MRH:
“Rick, why did the club pick this particular locale or free-
lance prototype to model?”
Rick:
“Process of elimination. We decided when we were doing
the excavating we were not going to make the same mistakes
we made on the first layout. The concept of the original layout
was just mythical. There was no rhyme or reason, the scenery
was vaguely in western Oregon. If you asked someone where in
western Oregon would it be, the answer was, well, somewhere
in western western Oregon. (chuckling)
“The idea was to have a locale that was something like the
Columbia Gorge, but that was already taken. We thought about
the Siskiyou line, but that was too far south. Willamette Pass
would be neat, but it wasn’t operationally oriented, and that
was a big prerequisite.
“So I was perusing the Internet, and I came upon the Bear
Creek and South Jackson. I looked on his website and I saw he
had a map of Oregon with his line cutting straight across from
Toledo all the way to Ontario. I thought – that’s interesting,
what if? At that time I knew the SP Mill City branch was just
a branch, but I didn’t know they had actually surveyed it over
Santiam Pass, and the actual idea was to connect with Ontario.
Finally I saw that and I thought, now that’s kind of interesting.
“I looked in Tom Dill’s and Ed Austin’s ‘SP in Oregon’ book and
I read the history, so I thought, what if the line actually made
it, and our railroad had the line over the Santiam Pass? So that
was the seed that was planted in my brain.
“We had a design-off of four layout concepts. One was the
Espee Valley Line, one was the Siskiyou line, and there were
two Santiam Pass lines. One was a double-deck Santiam Pass
line that ran from Yaquina all the way to Ontario. And then my
