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Skagit Valley Children’s Museum

Written by Anton Faulk
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By James Harvey

The Skagit Valley Children’s Museum located in the Burlington Outlet Mall (Old Bass store) is building a hanging G Scale model railroad with over 700 feet of track as an interactive display. The main layout is suspended 9 feet high due to the other museum structures. There will be false building fronts and wall murals depicting that area of the layout, farm land, city, industrial etc. The trains will be controlled by push buttons and the kids will be able to view the trains from cameras inside the cabs. A lot of items have already been donated for this project and grants from BNSF have been given. This project is ready to begin. We need volunteers to build this layout. If you work with wood, wiring, landscaping and painting, we need you. Click here to see the drawing of the layout. If you would like to participate in this project, please contact me.

James Harvey
(360) 914-7714
James.c.harvey@comcast.net

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More National Narrow Gauge Convention

Written by Russ Segner
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By Russ Segner

The recent Narrow Gauge Convention featured many very interesting things. There were great clinics, many fine layouts and several prototype attractions. There were also several award winners from our area: Greg Wright and Harry Avis of Olympia both won awards as was previously reported.

Mark Allen from Roche Harbor won two 2nd Place awards; one for his module Mystic Mine and one for his Parlor Car “Cascade”

Don Rose of Gig Harbor won 1st Place Motive Power Rod Locomotive a CB&Q Consolidation

I saw several fine layouts

Jeff Reynolds – Mears Madness is a famous HOn3 layout which has been relocated to Nevada City, CA in the hill country northeast of Sacramento. It is in it’s own 30′ x 40′ building. It is one of the largest HOn3 layouts in California.

Aaron Splawn – Nighthawk Branch of the Copper River & Yukon Railroad

Aaron has restored the best parts of Brian Ellerby’s famous Copper River and Yukon Sn3 layout. When we had to dismantle Brian’s layout, we were able to keep the beautiful Nighthawk scenes intact. Jimmy Booth of PBL was able to truck it to California where it is now located. It is possible that this famous layout will ultimately move to the California Railway Museum in the new Model Railroad Section.

California Railway Museum

This is one of the finest railway museums in the world. A major portion is dedicated to the history of the rails through the Sierra’s. Beautiful 4-4-0’s are displayed alongside one of the Southern Pacific cab forwards.

A new section on Model Railroading is open now in October. We got a preview.

I certainly hope many of you will get to Sacramento to visit this fine museum. Plan to spend the day viewing all the exhibits and the nearby historic Old Town.

Next year, the National Narrow Gauge Convention will be in St. Louis and the Convention will be in Seattle in 2022.

News

Skagit Valley and Whidbey Clinic October Meeting Foam Scenery and Other Topics

Written by Rich Blake
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Article and Photos by Rich Thom

Cliff Aaker, subbing for clinic chair Rich Blake, welcomed 24 to the SV&W NMRA Clinic’s October meeting.  Cliff welcomed first-time attendees Roy and Penny Andrukat, Oak Harbor residents modeling in n-scale; we hope they become regulars.  Sad news about the Anacortes and Fidalgo Model Railroad Club, whose members are long-time clinic contributors: the lease on their space has been terminated by the building’s owner, a familiar story to many clubs.  The club’s annual Fall Open House on Nov 2nd and 3rd will likely be their last.  We hope modelers from all over the area will consider paying a visit to the club’s HO-scale 24’ x 45’ layout, featuring Many scratchbuilt bridges and other structures.  Hours each day are 10 am to 4 pm; the address is 419 Q Avenue (intersection of 5th and Q), Anacortes.

The evening’s clinician was MMR Mark Malmkar, who reprised highlights of several clinics he presented over the years back in Nebraska, from which Mark and wife Chris relocated to Whidbey Island.  Mark first covered diverse topics including: layout design for 4’ x 8’ tabletops; locomotive wheel arrangements; benchwork types; wiring basics; passenger car eras and car types; and dining car window arrangements.  Mark is an expert on passenger cars, Pullman Company history and its monopoly on sleeping car services, and the complex Pullman routes and innumerable car variations, and always has good examples and anecdotes to share.  We were even pulled back into that era by Mark’s use of flip-charts—if anyone can remember those!  (In his defense, he has also given clinics using Powerpoint.)        

Fig 1 – Mark Malmkar Shows Sample Foam Scenery Sections

Next, Mark focused on his extensive use of insulating foam scenery (Fig 1).  Mark has managed a somewhat rare feat: He packed up and moved his entire Nebraska model railroad to Washington, and is in the process of re-assembling it, with some shifts and rotations of sections here and there to fit the new space.  One feature which made this easier—or even possible at all—was his extensive use of foam scenery rather than plaster hardshell.  Its light weight and ease of creating large, easily-removable scenery sections and smaller liftouts is well-known.  Mark described the tools and adhesives he used to laminate 1” – 1 and ½” – and 2” sheets into landforms, the rasps and carving tools used to sculpt it, and materials to overcoat it to form the final scenic form.  Fig 2 shows one of several liftouts Mark brought in to show, this one with a tunnel.  Thanks to Mark for an interesting and entertaining presentation.      

Fig 2 – A Foam Liftout Including a Tunnel

Rich

Skagit Valley and Whidbey Island Clinic

Upcoming Clinic – Eastside Get Together, Thursday 10/17

Written by Anton Faulk
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By Alex Brikoff

The October 2019 Eastside Get Together Clinic will have its monthly meeting on October 17, 2019.

