Back in the saddle again

It has been a long time since I last posted.  

Many things going on in my life with most of them attributed to my children.  Since 2008 all of my boys have played summer club soccer so there was a lot of traveling around the state of MN.  My youngest son started spending his winters wrestling so since 2009 we were going to at least 1 tournament every weekend and for most weekends it was 2 tournaments.  As the boys got older they got involved in other things such as marching band and school soccer so it became pretty evident real quick that most of our free weekends were going to be in April after wrestling and before club soccer and then maybe two weeks in October after school soccer and marching band were done whereas wrestling started up in the first week of November.

Our travels for wrestling started going out of state to IA, SD, WI, MO, and OK for major tournaments.  Marching band has also gone out of state to IA and SD.  Now with two boys in college with a third starting next year we have only one at home but he is the most athletic and active one.  He has been the only one to do summer soccer, school soccer, marching band, and wrestling in a single year so we still spend a lot of time traveling, especially since I also started coaching summer soccer.  So the next three years we are looking at doing all of these every year until he graduates.

What does that have to do with this blog?  Everything....being with all of the boys during their summer and school activities was important.  Our daughters have also kept us busy by giving us six grandchildren though we don't see them as much as we used to do.  Both of us have been active in church leadership and helping out with the sports clubs running the wrestling program and soccer program.  So, there have been bits and pieces of time when I have been able to partake in my hobby, mostly visiting hobby shops during our travels.  I have been able to attend the March Meet in Chicago for several years so that has been about all I have done with model railroading.

I have created another blog where I plan on discussing macro economics and how our rail system could be completely different had smart people stepped in to help the railroads after 1971.  What you say.....well come to https://milwaukeeroadblog.wordpress.com and find out.

So with all of that said where am I at with modeling Lynden, WA?   Well, for the last few years I have strayed from Lynden and was looking at parts of the Beer Line in Milwaukee as well as the Kingsbury Ave area in Chicago.  All three areas fascinate me and I collected as much information as I could via magazines, books, youtube videos, Facebook and yahoo groups, railroad forums, and emails with people in the know.   I nearly jumped away from all three as I started looking at The White Pine Route in the Washington, Idaho, and Montana Railway as well as the Des Moines Union Railway.

What interested me in both of these was location and how the railroad operated.  All have ties to the Milwaukee Road and that will never change.  I do have other favorite railroads such as the Erie Lackawanna, Rock Island, and Ann Arbor for example but the Milwaukee Road will always be in my heart.

The WI&M was a really neat railroad in God's country that was scenic in a different way than the mainline from Avery, ID to Othello, WA.  Picked up a book about the history of the railroad as well as having conversation with others who modeled it as well.  It was somewhat limited in motive power and most of the towns were also limited in operations as it would take several towns to create enough industries to have enough work to do in an hour or two.  Space is limited so off the board went WI&M.  

The DMU was a hometown operation of which I missed most of it as parts and pieces were disappearing before I started rail fanning (able to drive).  I had not realized how much switching was going on in the SW part of downtown Des Moines.  Its crazy....I would drive by the DMU yard nearly on a daily basis starting in 1980 and never realized how that one track that diverged off the N&W line and crossing over the ex-Rock Island main line tracks led to Slimmy Yard where there was daily switching of various industries in the industrial area of SW downtown Des Moines. NEVER KNEW......until recently.  Almost all of it is gone now though I have been able to talk to people who worked for the DMU or knew it very well.  The issues I was having with Lynden, WA also applied to the DMU, very few photos or maps as well as very few photos....very few...I mean you can count on two  hands if not one hand the number of pics showing railroad operations.

Well, that all changed recently.   I have joined most of the Milwaukee Road FB groups as well as the Yahoo/Groups.io groups and one day a picture was uploaded with comments.  One comment was by Blair Kooistra, whom I have always admired for his photos of the Milwaukee Road in the Northwest, and then I made a comment about my issues with Lynden and off to the races we went.  Oh my God it was awesome.  I fell in love with Lynden again and now I was finding more information that was not around 6-7 years ago....gosh it has been long.  Now there was traffic reports for Lynden for both inbound and outbound freight..of which I have started to transfer to Excel.  New pictures began to pop up and maps as well other documents which made things more clear about Lynden.  Blair is modeling Lynden in HO scale and I will be modeling it in P48.   I know he will be done much sooner than I will...

I need to draw out the basement, then draw up the track plan and see how it fits to see if I need to cut out a section of the center wall in the basement.   Sorry Snake Track on the Beer Line...Sorry Kingsbury Ave on the C&E.  You both had issues that was going to be tough to deal with......Snake Track...just trying to fit it in the basement room and keep open the weightlifting area was not going to work, especially in O scale.  Kingsbury Ave...I was going to be able to fit you in from the Montgomery Ward buildings to the end of the line...though it would require 22 switches at $100 bucks a pop in O scale..I have not hand laid track and while I plan on doing it for this layout 22 switch was mind boggling for me to attempt with the free time that I have.

Now some of you may say to compress the area or say leave some track out to make it work.  I am not that guy.....I want to be prototypical as possible in the track plan as I want to follow operations as prototypically as possible.  Thank you for the suggestions though and I appreciate them.  If you have information about Lynden that you would like to pass on let me know.

More to come.