Art Sylvester's La Patera & Pacific

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1 Upcoming Meets: Saturday Nov AM Art Sylvester Goleta (805) Track and Battery Power Please bring: A-G Appetizers H-O Salads P-Z Desserts December 15 Siegel Holiday Party January 5 Eldridge February March OPEN April 27 Morgan Questions and changes about the meets should be addressed to Jim Eldridge. Contact information is on the back page. November 2012 Art Sylvester's La Patera & Pacific Art says that the layout is about the same as it was, as he spent his train time refinishing the deck, benches, tables, and chairs. The yard and layout look good. The layout is a narrow folded dogbone that runs across the back yard. There is an extension that loops down and around and around and to and fro and nearly gets lost before finally connecting back to the original route. Be advised that one 280 degree curve is eight feet in diameter; anything wider than 6 ½ inches may have some tight squeezes; an 18 foot long grade exceeds 5.5%; and that one of the underpasses is only 7 ½ inches high. Both the steep grade and the low bridge can be bypassed. Wheelchair accessible, plenty of street parking or in the school lot down the street. Rain cancels. Sylvester meet Directions and map omitted from on line edition. Please call meet host for directions. In addition to running trains, Art is going to have a silent auction. He has two locomotives and several cars that need to find new homes. So, if you have something to sell, bring it along and maybe you'll go home with some extra cash for more train stuff Is Coming Fast If you have a yen to host a meet in 2013, now is the time to contact Jim Eldridge and reserve a date. Prime days are going fast. Speaking of 2013, It's Time to Renew If you are getting the printed version of the newsletter, look at the address label on the back page, If it says 2012, you need to renew to continue receiving it. If you get the version, your expiration date is in the cover letter that came with this issue.

2 All Aboard!! More Leftovers From Last Month Please welcome our newest members, Dave and Judy Hayes of Nipomo, which is just north of Santa Maria. Dave reports that their layout has about 800 feet of track, some of which wraps around the house.. Some of the track is hand laid, and it is all battery only. It has a natural setting, with a water feature. Dave says they are looking forward to getting more involved with the GCGRS, but won't abandon the Central California Coast GRS. Status Report Our group now has 80 families. That is the highest it has been in at least ten years, and probably ever. Members who have been around since the earliest days have stories about having well over 100 members when we had the layouts at the Ventura County Fair. I don't have any rosters that support that number. The only complete, dated roster I have that is more than 10 years old is from 1994 (after we stopped the Fair layouts), and it has 65 families. Just under half of our members live in Ventura county. A bit more than one quarter live in Santa Barbara county. The rest are about evenly split between Los Angeles county, and everyplace else. Mary Says Thanks Mary DeBievre asked me to tell you how grateful she is for the beautiful cards and the heartfelt sympathy that everyone expressed. Paul and Francine Salverson tied the knot on September 22; but are delaying their honeymoon until the fireworks convention next February in Lake Havasu. This is the same convention where Paul popped the question, complete with fireworks, last year. Paul is a licensed pyrotechnican (fireworks expert). SLO Freight House Museum Opens For a Day The San Luis Obispo Freight House Museum has been a work in progress for more than 20 years, and it still won't open for business until the fall of 2013 at the earliest. Nevertheless, it had a sneak preview during the Central Coast Railroad Fair on October 6. The crew has been so engrossed in sorting out the exterior, that the interior only holds temporary(?) modular layouts. One of the layouts has this very interesting bridge/trestle combo. It is supposed to be inspired by a bridge on the West Side Lumber Company, but I Leftovers from Last Month The article about the Siegel's meet mentioned that Kim Whitaker took a group picture, but at press time I had not received it. Here it is: can't find anything about it. Next time, some of us will turn around so she can get our best side. Thanks, Kim. Here is a long view of the inside. There is also a gift shop, and a display of steam whistles. None were working, which was probably just as well as they are audible for several miles. There was also a guided tour of the area.

3 John and Jackie Chaudier's Meet LGB Forney with a one car train. I was about to call it an express, but that doesn't really fit a train pulled by a Forney, as lovely as it looks. The big change on the layout was the painted background was extended all the way around the yard to the storage facility. Marvin Hellwitz brought a Piko Mogul painted up in SP Daylight colors,and John reports that the track was numbered It's a nice engine, but working perfectly the day before, but very odd looking, as the real 4449 is a there had been just enough rain over GS4. night to make a mess. Despite the broad curves and level track, the wet Bill Fraser ran his two cylinder Shay conditions made it a day for small back and forth along the front track engines and short trains. Eventually and down and back on the track to the the track dried out and everything ran storage yard. well. John Ryan ran his GP38 on the point Bill Fincher brought a yellow Hartland of a very short train. Mack with gondolas. He also ran his I brought a Chris Walas Special, a railbus made from a Hartland Mack attached somehow to a caboose. As interesting as it looks, it had some mechanical problem, so I took it off before it got stuck in the tunnel. Rex Davis brought a small European outline LGB engine and one car. John Chaudier wasn't about to let us have all the fun. He ran his SOO Line GP38 on the point of Jackie's Halloween train. Thanks to Bill Fincher for some of these pictures. And thanks to John and Jacke for hosting another great meet.

