MINI-BUNCH NEWSLETTER The Mini-Bunch newsletter is usually published 4 times a year on an irregular schedule. Membership and a subscription to the Newsletter are $8.00 for 3 years or with Registration at a recent Mini-Bunch meeting. Website: http://www.narrowtracks.com/minibunch John Hansen & Ted Wiese Editors Volume 40 Number 3 Sept 2011 email: jvhansen@earthlink.net or ted.wiese@gmail.com Contents Revenge of the Snipe Fall Meet Summer meet Alvada RR Colorado Report Clear Creek Doings Anyone for Narrow Gauge? 31 st NNGC Convention Revenge of the Snipe Well, here it is late summer and the best time of the year. Cooler weather, football, and train shows. I know many of you headed for Hickory, NC, for the NNGC and I hope you all had a safe and wonderful time. Wish I could have been there, but circumstances didn t allow it, so I will wait for your reports on what I missed. The guys doing the Bear Creek Tramroad, all Mini-Bunchers, had their display at Hickory, so I hope you stopped over, drooled, and said hello. Your King Snipe did build a building for the display. This may come as a shock to many that I actually built something, but I did..and it was fun! I even started a second one! In between the glue and paint drying, I managed to do my alltime favorite model activity and that is armchair modeling. An easy chair, cold or hot drink, and a good magazine or book is all that is needed. Looking at old RMC s I reread several of Lester Jordan s articles from the 1970 s. He modeled the BB&K and the Shawmut on a small layout in HO and HOn3. Pretty inspiring stuff. Got my juices flowing on places in Ohio that had standard and narrow gauge lines together and I focused on Belle Valley, where the OR&W and the Cleveland and Marietta Branch of the PRR came together. It would make a great module in any scale. I even found a picture on the net of a C&M train pulling a string of tank cars during the oil boom in the late 19th and early 20th century. Coal, oil, steam, and old wooden cars! What s not to like here! Another series of RMC articles that has stood the test of time was Frary and Hayden s Elk River Saga and Thatcher s Inlet. With the reintroduction of the old AHM Mini-Trains from the 1960 s, I was wondering if anyone will tackle these layouts and use updated material? As many of you may have heard Fritz Prosch took ill beginning on Monday May 31st when he was taken to Fairfield Medical Center in Lancaster. He was diagnosed with an infected gall bladder, which could not be removed until the infection was gone and he had a 3 way by-pass heart surgery. All in all he spent a total of 48 days in the hospital or rehab facility. Determined that he was going to be at the NNGC in Hickory he was able to recuperate with a solid dose of positive attitude, model building, and story telling. The Friday before leaving for Hickory he was diagnosed with a case of pneumonia, but with a combination of drugs and sweet talking his female doctor he was permitted to go south, where he joined other Mini- Bunchers for a jolly good time. Fritz now feels like a rebuilt Heisler and wishes to thank all that visited, sent cards, or called to check on him. He now has a whole host of new stories to tell! Enough chat for now. The glue had dried and I need to get back to my building. Hope to see you at the MB meet in November! Jim Kehn King Snipe prrfreak@aol.com (Ed note: Jim Hamlin passed away this summer. I knew he had battled cancer for a number of years, but I have no further details. He had been quite active in the Friends of the Cumbres RR.) Fall 2011 Mini-Bunch Meet November 12 and 13 at New Life Church @ 3690 Stygler Rd. (the corner of Stygler and McCutcheon Rd) Gahanna, OH 43230 Cost $15 each and THAT INCLUDES DINNER
We need pre-registration information (so the dinner can be planned by the ladies at the church) Let Jim Ruisinger know how many of you will be doing dinner with the group. Contact Jim at Jimbo2490@yahoo.com You can pay at the door or you can send a check to Jim (payable to him.) Mini Bunch Fall Meet c/o Jim Ruisinger 2490 Johnston Rd. Upper Arlington, OH 43220-4668 Registration and setup will commence at 9am. Lunch is on your own. There will be a model contest, raffle and clinics. The clinics will start at 12:30, 2:00 and 3:30 and will be geven by Bill Logan, Jeff Schumacher and Jim Foster. Dinner at approx 5:30-ish followed by the usual short business meeting with His Royal Snipeness Jim Kehn, presiding. After dinner (plans are still being worked out.) If you are a vendor and need tables or are bringing a layout, please contact Mike Yoakam at (614) 206-2395 or via email at michaelyoakam@gmail.com Space is limited to get with him ASAP! Layout tour on Sunday commencing at about 10am till 3pm. Maps will be provided when you check in Saturday morning. Layouts include: Jerry Severson's Smokey Inland & Central Kolorado in HOn3. It's based loosely on the D&RG and RGS. Michael Yoakam's Muskingham Valley Central in On30 Jim Ruisinger's Weyehaeuser Timber Company Woods Railroad in HO (yes that's standard gauge) and maybe Butch Sage will have his dad's layout back together enough we can see it re-arising from the dust. Plus we're still