For almost 30 years, an operating weekend was held in the Salt Lake City area, called the “Great Basin Getaway” or GBG. In the last few years it has not been held, but last weekend a group of nine people, five of us from the Bay Area, made an informal visit, referred to as “GBG Lite.” Weather was fairly hot, but low humidity, and the air was gloriously clear, as it can be at the foot of the Wasatch.
We operated on two excellent layouts, Rob Spangler’s 8th Subdivision of the Western Pacific, and Lee Nicholas’s Utah Colorado Western. I have said a bit about both layouts, in my description of the GBG event in 2016 (that post is at this link: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/09/great-basin-getaway-2016.html ).
The first layout we operated was Spangler’s. As on my previous visit, I greatly admired his many excellent structures, fine backdrops, and impressive scenery treatments. Here is one of the structures that to me looked “just right,” at his town of Milton (note the “M” on the hillside in the background), a feed mill. The backdrop painting, for me, is a wonderful impressionist style, suggesting more than it shows.
An example of a fine scenic treatment is this depiction of a canyon, with one side of it shown only in part, but very convincing. I would say the same about the rock layers just visible on the hillsides.
One of the large industries is the Graymont facility at Lakeview, shown below. So often on model railroads our industries don’t look like they would need even one freight car for shipping, but this one certainly doesn’t fall into that error.
And just to the left of the above view was a nice treatment of a classic layout problem, how to handle a road that is heading directly into the backdrop. The Graymont sign in this view is right at the backdrop, so everything that looks like it is beyond the sign is just backdrop paint. And what nice mountains!
The second layout was Lee Nicholas’s well known and greatly respected Utah Colorado Western. I had really enjoyed operating here once before, and accordingly was really looking forward to another session. The train I drew was the CB&Q mine run, exchanging empties for loads at four coal mines. These were either facing point or trailing point switching, so planning was needed to do the work in most cases. Here’s one of those mines:
At the end of the run, all the (removable) loads were taken out of the cars in staging, and returned to all the empties that had been set out during the run. This of course set up the following session, when all that would be repeated. The actual operating plan was for me to run the train of (now) empty cars back over the entire route, so that the empty train would be at the original starting point.
But the way I was told that I now had the job of running the train in the opposite direction sounded to me like I was supposed to repeat the process: setting out empties and again picking up loads, just going in the opposite direction. This was actually pretty interesting, because the trailing point jobs in the original direction were now facing point, and vice versa.
But as I neared the completion of this second run, I was told that no, I wasn’t supposed to repeat the switching, just run the empty train. But since I was now almost done, I finished up, and then went back, again replacing loads in the empty cars I had set out. I thought my version of the job was really better than the intended version! And Lee agreed with me, stating that my version of the job might become the new standard.
As before, I really enjoyed the finished scenery and many interesting and challenging industries all over the layout. And the backdrops are just as good. Here is the town of Cobre, with the depot at left, and my coal train on the main at the road crossing.
Another example of excellent scenic treatment is an even bigger challenge than the road heading into the backdrop: a road heading into a room corner. This adjoins the large (and impressive) sugar beet mill at Jiggs. The edge of the layout is about at the tall Texaco sign by the gas station. The road curving behind the store is entirely on the backdrop, painted on the coved corner.
It was a great weekend, operating on two great layouts. We all had a lot of fun, no surprise on layouts as good as these, and it most certainly was time well spent. Thanks again to Rob and Lee for hosting us!
Tony Thompson
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