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Siskiyou Line tour report from the 2015 NMRA National Journals/Blogs
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MRH Founder 17,561 posts joef MRH Founder 17,561 posts
joef

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This is the home thread for the week of the NMRA National, and updates on the Siskiyou Line layout tours / op session.

My layout tours are Wed, August 26 and Thu, August 27. We'll be taking photos and posting them here along with reports of what's happening,

Joe Fugate​
Publisher, Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine

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OK Pix New member 1 post
OK Pix

Self Guided Tours

Hi Joe & Patty,

I'm not sure the first message got thru. Would there be any chance of seeing your Siskiyou Line on the way back from the National Convention on Saturday? We live in Southern Oregon and would appreciate the opportunity. We are loyal MRH and Trainmaster fans and enjoy everything you've done. I realize your in the Woodburn area and it seems to me there may be an address on one of your videos. But please forward if you can arrange this, Many thanks, OK Carhart Jacksonville Oregon . Just Email or (cell (541) 690-4398) Thank you.  
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joef MRH Founder 17,561 posts
joef

Unfortunately no

Unfortunately, the layout won't be open except for the scheduled tours Wed and Thu ... Otherwise we are booked solid with the train show and banquets Fri, Sat, and Sun until way late, and we need to leave for the train show venue in north Portland ( we're 30 miles south of Portland city center ) so we need to roll out of bed circa 6 am every morning and get on the road. So the short answer is sorry, can't open the layout except for Wed and Thu of the convention week as planned.

Joe Fugate​
Publisher, Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine

[siskiyouBtn]

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jlrc47 Regular poster 401 posts
jlrc47

walk through video

I know you said TMTV will be at your layout but any new video of a walk through of your layout? Hint hint!

gniture1.png 

Amherst Railway Society   HHJ YouTube channel

 
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joef MRH Founder 17,561 posts
joef

Barry Silverthorn will be there

Barry Silverthorn will be there with two cameras shooting the Siskiyou Line layout tours. So you will in effect get a "you were there" report of the tours of my layout, as well as layout prep fun. There's not much action yet, but there should be lots to report as of Wed and Thu of this week when the tours and OP SIG op session takes place. Right now, I'm tuning the layout, running trains and fixing issues as I discover them. Already there's been two major breakthroughs with issues discovered and corrected. Both had to do with staging yard problems ... I corrected them and things are running much nicer. In both cases the problem was not immediately obvious. But I kept studying the problem until I was able to determine a likely cause. Some tests then validated the problem was eliminated, so I knew I had found the cause. I then implemented a permanent correction and hooray, things were much improved.

Joe Fugate​
Publisher, Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine

[siskiyouBtn]

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Joe Brugger Prolific poster 1,014 posts
Joe Brugger

Hey!

Tell us about the cat, Joe.
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jeffshultz MRH Staff 8,002 posts
jeffshultz

Cat?

I've met that cat, I think... he's not supposed to be in the layout room....

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Jeff Shultz - MRH Technical Assistant
DCC Features Matrix/My blog index
Modeling a fictional GWI shortline combining three separate areas into one freelance-ish railroad.
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joef MRH Founder 17,561 posts
joef

The cat ...

Well, the cat has been confined to a room upstairs (Patty's MRH shipping office) in order to keep him from going places he should not while there's guests in the house. With all the MRH staff roamimg around, he gets nervous and tries to go to far corner places to hide. Meanwhile last might we opened all the windows in the layout room and opened all the doors to the upstairs so the whole house fan could air out the layout room with nice cool fresh air overnight. This morning before I closed up all the doors from upstairs down into the layout, I poked my head in the MRH shipping office (and cat confinement room) to ask Patty a question and the cat jetted out. He ran directly down the stairs and into the layout room like a flash because that seemed the safest and farthest away place from all the strange guests. Great! Now the cat was hidden away in the layout room - and the most damage done to the layout in the past has been from the cat - he's denuded several locations of trees, for example. Barry had a great idea - let's all go down into the layout room and stomp around on the raised floor and raise a lot of din and see if the cat would decide upstairs might be safer after all. Well, it worked! As soon as the cat came back upstairs for sanctuary, Patty closed all the doors and put the cat back into his MRH shipping office haven. Phew. Great idea, Barry!

Joe Fugate​
Publisher, Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine

[siskiyouBtn]

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joef MRH Founder 17,561 posts
joef

Barry Silverthorn, working on the Siskiyou Line

Here's a photo I just took of Barry Silverthorn, working on some Siskiyou Line scenery!

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Joe Fugate​
Publisher, Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine

[siskiyouBtn]

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joef MRH Founder 17,561 posts
joef

Last day to prepare!

The layout's almost ready to go. I'll try to post some photos of the last minute prep since tomorrow is the first tour! Oh yes, and tonight are the MRH and TMTV clinics down at convention central ... My only real appearance at the convention until the Train Show on Friday.

Joe Fugate​
Publisher, Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine

[siskiyouBtn]

Read my blog
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joef MRH Founder 17,561 posts
joef

Barry running a train

We did a lot of test running of trains today. Here's a shot of Barry Silverthorn running a train up the Coos Bay branch. This location models Remote, OR.

1408-web.jpg 

Joe Fugate​
Publisher, Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine

[siskiyouBtn]

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choo choo chuck Regular poster 119 posts
choo choo chuck

layout tour

Joe,

Best wishes for a successful open house.

I am looking forward to future posts.

Regards,

Chuck
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TimGarland MRH Author 1,099 posts
TimGarland

Handrails on Locomotives

Hey Joe,

I noticed in your video series you had a number of units that were pressed into service prior to receiving their handrails. Were you able to get these units updated before your open house?

