By Jeff Moorman

Next Clinic:

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.

Last Clinic:

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:

  1. Track warrants only apply to mainline track. Other rules govern what is known as auxiliary track.
  2. Radio protocol states that the person/location calling is given first followed by the person/location being called. For example, “This is engine 4233 calling Dispatch.” And NOT “Dispatch this is Engine 4233.” Note that the latter is what you might expect from military or amateur (ham) radio experience.

Many thanks to Ed and Ken for making the trip “up North” to share the clinic with us.

Directions: 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) between 175th and 185th Streets and more specifically, between the Cadillac dealer on the south and Deseret Industries to the north. Going southbound on Aurora, make a right-hand turn into the church driveway immediately after passing the Deseret location. The parking lot is at the rear of the church. From the lot go up the steps to the main entrance. Once inside, the room where we meet is on your left.

Meetings are the first Thursday of each month, usually September to May. In June we often do something different, so there is no “regular” meeting. Doors open at 7:00 PM and the program will start at 7:30.

Remember the next regular evening meeting is May 5, 2016. As of right now we are still finalizing a special tour for June, so you will need to watch for further communication on that. The initial meeting of the next clinic year will be September 1, 2016. Hope to see you there or at least sometime on down the line.