A little Hawaiian railroad history

During the last week of September, I attended a Thompson family reunion in Hawaii, which took place around the occasion of our donation of our great-grandmother’s diary of her life in the Big Island, to the North Kohala Library. There were 25 various descendants who attended. And yes, there is a railroad connection.
     There were a number of railroads at one time in the Hawaiian Islands, all but one of them narrow gauge, and nearly all of them built to serve sugar plantations and mills. The one standard-gauge line was the Hawaii Consolidated Railway or HCR (from 1899 to 1916, it was the Hilo Railway) on the east end of the island. It’s of interest to me because my grandfather worked at Hakalau, north of Hilo, for a number of years as a field foreman, and my father and all his siblings were born there. Hakalau was the location of a sugar mill and was on the HCR.
     The HCR was characterized, especially on its track on the Hamakua Coast north of Hilo, by many high trestles crossing the deep canyons of the east coast of the island (this 33.5 mile line had more than one bridge per mile). The photo below, from the excellent book Sugar Town, by Yasushi “Scotch” Kurisu (Watermark Publishing, Honolulu, 1995), shows a railbus of the HCR crossing one of these trestles in 1939, this one at Kolekole Gulch. Like most of the HCR’s high bridges, this one was destroyed by a massive tsunami on April 1, 1946.

     The railroad served Hakalau Plantation Company, and some of the old buildings are still standing there, as we saw on our visit. The depot was near an “armstrong” turntable, where locomotives and cars could be turned as needed. The photo below is also from Sugar Town.

The mill at Hakalau was below the bluffs, down at the river, as you see in the photo below from 1920 (from Sugar Town). The lower bridge at right is the water flume, used to bring cane down from the fields to the mill. The upper bridge is of course the HCR. Those bents were later doubled, and this bridge survived the tsunami of 1946. Most of the right-of-way of the HCR is now occupied by Hawaii Highway 19, and some of the HCR bridges now carry the highway, including this one.

Actually, the above version of the panorama cuts off most of the trestle, doubtless because the wide-angle lens severely distorted it. Here is the right side of this 1920 complete image. It is of course a straight, level  bridge.

     I have not found many equipment photos for the HCR, An exception is this view of the weed-killer equipment behind engine 91, photographed at Pa’auilo in 1943 (photo from the fine book, The Hamakua Coast by Ken Okimoto (Watermark Publishing, Honolulu, 2002). The flat car is HCR 57.

     We visited the small railroad museum at Laupahoehoe, north of Hakalau, where there is a replica caboose with the HCR emblem on it. The museum building is supposed to be open on Sunday, but wasn’t when we were there. That’s my nephew Matt admiring the reproduction.

     The reunion was fun, and I met a number of cousins, many once removed, some twice removed, that I had never met. And of course it was fun to visit Hakalau again and have some insight in the Hawaii Consolidated Railway that served it in my father’s day.
Tony Thompson

Promontory 2019

As most railfans and modelers must surely know by now, May 10 of this year was the 150th anniversary of the driving of the Golden Spike at Promontory Summit, Utah, completing the first transcontinental railroad. I attended the commemorative event as part of attending the Southern Pacific Historical & Technical Society’s 39th annual meeting in Ogden.
     As always, it is a joy to be in the presence of the Wasatch Range, which looms over the Salt Lake Valley in dramatic fashion, especially in winter and spring when abundant snow caps the higher peaks. I love this kind of mountain presence, and when outdoors in this area, you can hardly turn your head without noticing the Wasatch. Here is a typical view in Ogden.

     As it happens, this event was a joint meeting with the Union Pacific Historical Society, so the two societies shared clinic access, vendor and model room, and buffet breakfasts in the convention center. And for our banquet Saturday night, the two societies were joined by members of both the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society (R&LHS), and the National Railway Historical Society (NRHS). That made the banquet attendance over 800 people (including a fair number of spouses). Shown below is only part of the room.

Note the large display screens. These were on both long walls of the room, permitting everyone to see the speakers, as well as keynoter John Gray’s slides during his talk.
     I suppose the core event was indeed the commemoration at the National Historic Park site. As had been predicted, it was over 20,000 people. They arrived, we were told, in more than 1500 automobiles and 81 buses. The SPH&TS and UPHS had organized 12 buses to take our members to the site, so at least we didn’t have to drive in the traffic. Naturally, not being VIPs, we did not get particularly close to the reproduction locomotives and the re-enactment of the spike driving, but we sure got the flavor (they had display screens and a PA system). They even had a U.S. flag flying with the correct number of stars for 1869.

