Upcoming Meets: September 7 John Power September 2013 11 AM Camarillo (805) 816-4598 Battery Power Only Please bring: A-G Appetizers H-O Salads P-Z Desserts September 21 11 AM Gary & Marilyn Siegel John Power's Meet Gary and Marilyn Siegel's Meet OK, so if you ever made to John Power's Twin Falls RR, well, be prepared to have your socks blown off. His new layout is about as opposite as they come. What if the Southern Pacific had not abandoned the Los Altos-Santa Cruz Branch of the San Francisco Subdivison of the Coast Division in 1940; but instead was still using it in the late 1950's? The answer is still taking shape in Santa Barbara on Gary and Marilyn Siegel's layout. This layout is bigger and better every time we visit. The new layout is raised up to 32 inches, and features over 1000 feet of track with very long sidings and broad, easy curves. No waterfalls, at least not yet, but there is a mountain with a ten foot long tunnel. Buildings and trees are going in now. Santa Barbara (805) 969-7687 Battery Power Only Please bring: A-G Salads H-O Desserts P-Z Appetizers A portion of the line extends inside a large building. This part features a 5 foot turntable (John says thanks to our own Randy Bryie who owns Pacific Coast Garden Railway Supply), and a professionally painted mural. This part also has the steepest grades, suitable for geared locos but not much else. Not to worry, you don't have to run on this part of the layout. October 19 Chaudier October 26 Arseneault November OPEN December OPEN John also has three boxes of 6 foot flex track, brand new, in the boxes, for sale. Directions and map omitted from on line edition. Please call meet host for directions. John Power's new layout The mainline is point to point and is about 750 feet long. The maximum grade is 1.5%, just like on the prototype, and the sharpest curve is eight foot radius which is a bit sharper than the prototype. It favors first and second generation diesels, but the tunnels are just wide enough for 1:20 K-28s as well. There are also two branch lines with steeper grades, and sharper curves. The Boulder Creek branch is long enough to qualify as a layout in its own right. The last time we were there, it was just about to make the jump across the creek and onto the main part of their backyard. Come on out and see how far it has grown since then.
Wanted: New Meet Coordinator We need someone to volunteer to take over as meet coordinator. For the most part, it doesn't require selling or persuasion, as most people know what they want to do. It's more about making sure not everyone tries to sign up for the same week. Although, sometimes the ability to give someone a friendly nudge can be handy, as for example, right now with November and December. If you are interested, contact Jim Eldridge at (818) 954-9809. Future Meets As mentioned above, we are looking for two volunteers to take on the meets for November and December. They will both be regular meets, without a holiday party. If you've been waiting for the ideal moment, that would be now.. Joe Bussing recommends True Value Hardware at 711 E. Los Angeles Ave in Simi Valley for nuts and bolts, and for decomposed granite, which you might think is an odd thing for a hardware store to carry, but they have a wide selection of decorative rock of all sorts. Ed Davis suggests Kit Kraft at the corner of Laurel Cyn and Ventura Place in Studio City. He says it is a very well stocked hobby shop. From the web site, this place looks like a treasure trove of great stuff. It is mostly arts and crafts supples, but they have assortments of 1/24th and even 1/29th scale figures as well as gears and motors suitable for running accessories of various kinds, and all sorts of other stuff. 12109 Ventura Place, Studio City. Art Sylvester wrote in with Specialty Tool at 108 Aero Camino, Goleta. They mostly have nuts and bolts, but also have machine tools. Unfortunately, they are not open evenings or weekends, and you can't order anything off their web site. A Note About This Newsletter Kim Whitaker, Dennis Paulazzo and Bill Fincher sent so many great pictures of the Mele's meet that there wasn't room for more than a taste in the hard copy newsletter. If you have that, there are a lot more pictures at www.gcgrs.com/newsletters. Click September 2013. If you have the email newsletter, relax, you have them all. Art also suggested Santa Barbara Stone, 27 N. Nopal for its gravel, and California Hobbies and Mar Vac Electronics, both in the Magnolia Center near Walnut Lane and Hollister in Goleta. Nancy Bryie suggested B&B Do-It Center, 698 Mobil Ave, on the corner of Pondorosa and Mobile in Camarillo for a great selection of unique items. Hidden Gems Survey Thanks to everyone who responded with their (formerly) secret sources for the best stuff for garden railroaders. John Power suggested Rochelle Hahn's back yard after midnight, which explains the new barbed wire fencing and guard dogs. On the serious side, John Albin recommends Pacific Rock in Camarillo. They sell rock in one ton baskets. John goes on to suggest that you rent a truck and pick it up yourself, he says their delivery charge is too high. Getting it out of the truck is still your problem. 1000 Pancho Rd Camarillo. Deborah Mele suggests Santa Barbara Koi for those interested in building fish ponds. 110 E. Montecito, Santa Barbara. My suggestions are Avenue Hardware in Ventura for an amazing collection of tiny screws, nuts, and washers. In stainless they start at 000-90, and go up from there. You can also get brass hardware from 4-40 and bigger. 481 N. Ventura Ave, Ventura. If you're looking for alternatives to dwarf Alberta spruce, you can't do better than M&M Nursery in Tustin. Their specialty is fairy garden plants, but if you can get past the cutesy fairies, elves, and tiny ceramic children, they have a great seletion of miniature plants. If only they had some wicked witches living in gingerbread houses to balance out the other stuff. If you made to the Lowenberg's meet in February you've seen a lot of M&M's tiny trees. They advertise in Garden Railways, but since they don't have a web site, their stock varies by season, and quite a lot of it doesn't have labels, just make a day of it and go down there. 380 N. Tustin Ave, Tustin. Continued on inside back page.