twisting some arms... Nearby hotels include: She thought the day would be just old guys talking (a tolerably accurate description of a Mini-Bunch meet), and I am embarrassed to say I thought the Alvada Two-Footer would be a hundred feet of straight track with a critter wheezing back and forth. So wrong! Our host and hostess have what I would guess is about a mile of track winding through a woods. It has a stream crossing made out of a highway trailer chassis, with gauntlet track on it. How neat is that? The gauntlet track allows a balloon loop without turnouts, so there is a functional reason for it. There is also a 90-degree crossing that our host said he purchased, rather than built it up. The main line crosses a couple of trails in the woods, and there are working crossing gates at them. There is a steep climb and a steep descent, at least by northwest Ohio standards. The shop is huge and well equipped. Motive power is several critters. Most are Plymouths of a variety of types, with a couple of Brookvilles. One of the Brookvilles was out and looked operational, and the other was disassembled in the shop. It had a Chevrolet V-8 engine and what looked like a truck gearbox and rear axle. Final drive was by chains. There was also a home-built handcar, and a homebuilt speeder powered by a Kohler engine. We could pump the handcar within the confines of the shop, and the speeder was available for us to ride. There are several pieces of rolling stock: a boxcar, flat, tank car, a hopper and a few excursion cars. I believe our host built them up. For comparison purposes, there is a B&O standard gauge caboose on display. It looks enormous. We rode a train of excursion cars pulled by a Plymouth TGT. This is one of the three TGT s built, between 1952 and 1956 according to Jay Reed s critter book, and two of them are in Ohio. Jim Eakin said the third went to Venezuela (I think). All of us took several rides, with many also going down to the stream crossing for movies and photos, a particularly good spot, and other places along the main line. I also walked it as I enjoy inspecting railroad physical plants. Candlewood Suites @Port Columbus (866) 925-2407 Rooms from $60 Springhill Suites (Marriott) @ Port Columbus (866) 925-1480 Rooms from $99 LaQuinta Inn @ Port Columbus (866) 763-1926 Rooms from $55 There are others near Hamilton Rd. and I-270 and at I-270 and Route 62. All the hotels are within 15 minutes or so of the Church. You can do an internet search based on the zip code 43230 and find others. There is no room block, so you're on your own for accommodations. 2011 Summer Meet THE ALVADA TWO-FOOTER SUMMER MEET Or How I Learned to Run a Real Critter, Not Just a Model One By Honorable King Snipe Emeritus Jim Foster This year was the first Mini-Bunch meet at the Alvada Two- Footer Railroad I have attended. I took my older girl with me, and she had an absolute blast playing on the train and speeder. Photo by John Clark The highlight of the day for me was running the locomotive on one of the trips. Our hostess, a competent engineer, I guess noticed my interest and offered to let me run it. Yay! With a full load of passengers I started it up and took off. You make the engine go with a separate ignition switch and starter button,
just like an old car. The transmission is hydrostatic with a clutch pedal that is only used for starting from rest. There is a reversing transmission at the rear of the cab which must have straight-cut gears, judging by the sound. The clutch is heavy and I had a jerky start, but we got moving okay. On the advice of our hostess I throttled back on the downhills and used the hand brake, a big lever on the right side of the cab. This is to keep the hydrostatic transmission from shifting up, she said. I also throttled back entering and exiting the gauntlet track as I had seen the real engineers do this, and watched to see if the car tracked through the frogs at each end okay. Blew the horn for the crossings and there were no incidents (mostly because there was no one at the crossings). Got back to the station and stopped at the platform; stopping involves throttling back, pulling the hand brake, and declutching - presumably operating the very heavy clutch gets easier with practice. There were no reported injuries among the passengers. So. Come to the summer Mini-Bunch meet at the Alvada Two- Footer Railroad next year! It is in Hancock County, Ohio, some miles east of Findlay. These are real trains and are well worth your time! Finally, guess I m an outfit car junkie. Setting front and center in the Chama yard is a recently restored outfit office car complete with interior, 04982. I have enclosed several pictures that say it all. Colorado Report- by Bill Strathearn Work Week in Chama I just got back from Chama after working with the Friends of the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad for two weeks. My official reason for being there was to manage the carpenter shop which basically entails maintenance of the equipment (almost impossible to do with so many volunteers), ensuring the safe operation of the equipment and performing whatever machining operations others can t or don t want