     For many railfans, I’m sure the headline event was the arrival of newly restored UP 4014, the 4-8-8-4 nicknamed “Big Boy” from what was chalked on the smokebox of one engine at the Alco plant by an unknown workman. I rather liked the fact that the restored UP engine did carry this same chalked mark near the smokebox top (how it looked is known from a photo). You can click on the image to enlarge it if you wish.

I was intrigued with the details of the restored locomotive, many of which are modern applicances instead of restoring only the classic technology of 80 years ago. An example is this air tank.

     Also making a difference in the Ogden area was a street fair to mark the occasion of the 150th anniversary. The photo below, at the corner of Lincoln and historic 25th Street, is only a block from Union Station, location of the display of both the Big Boy and UP 844, plus the UP business train. There were crowds everywhere in this festival, which was fun to stroll through.

     Finally, I always try, when I visit the Salt Lake area, to drop in at one of my favorite bookstores in the world, the King’s English (see their site at: www.kingsenglish.com ). Co-founder of the store, some 42 years ago, was Betsy Burton, and she has written a marvelous book about the store’s early days and the adventures of booksellers. If you like books, you would love this one. It’s readily available on line, in either hard cover or softbound. Here’s one link: https://www.biblio.com/the-kings-english-adventures-by-burton-betsy/work/2874633 .

     It was a wonderful five days, and I really enjoyed practically everything about it. A great combination of interesting and engrossing activities, with enjoyable spring weather and marvelous mountain views.
Tony Thompson

Riding a tourist train

I am not generally a huge fan of tourist train rides, partly because railroad museums often provide train rides that are pretty darn short. I realize that the 99.5 percent of the general public that is neither railfan nor modeling oriented wants it that way, and I accept that the museums have to cater to the bulk of their audience. But in any event, though I do enjoy them from time to time, it would be fair to say that I would usually just as soon pass on tourist trains.
     That said, there are occasions when it is fun and even interesting to take a tourist train. I recently did such a ride, on the California Western Railroad, westward out of Willits, California. The Cal Western or CWR was for many years a serious lumber operation, originally carrying redwood logs from the mountains to the large Union Lumber mill at Fort Bragg on the Pacific coast, and also bringing finished lumber from Fort Bragg over the coast range to Willits for interchange with the Northwestern Pacific of the SP. The CWR in those days was actually a division of Union Lumber.
     But closure of the Fort Bragg mill left the Cal Western with little to do beyond its existing tourist operations. These have been in place for decades, originally using an ancient Mack railbus. Because the railbus had smelly fumes, the nickname became the “Skunk Train,” and eventually that name became embedded in the Cal Western’s publicity, as it remains today. The logo, as included on the Wikipedia entry for the California Western, is shown below. As the logo suggests, a variety of motive power, steam and diesel, has been used to pull passenger cars, though one old bus, CWR’s M100, still runs.

     The occasion for my taking a ride was a fund-raiser for the Mendocino Land Trust. The trip was to include quite a nice lunch in the middle of the trip. Shown before departure at the former NWP depot in Willits is the train, two conventional coaches and a roofed open-side car.

We rode from Willits up to a new picnic site west of the summit of the range, a place named Crowley. Formerly a maintenance location, a meadow was created by cutting brush and trees and mowing the weeds. In this photo, the musicians for the lunchtime entertainment are detraining. The information tent for Mendocino Land Trust can be seen at left.

The hot lunch (along with extensive hors d’oeuvres) was a gigantic paella, prepared in the shallow pan you see in the photo below. The smaller dish in the foreground is a vegetarian paella.

     Our train remained on the main line during lunch. Here you see the power, a modified GP9, reportedly former SP GP9E no. 3411, now CWR 64.

