Jim Sabol

No wonder they were tired!

Modelers at the November 16 Olympia Get-Together left town about 7:30 p.m., traveled 1,500 miles to Salt Lake City, Durango, Silverton, Cumbres, Chama, Alamosa, Antonito, Golden and Denver, Colorado, viewing every possible narrow gauge steam locomotive, car, and interesting infrastructure along the way, and were still home by 9:30 — all through the magic of Scott Buckley’s terrific camera work last summer.

Over 1,000 photos were viewed by the happy audience. And that was only half the shots that Scott took! Great PowerPoint show, Scott! Multitudes of ideas for weathering, structures, and yards.

An added bonus of meeting in Scott’s layout room was seeing the exciting progress he has made on his Tehama Valley HO railroad, which now reaches all the way from Tehama to the Southern Pacific interchange.

Models and samples of craftsmanship and artistic ability were shared by Paul Vaughn, Larry Williams, and Greg Wright. Greg won most popular model with his scratchbuilt 1:28 scale train of a log car, a flat car, and a MOW car.

Chuck Ricketts took up a collection which, when enriched by his personal donation, will provide a train set for a child who otherwise might not be able to obtain one. Think of a young boy or girl at Christmas time, with nose pressed to hobby shop window, with a dreamy but sad look. Chuck inspired the Tacomaclinic guys last year to place a contribution can with George Boucier at Tacoma Trains for the same purpose — a project that, thanks to George’s personal contribution, was very successful in making train sets available to several Tacoma-area youngsters.

We reviewed reports of layout owners Ry Bates, Scott Buckley, Brian Ferris, Chuck Ricketts, Greg Wright, and Jim Younkins who, on November 3, opened their layouts for guest operators from Oregon,Eastern Washington, and all points between for the price of a contribution to the Thurston County Food Bank. Visiting operators contributed over 175 pounds of food and $90 cash and had a grand time running trains on one layout of their choice in the morning and another layout in the afternoon.

Once again everyone present for the evening held a winning door prize number and carried home some treasure. “Itza muracle!” exclaimed Sue Ritter.

Our next meeting is the annual Christmas social get-together at the home of Ron and Carol Beghin on December 14.