to do. Resawing twelve 2 x 8 x 16 roof walks to 1! is rather boring. Especially after the lumber mill cut them incorrectly. However, the real excitement during these two weeks was watching the complete rebuilding of two major, complex pieces of equipment. The first was OP - the only remaining derrick on the line. This is an extensive rebuild in its third year with probably two more to go. The interesting thing about this piece is that it operates from an onboard steam donkey powered by the steam from a locomotive. Presumably, when completed, it will be used for demonstrations similar to OB, the pile driver recently completed. The second piece of interest was a rotted out hulk of one of the RPO cars used on the San Juan between Alamosa and Durango, Colorado. It was basically kindling at the start. The structural integrity has been restored and the siding both on the exterior and interior is now complete. The interesting part of this restoration is the trucks. When the Silverton train became popular, several new passenger coaches were built. The trucks used on these cars were ones removed from the older passenger cars that had been turned into outfit cars. The trucks currently under the RPO car are old tender trucks. In order to complete the restoration, new passenger trucks must be made. The original trucks were a combination cast iron, steel and wood. I m not sure what the status of manufacturing the new trucks is. It will be very expensive. However, the Colorado Railroad Museum has procured the molds for the required castings for its own use and may well allow the Friends to use them. Clear Creek Doings Dan Kempf sent some photos recently taken on his layout of the Colorado Central line on Clear Creek. We will be visiting that layout next fall.
The Machine Works in Idaho Springs Stock pens and Hay shed. Station behind cattle cars Buildings along alley Section house and water tank in Idaho Springs Breaking news: Harry Brunk s layout is being moved to a permanent home in Cheyenne Wyoming. If all goes well, it will be open for viewing in a museum-like setting by next summer. Rick Steele of Labelle models is the new owner of Harry Brunk s famous and lovely Union Central and Northern layout. It is patterned after the Clear Creek railroad, and it has generously donated to the Cheyenne Depot museum. We hope to have all 65' x12' of it installed and up and running in May 2012. Mike Pannell Photo by Mike Panell Anyone for Narrow Gauge? By Art Howard A few months ago I contacted our King Snipe, Jim Kehn, and told him that I wanted to rejoin the Mini-bunch. I also told him that I was looking for information/specs on the modules that the Mini-Bunch members, on occasion, would display and operate at their meets. He informed me that the practice was passé and asked why I was inquiring about it. I told him that I had been out of the hobby for a while, had dismantled my layout but kept a few pieces. And I was thinking of easing back into the hobby by creating modules with some of the stored items. After a number of emails back and forth and cutting a long story short, Jim asked if I would write a few words for the Newsletter about my old layout, how & why I got into slim gage, etc. So here goes! I will do my best not to bore you. Jim mentioned my layout and me in the May 2011 issue of the Newsletter, but let me formally introduce myself and tell you a little bit about my old layout. My name is Art Howard, I m 68 years old, a retired telephone man, and I live just outside Pittsburgh, Pa. in the little town of Trafford. I first was involved with the Mini-Bunch back in the mid 1970 s. Thru the 70 s, 80 s, & 90 s I had attended a number of meets throughout Ohio and also participated in one here in Pa. I had a HOn3 layout, which was named the PIC & C, (Pitsburg Iron Coke & Coal RR.). Also, I have written a few articles that were in Model Railroader, Short & Narrow Rails, and a couple of newsletter type publications. I am not into operation, but enjoy just about every other facet of model railroading. I know just enough about electronics and software to be dangerous, but enjoy the challenge of applying them to modeling. If I had to choose what part of the hobby I liked best, it would be scratch building structures, hands down! Now for the how s & why s of my entry into narrow gauge modeling. That is easy! It all started with a Balboa two truck Shay and the March 1968 issue of Model Railroader. At the time I was a millwright at US Steel and my supervisor learned that I was interested in model railroading. So he brought this little two truck Shay into work for me to look over. I had never seen a geared locomotive before that and I was fascinated by it. Shortly after that, I read the article, Anyone for Narrow Gauge? in the March 1968 issue of Model Railroader. I was hooked, and so the reason for the heading of this article. The article made a lot of sense, narrow gauge fit me
