By Dan Peters
It is with great sadness that I have to inform you of the passing of Woody Matthews. Woody passed away Tuesday, January 19th. I do not have any details on services at this time.
For all those of you who might not know Woody’s background, he was a lifetime NMRA member, involved with the Fourth Division for a long time, a lot longer than me.
He won the Fourth Division “Man Of The Year” Award in 1966. Now known as the “Golden Grab Iron” Award. ( At that time, the 4th Division was known as the “Evergreen Division”. The name got changed when the NMRA formed “regions” and our division was assigned to the Pacific Northwest Region. I think that was in the 70’s. At that time PNR changed division names to numbers. )
Woody started the Science Center show. He was the first show chairman for 10 or 15 years, until Lou Toppano took over for him. Woody has been in O gauge for as long as I’ve known him, almost all that time in 2-rail “O Scale” (as opposed to 3-rail “O Gauge”).
He used to wear a cap with the slogan : “O Gauge, The King Of Gauges”.
When the module program was started in 1988, Woody and 2 other modelers built a set of 2-rail O Scale modules. Once they had 4 straight modules up and running, the division financed the building of 4 corner modules – that was the first completed circuit of modules in any scale. The O Scale module group disbanded in the 90’s when the other 2 members dropped out because of health problems. Woody is a retired Certified Public Accountant.
Dan