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6 Georges & Marie Arseneault's Meet The weather was hot, but at least the winds had died down from the 60 mph the day before. Still, the heat kept most people in the shade all day. Early arrivers got to walk the track and pick up all the debris. A side attraction was Madame Mystere, who read palms for anyone who was interested. Georges now has four layouts. One has track power, two are battery power only, and one is one inch scale. And that doesn't include a line around the upper levels inside the living room. The battery layouts are known as the Dolly Partons, for reasons you can probably guess from the picture below. Bob Woodward and his friend Collin Westphal brought a one inch scale live steam It steams well, and likes to run, which was good, because it ran all day. It's a fun engine to ride behind. I ran my Hartland Mack and a short train of gondolas early on, and then switched to taking pictures when everyone else showed up. Gary Raymond brought the most unusual engine: It was a LEGO motor block with an alien for an engineer. It was battery powered and controlled not by radio but by an infra-red link. John Power ran a K37 and a very short passenger train. He took some ribbing for running the combine backwards, but John has always been more interested in running trains for enjoyment than counting rivets. Randy Brylie brought a bunch of engines, some of which hadn't been out of the box until this meet. They included Chessie SW1200 and GP7, a UP ALCO S-4, and a Bachmann logging Mallett. Some of them ran light, while others took turns on the point of a block of billboard reefers. Jim Eldridge brought his D&RGW black and yellow GP9 which pulled the longest train of the day with more than a dozen cars. No surprise there, this engine did extremely well in Beaver's pulling contest way back in Georges Arseneault ran a D&RGW K37 for the first time. Thanks to Georges and Marie for another memorable meet.

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9 Central California Railroad Festival Ini addition to the sneak opening of the SLO Freight House Museum detailed on page 3, there were a number of other events such as rides on the Amtrack Sufrliner that was running up and down a few stations and back. There were also some businesses that had gotten tie-ins. Most of these were model train shops, naturally. Then there was Dr Burnstein's Ice Cream Lab. Doc has several stores, this one was in Arroyo Grande. The store has a loop of G scale track around the ceiling, and some posters that discuss the history of the Pacific Coast Railway, which was a narrow gauge that ran from San Luis Obispo to Los Olivos from 1873 to As a layout, It's not worth a special trip, but if you are going by, and if ice cream with names like motor oil (dark chocolate, fudge, and Kahlua), Elvis Presley (banana ice cream with nuts) and Hob Goblin (your guess is as good as mine) sound appealing, it's worth getting off the freeway for. There were also several museums that participated, from the Santa Maria Valley Historical Railway Museum to the Oceano Depot Association. All of their displays were in the smaller scales, so we'll skip over them. Several people opened their home layouts, including our members Mark and Sheila Goodman, and Geoff Clinton, who all live in Santa Maria. I got there about half way through their open houses, and discovered that they had already attracted about 30 people. They came from all over California, from Sacramento all the way to 29 Palms. Here is a battery powered SW1200 on Mark Goodman's smaller figure eight layout. Walter Wajda is not a member of the GCGRS, but he is a member of the CCCGRS, and has a very large layout packed into a relatively small space. Geoff Clinton is one of our newer members, and is all about live steam. At present, his layout is a level loop on a wood base. He is already planning a major expansion across the back yard. The planter is built, and he is building trial layouts with garden hose. Here he is running a European outline engine, but he also ran a SR&RL from Roundhouse Engineering. There were also several other engines in the steaming bays, but I didn't see them run. Ed Morse is a member of the GCGRS, and is in the process of building a layout in the space in the picture below.. You may remember Ed wrote the article about speeders that ran recently. He has two tucked into a corner of his yard, although how he gets them out is difficult to imagine. The buildings on the right side of this picture are not the neighbor's houses. They are a tiny warehouse, and station that Ed is planning to use as storage space. He has large collections of train related stuff that need a more pernanent home than scattered around the house as at present. His wife will be glad when the mini warehouses are finished and the collections move into it.

10 GCGRS Membership Application Form Membership in the Gold Coast Garden Railway Society is open to anyone who is interested in outdoor model railroading. Dues are $20 per year if you need a printed copy of the newsletter mailed to you; or $10 if you can take the newsletter via . New members, please add $6 for each name tag that you want to have. Membership runs from January to December. Make checks payable to Bruce Kuebler for GCGRS. Bring this application and payment to any meet, or mail it to: Bruce Kuebler Encino Dr Oak View CA First Name Last Name: Spouse/Partner/Other(SPO) First Name: SPO Last Name, if different: Street Address Newsletter: Gary Olmstead (805) garyolmstead AT earthlink DOT net Membership: Bruce Kuebler (805) pbkuebler AT sbcglobal DOT net Meets: Jim Eldridge (818) sjeldridge AT earthlink DOT net NOTE NEW web site: City State Zip Home Phone: ( ) I enclose $20 because I love to receive a printed newsletter in the mail I enclose $10 because I want to get the newsletter two days earlier by I also need name tags, so I have added $6 each For new members: Would you like some help designing and/or building your layout? (Yes/No) If yes, what would you like help with? Gold Coast Garden Railway Society Encino Dr Oak View, CA Webmaster: John Albin jtalbin AT aol DOT com Please put GCGRS in the subject line of any correspondence.