Kevin Klettke will present “Fleet Weathering” which those of us who attended PDX 2015 recall how well received his Clinic was. Kevin is going to emphasize how to “efficiently” weather large fleets of rolling stock. If you get a chance before the Clinic, visit Kevin’s website.
The next Westside Clinic is Tuesday May 10, 2016.
If you are visiting for the first time our clinics are held at the United Way of Kitsap Building in downtown Bremerton (647 4th Street) at 7 pm. Additional details (including a map and contact info) are on the Clinics Page.
I apologize for not having anything planned, but my mind has been elsewhere.
For those who haven’t heard, we unexpectedly lost a member of our group last week. Paul R Neumann passed away in his sleep. I have been working with his family to figure out what they are going to do with his model trains and train photographs.
Therefore I’m not sure what we will be doing yet. Any Ideas? As always refreshments will be provided.
Please contact me if you have any related question at whopay@tscnet.com or 360-621-5041.
Our 4th Division Spring Meet is this Saturday, May 14th. This is a full day of clinics and a chance to meet other model railroaders from our area. It is also our Annual Meeting where you can discuss with your leaders the major directions the 4th Division will take over the next two years.
Your Division Superintendent gets to hand out a few awards to some very deserving individuals at the lunch break. There is a fine schedule of clinics presented by many of our best model builders. There is a special “Hands On” clinic on building laser cut kits. This is a limited space event and you must pre-register for this extra fare session. Click here to see the full clinic schedule.
While it may be too late to guarantee lunch, you can still register online and either pay online (through PayPal) or at the door. Click here for the main registration page (the “Hands On” registration is on the Clinics page).
Welcome, new 4th Division (PNR) NMRA members (or former members recently renewed)! An e-mail notification is sent out to all Grab Iron subscribers every time a new Grab Iron post is made (or on a regular basis), so this may be one of the first messages you see from our Division. Our 4D web site has clinic info, modular group info, an events calendar, some excellent model train photos, and many pages of other related info as well as all of our Grab Iron posts – click here to navigate to the front page.
As many of you have noticed, there have been problems with Grab Iron post e-mail notifications for at least three weeks. We have been troubleshooting and understanding more of the inner workings of WordPress (and PHP e-mail), e-mail servers, spam blacklists, and SQL tables with plugins. (You can safely ignore the technical words I just wrote – if you’re interested in the details send me e-mail at the address at the end of this message).
We have switched to using the Constant Contact e-mail service that the PNR (Pacific Northwest Region of the NMRA) is using to send out regular (at least monthly) newsletters (typically written by Jack Hamilton). For now Grab Iron post notifications will be sent out by me on a manual basis versus an automatic “post by post” basis (“automatic” notification will be put in place in the future).
On May 8, 2016 at 1:30 p.m., the 4D Ballot Committee (Bill Messecar, Burr Stewart and Al Lowe) met at Al’s home. We confirmed that each ballot received was from a valid 4D member in good standing, remained sealed until we took possession, and was submitted to us before the May 1 deadline.
The results of our count are:
Total Ballots 143
Invalid Ballots 0
Superintendent:
Russ Segner 139
Write-in votes 0
Board of Directors:
David Yadock 74
Scott Taylor 69
Congratulations to Russ and David and our thanks to Scott and all of our 4D members who took the time and spent the effort to exercise their voting privilege.
Respectfully submitted and attested to by:
Al Lowe
William Messecar
Burr Stewart
Many of us visited layouts open in Olympia on April 30th. So far, several groupings of layouts throughout the region are open on weekends during the year, but there is no such opportunity on the Eastside (East of Lake Washington). These open houses are usually Saturdays from 1 to 5.
I am proposing a layout tour in the Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, Issaquah, Renton, Maple Valley, Kent, Auburn, and other close by areas for a weekend in mid July.
If you have a layout you would be willing to open to members sometime this summer and are located in one of these areas, please contact me at 452-228-7327 or by email at russseg@gmail.com.
The next Seattle-North clinic is this Thursday, May 5. Seeing that it is Cinco de Mayo, one of our topics will be Mexican Railroads. Other topics include a short audio/visual presentation on urban transport and a video on what it takes to get the fire started in a steam engine.
We didn’t get to our fallen flag mini-clinic, so we’ll hold that for some later date. What we did do was listen and participate in a clinic on track warrants presented by Ed and Ken L. Two things I took away from the clinic were:
N scale semis detailed and weathered by Tyler, “Bring and Brag” winner
MMR Gene Swanson opened the clinic on time as always, we had 33 in attendance including one newcomer. MMR Dale Kraus presented a Merit Award in Scenery to Wain Miller.
Other announcements included requests for mailing in your 4D ballots, a Rail Day show on May 14, 2016 in Oregon, and a plastic model show in Renton.
A discussion was held about changing the start time for the clinic from 1930 hrs (7:30 PM) to 1900 hrs (7:00 PM) due to the fact that the doors must be locked before 2200 hrs (10:00 PM). The computer system will set the alarm at that time. By starting a half hour earlier we will be able to finish around 2100 hrs (9:00 PM) and have time to clean up and stack the chairs. The new start time will begin with the September clinic.
Bill Sandstrom from Tacoma Trains presented a number of new items from Rivarossi, Athearn, Intermountain, BLI, and Microtrains. He also carries some items from Chip Van Gilder including 3D printed log cars in N scale and the Morton Station.
We will have a clinic in Renton in May on the 26th.
Date: May 26
Time: 6:30
Location: Renton Highlands Library at 2801 NE 10th Street, Renton, 98056
Program information will come next week.
Last months meeting in Newcastle was very well attended and we had several new attendees. Plan to join us if this location works for you.
I can be contacted at russseg@gmail.com or 206-200-2211.
Date: Thursday, May 12
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: Mount Vernon Senior Center, 1401 Cleveland Street, Mount Vernon (Click Here for map & directions)
Kevin Klettke will present his “Fleet Weathering” clinic. This is a reprise of his well-received Clinic at PDX 2015 on efficiently weathering large fleets of rolling stock. Visit Kevin’s website at http://wnrr.net.
Another Example of Kevin’s Work