visiting photographer, part 3 - the Empire Builder in action

Hajime Hosokawa visited the layout recently with his camera in hand, and I enjoyed the different perspectives he gave me of the layout, as seen through his eyes and his camera. The following set of photos show the Empire Builder making its way from Seattle towards Chicago:

Having departed King St. Station in Seattle, the Builder is progressing northbound through Interbay/Balmer yard, despite the fender-bender taking place on the Dravus St. bridge above. I also don't know why the train is on the "A track" and not the main - seems like a dispatcher error on my part.

Leaving the city lights behind, the Builder approaches a trestle along Highway 2 in the north cascades. The narrow gage passenger coach on the right side is waiting to take miners home at the end of the work day from the Cascade Copper Company mine on the narrow gage branch.

Here the Builder is rounding the "Index Loop" near Mt. Index and the town of Index, WA. The bridge above it was build years ago by Paul Scoles and came here after he replaced it with a low trestle to improve the view. Now it improves this view, and carries trains on a secret cut-off between Skykomish and Bellingham staging yards only used for staging purposes. The backdrop was painted from photos of Mt. Index by our son Robin back in about 2004.

There used to be a large sawmill in Skykomish, which I have (so far) modeled as a pile of logs and a water tank. Here the Builder passes by on the "Rainbow loop" which allows trains to turn around at Skykomish.

Having turned around, GN #510 and its Empire Builder takes its rightful place alongside the other steeds in the Skykomish staging yard, ready to race forward on another day. Many thanks to Hajime Hosokawa for the wonderful set of photos in these last three blog posts.

from the eyes of a visiting photographer, part 2

Here is a second set of pictures of the layout in action from visiting photographer Hajime Hosokawa, showing artistic and creative angles:

Here is E7 #510 bringing the Empire Builder in from Chicago, through the cascade forests. More on that coming up in the next blog post.

This shot shows one train crossing Royal Brougham on the lower level while another crosses the Skagit River bridges near Mt. Vernon. I decided to leave out the water under the bridges to preserve the view of the road crossing below. (Another one of those painful design challenges we are always facing with model railroads.) The building flat on the lower level is a stand-in for what eventually will be a backdrop of the various freight houses and industries located east of Stacy and Argo yards.

At some point in the session, we brought out the Bachmann 3-truck shay for fun, and he captured it passing the rowdy swing dancing scene at the Everett passenger station. Nobody seems to be paying attention to the locomotive - too busy with their dance moves...

Despite the unfinished scenery and exposed wires, the view down the turntable track is still a favorite. This locomotive is clearly planning to do some work.

The GP9 has made it off the turntable and is taking on sand, but meanwhile our U-boat (see previous post) is seen chugging through town with its long train.

The Geep is now ready for action, while logs pass by in the foreground and aluminum billets in the background. The tracks in the center background represent the Scott Paper Co. in Everett.

I normally take this shot closer to the locomotives in the Skykomish yard, for dramatic effect, but Hajime's photo shows the overall context well, with the mainline along Carkeek Park on the lower left, the MILW's Limestone Jct. branch and its grey concrete silo in the upper left, and the gravel pit at Grotto in the lower right.

The next post will feature a series of shots following the progress of the Empire Builder across the layout.

from the eyes of a visiting photographer

You can look at your layout a thousand times, and you see it through your eyes a thousand times. There's nothing like a visiting photographer to give you a different perspective. Here are some shots taken recently by a new visitor to the layout, Hajime Hosokawa, showing some angles and perspectives I don't usually "see." His entry in the visitor logbook reads "This place is an artistic masterpiece!", but I think perhaps his photos are the masterpiece. In any event, it's amazing what you can see through someone else's eyes:

This U-boat is one of the best locos on the railroad. Made by Rivarossi about 5 years ago, it has great detail, including roller bearings in the trucks that rotate as the engine moves. It would never occur to me to take a picture of it on this plain shelf with the sky backdrop behind it. And you would never guess it is part of a 4-engine consist pulling a 32+ car train. Here it comes! You can practically hear the horsepower!

The slight over-exposure of this photo evokes a hot summer day, with this double-header climbing towards Vail Jct. on my fictitious D&RGW extension to Everett, WA. The locomotive is by Blackstone, and the cast rocks were done years ago by Eric Vannice. My son Robin and I painted the backdrop around 2004. Who cares about the black-painted bare plywood under the tender?! Let's call it a bridge!

This is a new take on a photo I usually take at a different angle, lined up with the mainline through Delta yard. It shows our double-header having passed Vail Jct., with some narrow gage hoppers at the Cascade Copper Company waiting to be hauled out, two legs of Delta Wye, and the steel trestle on the standard gage mainline heading up towards Skykomish in the foreground. In the far distance on the left is Legotown/Harbor Island on the bottom, Interbay/Balmer yard in the middle, and Bellingham staging on the top.

You don't notice details until you notice them. Here are a couple of rock climbers working on a disguised pillar in the middle of the room. These rocks are just extruded styrene foam carved with a rasp, covered with white latex house paint and then some acrylic stains. Not as good as cast plaster, but it'll do "for now".

Here's a couple of railfans admiring the passing Thrall-door lumber car near the Samish river crossing north of Burlington, WA.

This scene (near the freight station in Everett) is a tribute to the many hours I spent getting rid of my mom's household goods when she needed to downsize and move into a nursing home. I still have two old antique chest of drawers, if you're interested (prototype dimensions only).

The Interbay Car Repair Facility is a favorite railfanning spot on the prototype, and this unfinished scene hints at its potential for a modeling subject. The blue crane suffered a fall to the floor, so it needs repair, too. I have no idea what the fire truck is doing in there.