perfectly with the small equipment, small layout sizes, low budgets, and freelancing. What more could I ask for! Now a little bit about the PIC&C. It was a free-lanced eastern narrow gage layout set in the hills of Western Pennsylvania during the mid 30 s. As the name suggest, the railroad s function in life was to transport the coal & coke needed by the iron & steel industry of the area. The layout track was mostly flex track, but had hand laid turnouts, and mostly scratch built structures. Every scratch built structure on the layout was based on an actual structure somewhere in Western Pa. The only exception was the Ostlet Trestle, which was completely out of my imagination. I often had comments about the Gill Hall Bridge, such as They don t build bridges that way! It was plastic bridge kit that I kitbashed to very closely resemble the real Gill Hall RR Bridge which is standard gauge and still in use today. The PIC&C boasted an engine roaster of all four types of geared locomotives along with a few 2-8-0 rod engines. The rolling stock, true to narrow gauge, was purchased from other railroads along with a number pieces made and designed in our own shops. The track plan was my own design, which was a loop and had a switchback that most people didn t realize was there. Had I had finished the layout, the track plan would have expanded to be capable of point to point operation from the small coal town of Eleanora, which was my Father s home town, to Pitsburg a fictitious river port. Hence the reason for the riverboat model that Jim mention in the newsletter. It would have also had small interchange with the PRR and dual trackage. But like its real life cousins, this railroad is all but a memory. I hope to bring back some of its past glory thru a couple modules from the parts I have salvaged. The first module I will be working on was originally one of the MB modules I referred to earlier. I made it for a meet in Columbus; but since then it has resided on two layouts: the Huntingdon Northern (a club layout) and the PIC&C my home layout. It also has traveled to Dayton for a NMRA meet, Columbus, and a couple other local meets. It has as many miles on it as did some of my automobiles! Right now it needs a lot of TLC to get it back to its original glory. Since its original construction, I have found some errors in the characteristics of the ovens that I will correct too! I hope to start this in the fall after I complete a number of long standing projects. If anyone out there knows the specs for those old MB modules I would appreciate hearing from them. As I recall, they were purposely very flexible and would be a good standard for my purposes. Being that this article is my first attempt to get back into the hobby after about 10 years, surprisingly, I really haven t suffered from any shocking surprises or sticker shock. What will probably be my biggest issue, at this time; will be learning about the new products for scenery, e.g., what is now available for making water in streams, ponds, rivers, etc. I do email, but I imagine that I will have to learn some new computer skills so I can catch up on the hobby! Due to the fact that I didn t get a great deal of the scenery completed, I didn t bother to take any photos of the layout. I hope that the layout sketch gives you a good jest of what it was like in its heyday. Art Howard wedge02@hotmail.com 31 st National Narrow Gauge Convention After spending a week visiting Civil War sites and Monticello, Sandy and I arrived in Hickory NC for the convention. Visiting with old friends and many vendors was the order of the day. A few problems: my main camera blew out the memory chip, and I had not downloaded any photos until I got home. So, most photos shown here were taken by others. First of all the winners: Bear Creek Tramroad took first in modules and Joshua Yoakam took first in the youth category. Phil Gliebe took third in the mechanical locomotive category. Photos of these are on the cover of the newsletter. Soooo many beautiful models and the module room was the best I ve ever seen. As Advertised, Muskrat Ramble was there. Everyone took lots of photos, but none are printed here because photos do not do it justice and BW pictures are really useless. So many details in the modules it s hard to believe this was built about 10,000 miles from the area being modeled. A lot can be done using the Internet. It will stay in the US as there is a new fine scale museum being built north of Tampa FL, and it will be housed there along with other excellent layouts and models. The contest room had its usual problems too little light and tables too low. However, the photography exhibit was pretty good as they used boards set on chairs against the wall, so the photos had no light glare. Driving Nearly all the layouts and other off-site events were at least an hour away. We made it to one On3 layout and two club layouts. All were really nice. GPS really made it easy to get around. On Thursday afternoon, there was an event at the Tweetsie theme park. They had two locomotives steamed and they double-headed the passenger train. They did two separate runs so that most of the folks could ride the train (lots of soot). We rode the first trip and we had three laps around the loop and four photo run-bys. There were some great scenes to photograph, but the number of picture takers made it difficult to get clear shots, and the lack of sun did not help any.
