This past weekend, four Californians traveled to Chicago for operating sessions on four outstanding layouts. This was an informal visit, arranged partly for the benefit of teenage modeler Dean Deis, whose name may be familiar because of his recent article in Model Railroader (the issue for May 2024). All four of us, and our hosts, enjoyed the entire event, which really went well.
We visitors all met at Midway Airport from our various inbound flights, and on the way to our first layout, we had the opportunity to visit one of two excellent hobby shops that we patronized on this trip, Lombard Hobbies. Then it was on to the op session.
Our first layout was Steve Cizek’s Marquette & Grand Marais, which would set the theme of the weekend: iron ore railroading. I’d operated there a couple of times before, and this time was lucky enough to get the West Yard job. Really interesting set of trains to build, some for the following day so no particular pressure, and lots to do. Everything ran well and was fun to carry out. Here’s a view of “my” yard, with its husky 0-8-0 switcher at lower right:
The next morning we headed off to Jerry Zeman’s layout, called the Spokane Southern (resembling the SP&S), with ample Great Northern and Northern Pacific components: an impressive and huge layout. Dean and I were in charge of Worley Yard, where we were kept pretty busy. Below is a view of the yard from the end I worked, with my power, an NP 0-8-0, in the foreground. That’s Dean in the distance, who was yardmaster.
On the way to our next layout, we had the opportunity to visit the second hobby shop, the justly famous Des Plaines Hobbies, where we were lucky to land in the midst of an all-store sale! Needless to say, a few purchases were made.
The next layout was Bob Hanmer’s Great Northern/DM&IR, where I have operated a number of times while at the annual Naperville RPM meetings of past years. It’s a really well-designed layout and we enjoyed its equally well-thought-out operating scheme. Having drawn a good number for job selection, I chose the Grand Rapids switch job, which I’ve done before and always enjoy. This job is centered around a paper plant, and therein lies a tale.
Awhile ago I was searching for additional industries to ship inbound to my layout’s printing company, so Googled the kind of paper I was familiar with from Signature Press books, coated paper sheet (not rolls), which is common in the book trade. I wanted a company that had been in existence in 1953, my layout’s era, and found a leading American company of this kind, Blandin Paper. This sounded faintly familiar, but I wasn’t sure why. I then looked at the location, which is Grand Rapids, Minnesota, and then the light came on. This is the paper plant I’ve switched at Hanmer’s!
I told Bob this story and he said he’d like to see my inbound waybill, so he can make the corresponding outbound bill for his layout. Here’s the bill I had made:
I like the way Bob has depicted the plant, with a plain color for the plant’s footprint, and landscape scenicking right up to the building edge. (This isn’t the whole paper plant, just the shipping and receiving building.) I presume in the future he may add just the lower edges of building walls to emphasize that there is a building here. Here’s my switcher at work.
The final layout was Lou Steenwyk’s Ashland & Southern, where I got the Ashland East switch job. What a layout! I hadn’t been there before and was really impressed with the quality as well as the sheer scale of the layout, which had two decks. Just to show one example, here is most of the “ore yard,” where ore is collected prior to loading into a lake boat. (There is also a massive ore dock, and full-scale ore boat, modeled next to this.) You can click on the image to enlarge it if you wish.
A great weekend for us visitors, and I’d think for the hosts as well. As with other visits of this kind that we have made (for a recent example: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/07/an-operating-visit-to-salt-lake-area.html ), it’s really more enjoyable than the usual mob scene of 60 or 80 people at a formal event. Genuine fun and well worth the travel.
Tony Thompson
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