     The trip was a fairly brief train ride (not a lot over an hour each way), and an excellent lunch selection which included complimentary wine or beer (the latter donated by North Coast Brewing Company of Fort Bragg). Moreover, our ticket prices included a nice donation to the Mendocino Land Trust, which has been instrumental in preserving old-growth redwoods in the Coast Range, including a tract surrounding some of the California Western trackage. We were more than happy to make that donation. So there are times that tourist trains can be a worthwhile experience, and this was certainly one of them.
Tony Thompson

The role of mainline trains on a branch-line layout

My layout portrays a mythical branch line of the Southern Pacific, and is set in the Central Coast area of California. (This locale has been described in several previous posts; the most informative of those posts is probably the one found at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/01/layout-design-locale.html .) The main line on my layout serves primarily as a conduit to the rest of the world, for cars coming from or going to points on the branch. In the transition era, when I model, SP operated through or mainline trains from division point to division point, and those trains did no en-route switching; all switching was handled by local trains. So in this situation, through trains on my layout are really just passing scenery. Or are they?
     One important point is that mainline locomotives would necessarily be different (in particular, bigger and more powerful) than branchline ones. In 1953, the year I model, many Coast Route freight trains were pulled by 2-10-2 steam engines, and for mainline trains on my layout, such power obviously is quite appropriate. Here is an example of a westward train so powered, just passing the Shumala depot.

Diesel power for freight trains was becoming common in 1953, and on the Coast Route, most diesel-powered trains were either A-B or A-B-B sets of EMD F units. I have followed the same pattern, as seen on this eastward train on the main at Shumala.

     I have begun to incorporate through trains like these in my operating sessions, partly to increase the “beyond the basement” impression that is desired as part of the layout experience (see for example this post: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2017/10/an-op-session-with-through-trains.html ). I expect this to continue and likely to increase.
     Another factor in my use of through trains is that they can incorporate two kinds of freight cars that might otherwise not see operation on my branch. One kind is the group I call “mainline” cars, meaning cars not as well detailed or otherwise falling a little short of the cars that can withstand examination during switching (on the branch). I have discussed this distinction, which only applies to some cars, in prior posts, such as the one at this link: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/03/model-freight-car-standards.html . Obviously viewing a car in a moving train is a different situation than scrutinizing it during switching moves.
     The other class of freight cars I can include in through trains are those which have no natural destination on my branch. An example might be a box car of auto parts. These were significant traffic on the Coast Route, but would only be found on the main line. Another example might be a flat car with a large transformer load. I can include such cars very naturally in a mainline train, though they would not be realistic on the branch.
     And one final point about these trains: few if any model railroaders don’t jump at the chance to “railfan” a passing train. Operating these through trains is fun in that way for both me and for visiting operators.
     What about waybills for these trains? If the train simply runs from staging back to staging, there would be no need for waybills; but if cars need to switched out of the mainline locals, the Guadalupe Local or the Surf Turn, some of the cars should have waybills for destinations other than my branch. Accordingly, I have been making up waybills for a limited number of “through loads,” both eastward and westward. Here is an example of each kind (you can click on the image to enlarge):

There are some handwritten marks on both bills, something that was commonplace on prototype waybills.
     Incidentally, the perishable bill here is for a Santa Fe refrigerator car. Sometimes modelers will ask how it would happen that SP would be moving a reefer of PFE’s rival, Santa Fe, but the answer is simple: shippers determined routing of cars, not the railroads. Photographs document that SFRD reefers were often seen in SP trains, just as PFE reefers were often seen in Santa Fe trains.
     I can’t speak for other kinds of layouts, but for my layout, emphasizing a branch line, the mainline trains are a useful and significant complement to the branch operations, and allow use of both locomotives and some cars that otherwise would be unemployed. That’s plenty of reason for me.
Tony Thompson

More on the Kyoto (Japan) museum

As part of describing some interesting aspects of my recent trip to Japan, I wrote an appreciation of the Kyoto Railroad Museum, a superb facility well worth a visit by anyone with even a small interest in railroads (you can read my post here: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-kyoto-japan-railway-museum.html ).
     The core of the Kyoto facility is a concrete roundhouse, which served the Kyoto engine terminal in steam days. I showed some views that included it in my prior post. Here is another photo from inside, and you can see the earthquake reinforcements added to the structure. (At photo center is a former JNR D50-140 locomotive of 2-8-2 wheel arrangement.)

      But also on display at the museum was a superb model of the facility as it once was, looking to me like HO scale (remember that Japanese track gauge in steam days was 42 inches). I want to show some images of that model, both because of the fine modelbuilding, and because it shows the similarities and differences of Japanese and American steam facilities. First, here is an overall view of the model, looking in a direction which on the prototype would be pretty nearly northward. The large number of garden tracks (used as ready tracks) is noteworthy.