I usually take this shot from a lower angle, but now that we have drones I suppose it works. The overpass is Dravus St., and the train moving through Interbay on the "A track" is the same 32+ car train that was being pulled by the U-boat back in the beginning of this post. In the upper right hand corner are the buildings in downtown Seattle. It looks like there was a collision on the Dravus St. overpass I'd better go look into...

progress on the sea floor underneath the MILW car barge

Eric Vannice came over yesterday and we laid down the sea floor underneath the MILW car barge. It looks really cool, except that once the car barge is on top of it, it's hard to see much of it. But it's still a cool idea. The plexiglass water surface is removable, so we plan to go back in and add some divers and a mermaid after the rest of it is finished to our liking. Here's a few pictures:

The MILW boxcar that had fallen off the barge and is buried in the mud was originally Ray Wheeler's idea, much appreciated!

We decided to also include a Great Northern car upside down, just to give Doug Paasch and other die-hard GN fans a hard time! :)

Now, on to the next step, detailing. First off is a reclining mermaid attracting some interest from divers:

operating session #23

The Burrlington Northern held op session #23 on Saturday, Dec 7 from 10am to 4pm. Dave Enger and I shared the dispatching, with Dave Cook on Interbay, Todd Von Stup and his son Nik on Stacy, Len Thompson and Tim Taylor on Everett, and Mike Chandler on Burlington. Doug Hicks, John Thompson and Joe Green worked the locals and pool trains. Here are some photo and video highlights:

We had three visitors from Vancouver BC, one of whom (Len) was generously willing and able to manage the Everett/Bayside yard. I had fun watching him get his arms around it, and as you can see he came up with some clever solutions to trains threading their way through his territory:

Mike Chandler enjoyed the Concrete Local while handling the extensive switching in the Burlington area:

...sometimes sharing the stairs with Todd and Nik, while they worked the "Chrome Collector" job in downtown Seattle, from Stacy St. yard. It looks like Nik is handling the throttle while Dad tries to figure out which car goes where:

The Chrome Collector was a lot of fun this time, knocking into illegally parked cars, per prototype practice. Click here to see a low quality video of the crashes:

Meanwhile, Dave called for a video crew when he saw that his southbound train #139 was moving across the Snohomish River bridge #10 in parallel to the Sky Local up on the trestle near Skykomish. You can see the resulting video here.

Once he entered Bayside yard in Everett, though, things bogged down:

And it took them quite a while to sort it out!

On the whole a very fun day!

operating session #22

The Burrlington Northern held op session #22 on Friday, Dec 6 from 10am to 4pm. Dave Enger dispatched, with Dave Cook and Ray Wheeler on Interbay, Terry Dillon and Eric Dahlgren on Stacy, Kirk Reddie and Tim Taylor on Everett, Joe Green on MILW, and Don Trettel on Burlington. Lisa Murray, Al Lowe and Steve Haas worked the locals and pool trains. Here are some photo highlights:

Al did a nice job with the Sky Local, which is seen here rounding the bend on its way into the Skykomish yard. Not a long train, but very photogenic:

Here he's picking up the loaded gravel from the Grotto pit before spotting his empties there:

Somehow Al and Lisa managed to have a cornfield meet in Mukilteo. Lisa was kind enough to pose for the photo, but Al was too eager to resolve the situation:

Meanwhile, Kirk was getting his head wrapped around the Everett Bayside yard. It was going fine when Steve brought in a train:

 And then Don:

But by the time Lisa arrived on the scene things were pretty plugged up! She seems to be enjoying it, but I don't know about Kirk. You can see that he used at least one of the styrene I-beam "car tabs" I had made the previous day (in the orange gondola), but I didn't see any of the other yardmasters use them, and Kirk's comment was that they were useful for the first hour or two, but once you had the waybill scheme figured out it wasn't worth the extra time to use them:

We enjoyed a relaxing quick lunch at the nearby QFC/Starbucks:

And then got back to work. Here is the MILW coast train under Joe's control, passing through Interbay, and here is a link to the video of same:

And here's Terry working away on the Stacy St. yard complex:

We also ran the two passenger trains (Empire Builder and International), but I didn't get any photos of them. All in all a great day!

colored car tabs for yardmasters

At an op session last year, Kirk Reddie pointed out that it would be useful for yardmasters to have some type of temporary tags to place on top of cars to make classifying them easier (he said he got the idea from Pat Lana's layout in Colorado). The tags would not stay on the cars when they left the yard, just during the classification process. I liked this idea. Taking some measurements of typical roofwalks, it seemed that 5/16" Evergreen I-Beams would do a got job, so I bought some of them.

The next step was to paint each side of each strip a color corresponding to the waybill colors I use: Blue is north, Red is south, Yellow is UP, Orange is MILW, Green is Everett, White is Interbay, etc. Here are some beams being painted two shades of pink, to correspond with the two main districts in the Stacy St/Argo area:

Next is to cut the strips to 1/2" lengths. This length is short enough for them to fit in between hatch doors on top of my many ACF cement hopper cars. This was made quick and easy using the NWSL "Chopper" desktop tool:

Then, I sorted the various colored tabs to have an even distribution for each yardmaster:

And finally, I tried placing them on some cars in Everett, corresponding with the the waybills in their car card pockets:

You can see here that five of these cars need to be sent south (red, yellow and orange), without re-blocking, and one needs to be re-spotted in the Everett area (green). We're having op sessions here tomorrow and the next day, so we'll see if these tabs are used by anyone to help anyone. Stay tuned.