By Jeff Moorman
Please come join us on Thursday (February 7) for our next clinic. Our general topic will be using photography to improve your modeling.
In January we looked at attendee’s favorite sources of data for researching railroad history, primarily for the period of the first half of the 20th century. Certainly Google came up as well as the myriad of railroad books that have been published. Like everything else on the web, it is probably best to try and confirm the facts you get online.
A couple of less known sources were mentioned. Just as the NMRA Library is working on digitizing its archives, so are libraries, museums, and archives all over the word. And it is not just scans of pictures that are available. Old books are scanned to DVDs and some of these make their way onto the web. All sorts of paper documents are imaged as well. It was suggested you do a Google search for “digital archives” or maybe “photo archives” to find this material.
Of course not all archives are digital yet. Libraries and museums often have collections of photos, papers, and memorabilia that are not on regular display. It doesn’t hurt to ask at your local library. As an example the Bellevue Community College branch of the Washington State Archives has a 1930’s photograph of almost any building in King County. These were taken as part of a depression-era arts project, but are not available online.
Other sources for early 20th century information are reproductions of Sears’ mail order catalogs. They will show you what fashion and household products were in vogue, as well as prevailing prices.
Show and tell had the same two participants as last month. Dennis T had a pile driver in On3. Although not this regular scale, he “rescued” the car some years ago and has been working at making it look presentable again.
Rob J had a selection of rail maintenance equipment all from resin castings. They made an impressive display. Rob also had a log car and 2 resin fire trucks. I’m of the opinion that Rob might just have an inexhaustible supply of N-scale resin vehicles.
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. For regular meetings enter the lower, left side of the church from the rear lot.
Meetings are the first Thursday of each month, except July and August. In June we usually do a tour. Doors open around 7:00 PM and the program starts at 7:30.
Remember the next meeting is February 7 and the one after that is March 7. Hope to see you there or at least sometime on down the line.
More From Rob
Robb’s RR Maint Equip
Dennis' On3 Pile Driver
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