Bay Area Prototype Modelers 2026

As happens nearly every June, the all-day Bay Area RPM meet was just held again, this year in El Cerrito. The logo for the meeting remains the same, and I was delighted when the announcement appeared. 

There was a big crowd this year, partly magnified by the smaller quarters than in some previous years, but it was a lively and active crowd. There was also a program of talks, of which I saw two. I really liked Matthew Teixeira and Justin Leong’s talk about designing a shelf layout, with really good descriptions of alternatives considered, and how the plan was worked out, to model the Ballard Branch (originally of BNSF) in Seattle.

Walking around in the display room was, as always, interesting and fun. And I saw some really neat stuff. Pat Davis showed several Baldwin switchers in various Amador Central schemes, and gave information about how to get the decals from Precision Design Co. of Canada (email billy@pdc.ca ) . Below, these are nos. 9 and 10 in the light blue American Forest Products or Georgia Pacific scheme, and also no. 10 in the black and orange Amador Foothills scheme. 

 Some really super 3D-printed Southern Pacific towers were shown, available in both HO and N scales. These are produced by Common Standard Scale Models, which specializes in signature structures. You can visit their website at: https://www.commonstandardscalemodels.com/ . Shown below are Oakland’s 16th Street tower in both N and HO, and at right, Burbank Junction tower in N.

I also enjoyed seeing a number of gorgeous N scale freight cars with hand-painted graffiti, following prototype photos. These are from Alvin Ho, who got his aunt, an artist, to hand-paint the graffiti from photos (he said she enjoyed the challenge), then he added weathering, rust, etc. They are simply superb. Here is just one of a dozen examples.

Last but certainly not least, I enjoyed seeing a complete train by Dave Stanley, a version of Western Pacific’s Pittsburg Turn out of South Sacramento, bringing (among other things) steel coils to the US. Steel plant in Pittsburg (the plant was a facility of U.S. Steel’s Columbia-Geneva Division). WP had built some short 70-ton gondolas, 29 feet long inside, for the steel traffic, as shown here;  the models were made from cut-up cheap train-set cars purchased at swap meets. Pat Davis provided the “Roller Freight” decals.

As always, a fun day, seeing lots of friends and acquaintances, and tables and tables of interesting and well-done models. Most RPM meets are like this. If you’ve never been to one, keep your eyes open for an announcement of a meet near you, and give it a try.

Tony Thompson