Moving around to the left of the model view above, one sees a different perspective of the roundhouse and the shops to its west. Especially interesting here is the coaling facility at photo center, with overhead cranes to fill tenders from the elevated coal bunker and also to unload from coal cars, like the gondola shown to the left of the bunker.

Moving still farther left, the car shops are depicted, again easily oriented relative to the back of the roundhouse at photo top. Most cars shown are passenger cars, but a smaller freight car shop was also included.

This was really an interesting historical depiction of former uses of the facility we visit today.
     But before leaving the Kyoto Railroad Museum, I have to say that you cannot dislike a museum where you come upon items like this as you stroll from building to building.

     Now of course all this viewing of models whetted my appetite, and so on the way back to the hotel, we stopped by the main Kyoto train station, containing a great many shops in the associated building, and one of them was a Kato shop, with both N and HO scale models. (American modelers are familiar with Kato USA, an offshoot of this Japanese company.) I didn’t experience too much temptation to make a purchase, since the models on sale were entirely Japanese outline, but here is my wife posing at the entrance. It was fun to visit anyway, and of course anyone inspired by watching and riding Japanese trains could pick up a nice souvenir here.

     This wraps up what I wanted to say about a terrific visit to Japan. And I will repeat my previous suggestion: if you are anywhere in east Asia, try and fit in a visit to this superb museum.
Tony Thompson

The Kyoto (Japan) Railway Museum

Last month, my wife Mary and I were traveling through central Japan. This involved a lot of train travel, experiences I described in a prior post (see it at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2017/06/riding-trains-in-japan.html ). The trip also involved the discovery of a superb new railway museum at Kyoto. It opened quite recently, in April 2015, as a major renovation and expansion of an existing museum, the Umekoji Steam Locomotive Museum. The Umekoji already held an extensive collection of railroad equipment, including many steam locomotives, and the Osaka Museum collection was added to it, as the aging Osaka facility was closed.
     I have been to many railway museums around the world, and this Kyoto facility is absolutely top rank, certainly among the very best anywhere. I might rank the York museum in England above it, and the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento as its equal, but the Kyoto facility is definitely in that company. Shown below is the museum entrance plaza, with groups of elementary school kids waiting to enter. They are all in uniform, with different hats from different schools.

     Shown next below is a map of the ground floor of the museum (it also has a large amount of displays on a second floor, and a third floor with a superb viewing platform for the action in and out of the nearby main Kyoto station). You can click to enlarge. The photo above was taken at the extreme lower right corner of this map.

The 20-stall roundhouse dominates the plan. But many pieces of equipment are also displayed in the “Promenade” area, shown above at right in brown, including one of the original Shinkansen (Bullet Train) trainsets, called “Model 0” today. The upper rectangle on the map is the main building, with its three floors and many pieces of equipment on display. The whole museum currently displays 53 locomotives and cars. The photo below is the nose of the “Model 0” train.

     The roundhouse full of preserved steam deserved more time than I could spend, but most of the engines were very handsome to my eye. All are 42-inch gauge. One example is this 4-6-4 or Hudson type (in American nomenclature), a C62-1 class on JNR. Very nice lines.

The action we saw that afternoon was one of the excursion locomotives (there were two under steam) being turned on the turntable and then backed onto a garden track. It was a 2-8-2 or Mikado type, in JNR classification D51-200. Again, a very handsome locomotive to my eye. Here you see it backing off the turntable.

     I did note in several places around the facility an unusual track-end bumper design. The background engine is another Hudson, Class C61-2, but the foreground bumpers are the subject of this photo. Good luck on making up a few of these for your layout:

For a non-Japanese visitor, the museum does have one drawback, in that very few displays have English descriptions (beyond just the name of the item). But there is an English brochure, and for the knowledgeable railroad enthusiast, you do know what you are looking at in nearly every instance.
     Though I had not planned to visit this museum as part of our group travel, a very timely free afternoon in the schedule made it possible, and it was a highlight of the entire trip for me. I hope to go back sometime and spend a full day or more!
Tony Thompson

Riding trains in Japan

During much of the month of May, my wife Mary and I were traveling through Japan, starting in Tokyo and seeing much of central Japan, including the Japanese Alps, and then heading south and west to end our trip on the island of Kyushu, at Fukuoka. The long-distance and even some local travel was by train. That’s what I want to write about in this post.
     The bullet-train system of Japan, the Shinkansen (which just means “new trunk line”), has been around more than 50 years, with the first trains entering service in 1964. So it’s not exactly a new idea, but the Japanese have continued to innovate, improve, and increase speeds. Those are reasons the Japanese continue to be leaders in much of this technology.
     We first rode the oldest of the lines, the Tokaido line, which connects Tokyo and Osaka. Though it initially operated at 125 miles per hour, its speed has been progressively increased, with the current N700 trainsets normally running at 180 miles per hour.  Naturally these are now far more aerodynamic than the 1964 trains. Here is the end unit on an N700 trainset (both ends are the same).

