A couple of inches of snow falling on Ottawa last evening made our visit to Bill Scobie's expanding Rio Grande Southern's layout that much more enjoyable. Bill had nine trains set up for us, and it took until 11 o'clock before the last freight pulled into Ridgeway.Two of Bill's friends - Don from upstate New York and Joe from Pennsylvania - had made the trip for this operating session. Here we see Bill explaining a few of the changes since their last visit.
As well, Bill Meridith and his son Jason joined our Friday Night gang in enjoying this marvellous depiction of narrow gauge railroading.
Suspecting I might be the only one to think of it, I brought my camera to document some of the happy faces as they made their way through this great scenery; unfortunately, I forgot to bring the tripods, so some of the pictures may be a bit blurry. As I am just getting the scenic part of my own layout going (see the previous blog entry), I concentrated on that aspect of Bill's railroad.Scenic details such as the dead trees and other litter oddly bring the layout to life. Remembering their effect, I have started to collect lots of modelling litter before the snow hides it entirely. The Spirea will be showing for the winter, but the two or three feet of snow covering the ground around it is likely to discourage foraging until the Spring. Leaves to be ground up in the blender are completely out of the question.
I've also remembered how good the track looked at Bill's with the ballast brought right up to the tops of the ties.
This curved switch appealed to me ...As did this bucolic scene.
My evening started with a train from the new trackage at Teluride to Vance Junction. You can see my train cooling down at the station after completing its run.
Here's the view in the opposite direction. Both are on the upper level.
It was hot in the cab, so I took a break before checking on the other activities.
Back out on the layout, David was pulling his train into Placerville ...
Mike and Bob were filling up the tender with a bit more water ...Fred's train was escaping ...
Stanley was struggling up the grade ...
Ron was finishing up his run ...
and both Tom and Chris were having a serious discussion.Here are a few more shots from a very satisfying
evening.
2 comments:
Hi Jim, Thanks for posting to the blog. You're doing a great job! With seven Friday Nighters and an equal number of other guests, the evening was most memorable. I can say that Bob and I were kept busy with our mainline train all evening long traversing the entire layout, spotting and lifting traffic for other destinations along the line!
It was great to meet Don again and to be introduced to Joe for the first time. Joe is the owner of "Rags to Riches" a company that makes laser cut kits for the western thinkers! Had a great time!
Cheers, Mike
Jim. Great article on our exploits. We sure had fun. See you at Bob's next week. Thanks Bill for hosting the FNGers. It is a pleasure as always to run your Sn3 empire.
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