Mark & Sheila Goodman's meet Mark celebrated his birthday in style by inviting everyone from the GCGRS and Central California Coast GRS to come over and run some trains. So, we did. Ed Morse's little Connie pulled a much longer string of loaded hopper cars. It ran well except a coupler issue meant that bits of the train got left behind some times. him at speed and bent some steps and handrails. Doc Riese had the other wreck of the day when half his train turned over for no good reason. Luckily, the loco, his U25B stayed upright. He also ran his There were several kids present, so Shay, which didn't give him any Mark has added another whole layout Randy Bryie barely got to run his RS3 problems at all. since last year. This one is elevated to and GP30; but the kids had a great standing height at one end for loading, time. Mark Goodman ran his Uintah Mallet and drops down to a foot or so above and a long string of shorty hopper the main layout. You can merge into Jim Eldridge's GP9 rescued another cars. He also ran his SW1200 in the the main layout, or just loop around train that had locomotive trouble, and center layout. forever. ended up pushing and pulling nearly 20 cars. Of course it's such a Thanks to Bill Fincher for contributing Bill Fincher's Shay was the first to try workhorse that it had no problems at some of today's pictures. And thanks out the new layout. all with that many cars. to Mark and Sheila for another great meet. Walter Wajda's Mikado pulled a short Jim also had one of the wrecks of the string of mostly box cars around the day when a guest engineer ran into layout.
Sal & Deborah Mele's Meet to run well, but he took it off before any Art Sylvester ran his GP30 very light; of the four photographers could get a only one car. Sal has the most amazing collection of good picture of it. model buildings with working Randy Bryie actually got to run his machinery in them. Not just sawmills, Kim Whitaker ran her new-to-her 2-4- very nice RS3 and train because there but ball bearing factories, and, brand 0 and a caboose which she acquired weren't any little kids around to hand it new for this meet, Nikola Tesla's lab, at a parking lot sale. off to. complete with a Van de Graaff generator that had glowing lights. Rex Davis brought his European style Thanks to Bill Fincher, Dennis LGB train. Paulazzo and Kim Whitaker for some Bill Fincher ran his Forney on all of today's pictures. See the note on three loops, the only train to do that. Doc Riese finally got the kinks out of page 2 for even more pictures. And his U25B with some help from Randy thanks to Sal and Deborah for another Richard Abraham brought his Army Bryie. It ran well afterwards. great meet. 0-6-0 and military train, which seemed
Hidden Gems continued from page 2 It's Almost That Time Again Even farther away is Gardens by the Sea in Leucadia They have one of the widest collections of succulents and low maintanence plants that you will find anyplace. 1500 N Coast Hwy 101, Leucadia. The 5th Annual Central Coast Railroad Festival (CCRRF) will be held October 10 to 14. That is soon after the next newsletter comes out, so it isn't that far away. If you are building a waterfall, The Pond Diggers in Yucaipa has everything you need, including expert advice and encouragement. It's awfully far to drive; but you'll learn more in a few hours than you will in a week of wandering around the web. If you are a bit farther along, they have a great web site. But order over the phone; they are careless about responding to emails. Their web site also has a list of places in Yucaipa, Redlands, and even San Bernardino that have Pond Digger built waterfalls where they can be seen and admired from the street or sidewalk. 31710 Dunlap Blvd, Yucaipa. California Western The California Western Railway's Skunk Train is back in service after suffering a tunnel collapse the night of April 11 that cut off 36 miles of the 40 mile route. Approximately 40 feet of track were blocked, but there was so much dirt and rock that the clean up was estimated at $300,000. According to an article in the San Francisco Examiner, the CWR didn't have anything like that sort of money but the Save the Redwoods League stepped in and bought a conservation easement to preserve public access to the redwoods. Or something like that; it's complicated but the upshot was that repairs started immedately. It is estimated that when complete, there