     Perhaps the most surprising aspects of all these train are the passenger densities. They are very high on most lines, with the Tokaido line remaining the busiest, carrying more than 150 million passengers per year. At the busiest times of the day, morning and late afternoon, there are 13 trains per hour on this line alone, little more than 4 minutes between trains. These are 16-car trains, with 1323 seats per train, and it is indeed dramatic to witness the very rapid boarding and exiting of passengers. Here is a shot of a couple of the 16 cars in an N700 train.

     Of course Japan is not all Shinkansen trains. First of all, there are shorter routes of all kinds, along with local train service. The vast majority of Japan is still the 42-inch gauge recommended originally by British consultants when railway construction began in Japan (this gauge is rightfully called “Empire gauge” for its prevalence in many parts of the former British Empire). But the Shinkansen lines, specially constructed for the very high speeds, are all “global standard gauge” (4 feet, 8.5 inches). We rode a bunch of these local trains too, in many different areas. For example, here is the very nice “express” we took from Takayama to Kyoto. It was a six-car train, ad though most of Japan is electrified, it is diesel-powered.

The cars were a very familiar size from U.S. practice, 68-seat coaches, 17 rows of 2 + 2 seating. Like all the trains, they were clean and comfortable, and with very adequate leg room.

Probably among the most impressive things about Japanese railway travel is the number and length of tunnels. It’s a mountainous country, and every line we rode had tunnel after tunnel. The sheer investment is daunting. No wonder that tunneling is another technology in which the Japanese are leaders.
     The biggest cities, like Tokyo and Osaka, have “heavy-rail” commute services mixed in with subways. In Tokyo we rode the Japan Railways lines several times, and these were less crowded than the subway (at least when we rode the two modes). Here is such a train. In the lower right corner you can see the JR emblem.

The railway system in Japan was formerly government-owned and operated, under the name Japanese National Railway (JNR). Since 1987, however, it has been privatized into seven companies, but they adhere to strict rules on maintenance, operating practices, and cooperation, and are collectively known as the Japan Railways Group companies, all branded as JR.
     Most Japanese cities of any size have replaced their streetcars with subways, but there are exceptions. For example, here are typical streetcars in Hiroshima, modern and fairly quiet cars.

     Putting it all together, trains are really excellent transportation in Japan, fast, frequent and not excessively expensive. The only drawback for the traveler, as opposed to the commuter, is that hardly any trains have provision for luggage. The overhead racks are not large, and there usually is no luggage section at the end of cars. But all in all, we really enjoyed our train experiences in Japan.
     We also visited a superb railroad museum in Kyoto, which I will describe in a separate post.
Tony Thompson

Pacific Coast Region, NMRA, 2017

April 19th to 23rd were the dates of the annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Region of the National Model Railroad Association for 2017, held in Bakersfield, California. I was in attendance for most of the meet, and gave a couple of talks. There was a full clinic schedule, with many very interesting topics, organized mostly by Bruce Morden, who deserves credit for the fine program. Just one example, below, shows Dennis Drury in the middle of his talk about “A Cheap and Easy Automatic Block Signal System,” which naturally attracted full rooms both times he presented it.

Yes, it’s true, a lot of us sat in the dark, hour after hour at clinic after clinic, hopefully absorbing good or useful information.
     I always enjoy visiting the contest room, to see all the entries in various categories of the contest, and often we also have “display only,” non-judged, entries. One I liked (I apologize for not getting the modeler’s name) included some well-done open-car loads, such as the girders shown below.

     A very nice feature of the meeting was the portable switching layout brought by Robert Pethoud, called the Fall Creek Branch. Clinics about how the layout was designed and built were presented right at the layout, and separately, operating sessions were hosted in which crews were given a switchlist to follow. The modeling is very nice, as you can see in the view below of just one part of the layout (it’s 12 feet long). There was an article about this layout in the March 2016 issue of Model Railroader.

