Wednesday, March 18, 2015

2015 Narrow Guage Meet

Great weekend, you missed a good one if you missed this one. Weather, people, trains....
 
It was a very busy weekend from Thursday through to Monday. Bill Shepherd is in town working on a project up on the 15" but spent some time on the high line mid week and we are getting close to being through the rock moving section above the Tedder Shed. Things around the steaming bays started Thursday too. The Burns', with RGS 41 rolled in from Salinas. John Norquist with his RGS Goose 7 all the way from Upstate New York or Phoenix. The Stites' GE 47 Tonner and Steve Nelson's C-21 fresh out of the paint shop made some track time Thursday. The Thursday night crowd was in full swing by the time Shelli and I got in. Greg and Becky weren't too far ahead of us.
Friday Morning Five of us made a run to Palm Springs Air Museum to see FiFi, presently the only flying B-29, we stayed long enough to get a walk around her and watch the lumbering beast take off; then back up the hill to play trains. Friday I got a chance to get out the 4-4-0 and the Alco but didn't get to run till Saturday. Paul and Celeste Lavacot brought out Goose 6 to round out the RGS faction with the addition of Maywalds #20 to 6,7,20 and 41. Colorado and Southern was well represented with Thompsons 2-6-0 #13 which spent a lot of time out running flawlessly. Anthony Duarte had his 0-4-0 out and ran the wheels a little smaller. Out for it's debut in its new electric drive system and Sumpter Valley Yellow paint job was the Joshua Tree Davenport. After a few years of neglect and attempts to at least stay on the track Matt took the project under wing and got her to roll, and it spent a weekend a while back in tow just to see that it would do that and it was off to the next segment. Greg and Matt worked out an Artzberger drive that works well on the GE's so they adapted that to the Davenport. Right now it is running sans side rods but it still did wonderfully all weekend. It has four batteries under the hood and in the cab so she has some weight to go with the torque. The paint and body work were done by Matt and JT&S #7 starts it's next assignment ready to go.
     The weather was almost too warm the whole weekend, and a jacket was too much for when one was by the fire. The place was green as the wildflowers were still in the growing stages. The Mullberries were pushing out buds and fresh green leaves. By the end of the weekend little yellow flowers were starting to emerge in the sunnier of areas. Wildflower season is near. It was a busy weekend and I do believe most everybody had a good time, plenty of old familiar faces and quite a few new ones too. I hope I didn't miss many. Of course there is a link to my Picasa for a few pictures, not bad for an iphone, and I stole a few from others if I could. Off to Maricopa Live Steamers for a road trip.
 
 

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