The Tweetsie photo above was taken on film. Do you remember that old stuff? I used a twin lens reflex and held the camera upside down over my head for that one. Other photographs were taken by Vagel Keller, Michael Yoakam, Bob Shields, and Phil Gliebe. (I ended up with about 400 photographs to choose from. It was hard to pick these few.) John Clark s Pflaum Mercantile EBT train in Fn3 Contest room: Prize winning shay Sn2 Free-mo layout: Damariscotta station Jeff Boock s S scale Brewery In prior issues we have covered progress on the Bear Creek modules. It was a surprise to see what this group of modelers accomplished in the five months since Greenford. The display had an advantage over some of the others since they have selfcontained lighting.
Bear Creek Photos The Bear Creek participants are: Terry Hansley Karen Hansley Michael Yoakam Bill Brubach Gary Young John Clark Jim Kehn Fritz Prosch Joshua Yoakam Notes from the Editors HELP NEEDED!!!! We plan to send out 4 newsletters per year. We are looking for articles on modelbuilding and prototype that will be of interest for the members. Mini-Bunch http://www.narrowtracks.com/minibunch Yahoo! Groups Mini-Bunch http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mini-bunch Name Badges Available Soon, we hope - Unfortunately, we have lost our nametag vendor again. Hopefully, we will be able to make nametags available again at some future date. Mini-Bunch Newsletter on Internet Thanks to David Keith, our Webmaster, you have the chance to see these and additional photos in color. And thanks to Jim Eakin for helping us with the copying. Parties Responsible for this Newsletter Our Leader: Jim Kehn 735 West Columbus St Pickerington, OH 43147 614-837-0724 prrfreak@aol.com Editors: John Hansen 17826 Clifton Blvd Lakewood, OH 44107 216-521-1779 jvhansen@earthlink.net Ted Wiese 9099 Regency Woods Drive Kirtland, OH 44094-9380 440-256-5212 email: ted.wiese@gmail.com Narrow Gauge Timetable National Narrow Gauge Conventions 32nd 2012 September 12-15, Bellevue, WA 33rd 2013 August 28-31, Pasadena, CA 34 th 2014 September 3-6, Kansas City, MO 35 th 2015 September 2-5, Houston, TX 36 th 2016 September 7 10, Augusta ME Future Mini-Bunch Meets Fall 2011 Columbus, Ohio Spring 2012 Greenford, OH Fall 2012 Ann Arbor, MI
NATIONAL NARROW GAUGE CONVENTIONS Bellevue, WA Sept 12 15, 2012 Pasadena, CA August 28 31, 2013 Kansas City, MO Sept 3 6, 2014 Houston, TX September 2 5, 2015 Augusta, ME September 7 10, 2016 Mini-Bunch Meeting Fall 2011 Columbus, Ohio Date November 12-13, 2011 Phil Gliebe Third Place Internal Combustion Locos Joshua Yoakam First Place Youth award Mini-Bunch Newsletter Ted Wiese Co-Editor 9099 Regency Woods Drive Kirtland, Ohio 44094-9380 First Class Postage Bear Creek First Place Modules photo Bob Shields