Thanks for keeping us updated on your Siskiyou Line!

Tim Garland
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joef MRH Founder 17,561 posts
joef

All locos are detailed

Quote:

I noticed in your video series you had a number of units that were pressed into service prior to receiving their handrails. Were you able to get these units updated before your open house?

Everything running on the layout now has handrails and the correct cab number. No more yellow stickies and missing handrails. Also, more locos are properly weathered, although not all (yet).

Joe Fugate​
Publisher, Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine

[siskiyouBtn]

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joef MRH Founder 17,561 posts
joef

Open for tour!

It's Wednesday and we're open for the Layout Design SIG tour. Here's a couple British region modelers chatting with Joe, standing in the Camas Valley area - that's just a bit of Tenmile Creek off to the right ...

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Joe Fugate​
Publisher, Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine

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joef MRH Founder 17,561 posts
joef

Son Joey, running a train

Son Joey Jr. is one of the two helping run trains today ... here he is running the Siskiyou Line West across the North Umpqua River.

1417-web.jpg 

Joe Fugate​
Publisher, Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine

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joef MRH Founder 17,561 posts
joef

A visiting modeler

A visiting modeler enjoys the North Umpqua River bridge scene ...


0736-web.jpg 

Joe Fugate​
Publisher, Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine

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BoulderCreek Regular poster 269 posts
BoulderCreek

Can't wait for the

Can't wait for the TMTV episode! 

It's a bit hard to come see your layout for the open day due to living 8320 miles away in Australia! I googled the distance from my house to yours 

So TMTV it is. Hope you have a great day today.

Cheers
Luke.
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santa fe 1958 Regular poster 393 posts
santa fe 1958

Not two but three....

Not two but three dodgy looking British visitors......

Couldn't make it myself today unfortunately as I was out visiting some other layouts.

Brian

 

Brian

Deadwood City Railroad, modeling a Santa Fe branch line in the 1960's!

http://deadwoodcityrailroad.blogspot.co
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kleaverjr Prolific poster 2,872 posts
kleaverjr

So the BIG Question is...

..did the Bridge at Coos Bay pass inspection this time! *wink wink* :-D

Ken L.
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dmikee Active Member 30 posts
dmikee

self drive layout tours

Unfortunately all the south area layouts were available only by bus tour leaving us self-drive folk out of the mix. We did not discover this until Thursday morning, naturally after all the buses had departed. Did you know about this in advance?
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joef MRH Founder 17,561 posts
joef

Wednesday LD SIG car tour

I knew about the Thu morn bus tours but expected car tours Thu afternoon. Was surprised when no car tours showed up. There also were LD SIG car tours on Wed and anyone could buy that tour, not just LD SIG members. We had almost 200 come through on Wed and that would have worked if you'd known about it.

Joe Fugate​
Publisher, Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine

[siskiyouBtn]

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Mark Dance Regular poster 240 posts
Mark Dance

LDSIG Tour

I thoroughly enjoyed the LDSIG self-guided tour of layouts on Wednesday.  I saw many beautiful and impressive layouts including Bill Decker's Southern Pacific Cascade Line, Tom Dill's Southern Pacific - Ashland Div, Charles Clark's Modoc Southern Pacific Line, Rod Loder's SP in Oregon (and his workshop, wow!), Jerry Boudreaux AT&SF Pasquinel Division,  and Joe's Southern Pacific Siskiyou Line. 

Joe: thank you for opening your layout to the tour.  It was a treat to visit such an influential layout and to chat with you and Patty.  The layout's design is beautiful.

My only disappointment was not being able to get to more layouts on Wednesday especially Bruce Barney's Arrow Lake and Western, and the Willamette Model Railroad Club's Columbia, Cascade and Western....we just ran out of time.  We were fortunate enough to operate on Charlie Comstock's Bear Creek and South Jackson and had to try and get there for 6:00PM...Charlie’s session was awesome and we crawled back to the hotel just before midnight.  Quite the day!

(BTW: The whole week was fantastic.  The clinics were very impressive (thx again Charlie!) , it was great to meet so many people (Dr. Chubb, Lance Mindheim, Tony Koester, Jack Burgess, Bernie Kempinski, Lee Nicholas and all the OPSIG/LDSIG  gang) and I got to tour three drop dead gorgeous layouts in the bus tours: Tom Miller's Fn3 D&RGW, Rob Carey's N scale D&RGW Tennessee Pass, and Rick Ernst's N Scale Northbank Road.)

Wow^2!  The Portland National organizers get a huge round of applause from me.  Well done!

md

Mark Dance, Chief Everything Officer - Columbia & Western Railway

Videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/markdance63       Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/27907618@N02/sets/72157624106602402/
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bkempins Regular poster 317 posts
bkempins

Thanks Joe

Enjoyed my visit to the Siskiyou Line. It was fun to see after reading so much about it.  Joe, I hope you got some sleep now that the con is over.  

BTW I posted a more detailed report of my experience at the Con and show on my blog at this link. We arrived Tuesday and departed Saturday, so we did not to see it all. It's fun to read these reports and see what we missed.

 

Bernard Kempinski

​
 
Personal Layout Blog: http://usmrr.blogspot.com/
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JamesS Regular poster 195 posts
JamesS

Siskiyou Line layout tour ?

Quote:

Barry Silverthorn will be there with two cameras shooting the Siskiyou Line layout tours. So you will in effect get a "you were there" report of the tours of my layout, as well as layout prep fun.

I must have missed these video's, were they on TMTV ?

JamesS

Milwaukee  to  Lac du Flambeau  via Chicago & North Western

 
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