The Clinic will meet at the:
Redmond Community Center at Marymoor Village
6505 176TH AVE NE, Rm. 202
REDMOND WA 98052-4930

Doors open at 7:00 PM and meeting starts promptly at 7:15 PM

We will bring everyone up to date on the noteworthy model railroad and railfan events coming up in the area for the fall months ahead. We’ll also have our Model of the Month contest and Rail Photo of the Month contest. So, please bring your models and photos for the contests! Winners will have first choice of many fine items from our Door Prize table.

This month’s clinic will be a “twofer”. The first portion will be devoted to George Chambers and the conclusion of his presentation about his trip on the “White Pass and Yukon Railway” this past summer. The next portion of the clinic, titled “U. P. Memories”, will be a personal retrospective of somewhat recent Union Pacific history and operations presented by Bob Stafford. It will be a combination of slides and digital photos of UP operations in the western United States. This special presentation will be highlighted by photos of Bob’s chase of the UP 4014 across Wyoming to Ogden, UT this past spring.

We will have refreshments and snacks available as always. We’ll also have a great selection of Door Prizes to give away at the end of the clinic.

See you there!!

Alex Brikoff

Eastside Get-Together (Redmond) Clinic

MOHAI – This Thanksgiving

Written by Russ Segner
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By Russ Segner

Once again we are going to provide a public show at the Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI) over the Thanksgiving weekend. This is another great opportunity for members to share with the public our interest and skills in model railroading.

Last Year

  • N-trak Setup
  • N-trak
  • HO
  • HO
  • On30
  • Hi-Rail
  • Hi-Rail
  • Hi-Rail

We will have three main layouts; the N-trak; the HO and the Hi-Rail. In addition to their layouts, the HO and the Hi-Rail will be hosting two separate child friendly displays located adjacent to their main layouts. There will also be six one man displays including: the 4D switching layout, a small On30 operating display and Operation Lifesaver.   All of this will need volunteers to run all day each day of the show.

The modular layouts, of course, will have their own members to operate.  But, since we will be operating over several days, there will be opportunity for others of you who are not regular members of these groups to join in and run trains.  So, here is where you can join in and help:

Modules – N-trak – HO – Hi-Rail

Small displays

Switching layout

If you can volunteer for a four hour shift in the morning or afternoon, please contact either:

Ed Ives at 425 391 3313 or email gresley7@gmail.com,

Russ Segner at 206 200 2211 or email russseg@gmail.com.

Russ

News

Mount Vernon Clinic Important Announcements

Written by Anton Faulk
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By Ted Becker

The Mount Vernon Clinic is changing its meeting night to the third Monday of the month beginning in October 2019 and will continue on the third Monday after that. The next meeting will be October 21. The clinic is still located at the Mount Vernon Senior Center and the meeting starts at 7:00. This change moves us away from being back-to-back with our sister clinic in Oak Harbor and opens participation to folks with Thursday conflicts.

Also our meeting room will be in the craft room where we were last season.
The previously announced change to the larger meeting room did not work out.

To kick off our meeting on the new date will be a clinic on decals by Nick
Muff and Al Carter which is shaping up to be a very informative presentation.

Ted Becker

Mt Vernon Clinic

Westside Clinic This Tuesday October 8th

Written by Anton Faulk
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By Bill Hupé

This coming Tuesday, October 8th, is our Westside Clinic in Bremerton.

Steve Hauff is presenting our clinic and the subject is “Lies, Loggers and Logging Railroads.”

Bob Jensen will talk about “What’s Happening” in the upcoming Bremerton Northern Model Railroad Club move into Kitsap Mall.

Jack Hamilton will be there and hopefully he will bring some new tools he discovered and talk about what’s going on in the PNR and NMRA.

If someone from the 4th Division Board of Directors is there, I’m sure they will be happy to talk about what’s happening at the Division level.

The clinic is held at the United Way of Kitsap Building in downtown Bremerton (647 4th Street) at 7:00 PM.

As usual there will be a “Show and Tell”. If you have a friend or family member who is interested in model railroading, they are welcome.

See you there. 

For more information contact me (Bill Hupé) at whopay@tscnet.com or 360-621-5041.

Bill Hupé

Westside Local Clinic

October North End Clinic is Thursday October 3rd

Written by Anton Faulk
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By Lisa Murray

The north end NMRA clinic’s program for October is a Beginners Operating Session hosted by Burr Stewart.
If you are interested in seeing what an operating session entails, or even if you have model railroad operating experience, this clinic will be a practicum in operations and a chance to operate trains on Burr’s expansive home layout, The Burrlington Northern Railroad.
The clinic will be held on Thursday, October 3, from 7:00pm to 9:00pm at Burr’s home which is located at 204 NW 112th St., Seattle 98177. There is plenty of parking at or near the house, and it is located in between the #5 and #28X bus lines north of Greenwood.
The railroad has seven working yards from Tukwila to Bellingham, and there are Thru, Local, and Switching jobs from which you can choose. You will also have the option to work in single or two-person crews. The operation is set in 1973 and uses car cards and waybills for car routing and track warrants for train authority, with an NCE DCC throttle system. WiThrottle will also be available if you prefer to use your cellphone for train control. There are also a few new ProtoThrottles available if you want to try them out.
Since we will only have two hours for the ops session, the goal is not to finish all the jobs, but to give folks who have been interested in operating sessions a taste of what’s involved (and the fun that it is!).
That being said, if you have ops experience, please come! We’d love to have as many people there to provide input and share their experiences.
Attached you will find documentation about the railroad layout to help you prepare for next Thursday.
The four files attached include:

Please RSVP if you are planning to attend so we can get a sense of how many people will be there. 
RSVP to this email (mattinata@outlook.com)with the following information:
Name
Number attending
Operating session level of experience

I am looking forward to seeing you at Burr’s!
Lisa

Seattle-North Clinic