Steve Haas

Carol Enloe, Don Trettel, and I held a recent discussion on the future of Tom Enloe’s Pacific Northwestern Railway (located in Duvall, Washington). Carol and Jennifer (Tom’s daughter) have both expressed a strong interest in keeping the Pacific Northwestern “alive” for the immediate future. To that end, we have tentatively adopted the following schedule:

  • Weekly work sessions – Tuesdays, 4 – 7pm (times can be altered or extended or alternate evening dates arranged if there is sufficient interest)
  • Weekend work sessions (pending interest) – Saturdays, noon – 4pm (times can be altered or extended if there is sufficient interest)
  • Operating Sessions – December 12th, January 9th, February 13th

It is the intent that the above sessions serve as “shakeout” sessions, to get the premises, room, layout and rolling stock ready for the following:

  • “Memorial Operating Session” – March 12th (for the local operating crew)
  • SoundRail 2016 – March 19 – A “Memorial Operating Session” for OpSig members participating in SoundRail 2016

For those of you not aware, Tom was one of the original founders of SoundRail back in 2012. Over the years, Tom has operated on many different layouts across the country as a participant in various nationally known operating weekends. This session will be an opportunity for those folks to operate on Tom’s layout one last time.

In order to pull this off, Don and I are going to need a lot of extra support at work sessions, and we need as many as possible of you at operating sessions to help debug the layout and rolling stock before these two memorial sessions.

The extent that folks step forward to assist at work sessions and attend operating sessions over the next few months will play a large part in determining the future of the layout. If sufficient support is not forthcoming, the Memorial Sessions will have to be cancelled and no further sessions will be scheduled.

The future of this layout depends on your willingness to get involved in the maintenance and operation of the layout on a regular basis.

Please contact me at Steve.Haas@comcast.net or Don Trettel at TrettelD@comcast.net as soon as possible if you are interested in keeping the Pacific Northwestern and the Cherry Valley RR alive. We are depending on you!

We have some immediate needs for the following skills:

  • Track laying and maintenance skills – particularly working with hand laid track and the ability to tune turnouts
  • Rolling stock maintenance and repair
  • Structure cleanup and repair
  • Electrical
  • Staging the layout for operations – much of the details of getting the railroad ready for an Ops session were never written down – they existed only in Tom’s mind. We are going to need some folks with one or more of the following skills to really pull this off:
    • TT&TO (Time Table and Train Order)
    • Car cards and weigh bills
    • Staging operations

If you have one or more of the above skills and are interested in helping out we would love to hear from you.