One crew that took up the operating challenge while I was there was Seth Neumann, seen in the foreground below in his role as conductor, and his engineer Pat LaTorres (behind him). They certainly had fun doing the switching, and their elapsed time to complete the job was among the better ones posted.

     The proximity of the convention site, Bakersfield, to Tehachapi railroading was naturally an irresistible stimulus to head up toward the mountains. On Friday evening, after the last afternoon clinic, a whole group drove out to Sand Cut and Bena, where we were lucky enough to see several trains, mostly BNSF. Here is a shot I got of one of the trains, crossing Caliente Creek, east of Bena,

     All in all, it was a good meet. Though Bakersfield is at the extreme south end of our Pacific Coast Region, any losses from our usual region attendees not making the trip were made up by a whole bunch of people from adjoining Pacific Southwest Region, and it was fun to renew acquaintances with many of them. I always enjoy regional NMRA conventions and try to attend as many as I can.
Tony Thompson

Great Basin Getaway, 2016

The Great Basin Getaway or GBG is an alternate-year operating event in the Salt Lake City area, consisting of a number of fine layouts which are operated by visitors. This was the 27th year this event has been held (but mostly in alternate years), so it is a kind of “senior” event among operating weekends. Lee Nicholas has long been the mover and shaker of this event, and headed it up again this year. I had not previously attended, but was invited this year and found it an excellent function.
     This year’s dates were September 8 to 10, and we were blessed with warm instead of searing hot weather, as can easily happen along the Wasatch front in September. I carpooled with three others, driving from the Bay Area to Salt Lake, and arriving a day early, we could go railfanning before the start of GBG. We chose to drive up to Soldier Summit, the old D&RGW main line, where there weren’t many trains running, but we did make a most interesting visit to the Utah Railway shop at Martin. Seeing a lineup of their big Morrison-Knudsen MK-50-3 units was impressive.

And just look at the surroundings! What a location. It was a fun day.
     The first layout on which I operated was Gary Peterson’s Salt Lake Southern. A large and beautifully scenicked layout, it ran very smoothly. The first job I was assigned was the local to Lander, Wyoming, which had a whole bunch of industry spots and required careful planning to carry out all the car placements in limited space. A bonus to this job was the opportunity to watch mainline trains traverse the two-turn helix to the upper level, an “open” helix in which trains could be viewed during almost all of their time climbing up or down, a nice feature for engineers, who don’t have their train disappear for multiple minutes. You can see into the helix at the upper left of the photo below, with the train descending on the lower line as it leaves the helix; the upper line is near the top of the photo. In the foreground is Lander, where I was working.

Of course I can’t do justice to this extensive layout with a single photo, and this one is just an example. It was fascinating to walk around and see all the working areas and, later in the day, to run a train over the whole main line.
     My second layout was the Utah Colorado Western layout of Lee Nicholas, in Corinne, Utah. This is a nationally known and justly renowned layout, and I felt privileged to operate there. Like the Peterson layout, it is quite large and beautifully scenicked, but has quite a different flavor of its own. I really liked many of the skillfully designed industrial structures on the layout, for example Utah Steel, as shown here:

The backdrop here is typical of the layout, well conceived “hazy” features in the distance. Another example of beautifully rendered scenery is this corner scene. The coved corner is close to the center of the photo.

All in all, a terrific layout, certainly one of the best I’ve operated on.
     I didn’t have the pleasure of operating on Rob Spangler’s Western Pacific, but was able to visit during an open-house evening. Rob has done a terrific job with his scenery, and I really enjoyed the chance to see this layout, which is well along but continuing to develop. In the photo below, I deliberately show the room corner and the lower deck, just to show how nicely the layout is presented. The scenery on the upper deck is absolutely first class.

     My third layout operating session was at Pat Bray’s Southern California switching layout. It includes SP, Santa Fe and UP, along with the Harbor Belt Line at San Pedro. There are four busy yards and lots of industries, so the various operating jobs involve transfer runs as well as local switching. It was a lot of fun. Shown below is Pat Bray at right, talking with one of the other operators, Bill Decker, at left. In the foreground are the orange groves at Pat’s town of Highgrove.

     This was a superb weekend, one of the better operating visits I have made. My thanks go to the organizers, who presented a smoothly running weekend (including one heck of a banquet), and also to my carpool mates. With all of us confined to one automobile for all those hours, it’s most impressive we are not only still on speaking terms, but even remain friends!
Tony Thompson