will be a cavern 50 feet wide, 40 feet long, and 30 feet high in the middle of the tunnel. All of the locomotives and cars were in Ft Bragg, so they could run very short excursions. In the meantime, if you have anywhere from a few bucks to $100K, they can put it to good use. For $25 you get a Skunk Train keychain, for $100K they will name the tunnel after you, plus give you a lifetime pass, plus other goodies. All the details are here: The San Luis Obispo Railroad Museum will celebrate its grand opening on Saturday, October 12 at the freight house, which is near the Amtrak station. The Oceano Depot will be open. It has collections of artifacts from the early days of northern Santa Barbara county, some railroad related, some not. The CCRRF is teaming up with the Art Central Gallery, 1329 Monterey St in SLO to present an art show titled Shiny Rails 135 Years of Railroads in the Central Coast. It will feature two dimensional art works (paintings and photographs) and three dimensional works up to a 16 foot cube. The show will be up from October 3 to 29, with a reception for the artists on Saturday, October 12. Several people, including GCGRS members Mark Goodman and Ed Morse will have their layouts open on the Sunday only, to avoid a conflcit with all the museums. You will be able to get maps and directions to all the open layouts at either Mark's or Ed's layouts. All the details are here, or will be closer to the event: http://www.ccrrf.com/ Rumors of Aristocraft Going Out of Business There is a rumor going around, which I can neither confirm nor deny, that Aristocraft is going to close its doors in October. The press and News tab of the AC web site has been turned off. There doesn't appear to be a word of it on the Internet, so who knows what the truth is. But, if there is a purchase of locomotives, Eggliners or spare parts you have been putting off for tomorrow, maybe tomorrow is now. Or, maybe not. We'll know in November. More on the Union Pacific 4014 http://www.gofundme.com/saveourskunk Cumbres & Toltec #463 Back in Service Dennis Paulazzo sent this link to a one hour video about UP Big Boys. http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=s1txj6u2b3c&feature=em-subs_digest-vrecs After a six plus year rebuild, and more than three years behind schedule, Mudhen #463 is ready to pull trains again. Only, the railroad doesn't seem to know about it; as not a word about the 463 appears anywhere on their web site. And the Friends of the C&TS web site isn't any better; after having a running account of the rebuild for all these years, it has all magically disappeared. It isn't clear what they plan to do with her; all the other running locomotives are the much larger K36. For her inaugural run in late May, she had to doublehead with the 487. According to a note on steamlocomotives.com, the capacity of a Big Boy firebox is 32 school children. It doesn't say when or why this was measured, or if their parents had to sign a release beforehand or if the kids had to write a 500 word essay about the experience afterwards. Luckily, this test was done on the 4014. It was lucky because the 4014 had its asbestos boiler lagging removed to prevent rain water from collecting against the boiler and rusting it. We wouldn't want the little darlin's inhaling asbestos fibers while researching their 500 word essays.
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 to get a printed copy of the newsletter mailed to you; or $10 if you can take the newsletter via email. 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. Newsletter: Gary Olmstead (805) 648-1770 garyolmstead@earthlink.net Membership: Bruce Kuebler (805) 649-3050 pbkuebler@sbcglobal.net Bring this application and payment to any meet, or mail it to: Bruce Kuebler 10908 Encino Dr Oak View CA 93022-9238 First Name Last Name: Spouse/Partner/Other(SPO) First Name: SPO Last Name, if different: Street Address City State Zip Home Phone: ( ) email: 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 email 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 10908 Encino Dr Oak View, CA 93022-9238 Meets: Jim Eldridge (818) 954-9809 sjeldridge@earthlink.net Webmaster: John Albin jtalbin@aol.com http://www.gcgrs.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/group s/145996342219253/ High Priestess of Facebook: Kim Whitaker whitdevelop@sbcglobal.net Please put GCGRS in the subject line of any correspondence.