked the NCE DASR drop-in decoder on many of the old Atlas/Kato model Alco diesels (RS1, RS3, RSD5, RS11, RSD12, C424/5). I just discovered there is a drop-in decoder for the old Atlas/Roco model EMD diesels too, although it’s not labeled as such. It’s the NCE BACH-DSL decoder made to replace the really basic decoder in Bachmann diesel like my FT’s. I bought them figuring I might use them in my FT’s. I decided to use them in something else and have been looking at various candidates. I decided to try an Atlas/Roco SD24 since I had a couple with the shells off due to body kitbashing.
It’s a no-brainer, just as simple as the DASR. All I had to do was cut the wires from the trucks to the motor, unsolder the motor contacts from the actual motor tabs and replace them with wires, cut the old headlight bulb tabs off the top of the original plastic strip to make it level, run the 6 wires up through holes on the decoder and solder them to six pads. Add the supplied LED’s in the proper location and you are done. The LED’s may need wires to extend them to the proper place and pay attention to the polarity instructions. Don’t panic, it’s a picture! This works on the GP38, GP40, SD24 and SD35. One of the best things, the list price on the decoder: $19.95.
Sometimes ya gotta ignore the labels and use the decoder that fits.