15: Weyerhaeuser Timber Company Shay 5 works up
the 2.5 percent grade on the Moose River branch line.
15
Gustav:
I've noticed you don't weather your cars.
Jim:
I've weathered a few. I don't have an airbrush so I use chalks,
and washes of acrylic paint, and I haven't weathered any of my
locos. Frankly I'm sufficiently intimidated by the magnificent
weathering other people have done I'm hesitant to try it myself
until I can emulate that kind of quality. In fact, in the latest MRH, I
saw pictures of weathered freight cars I couldn't tell from the real
thing. Absolutely remarkable! It's an art form I have yet to acquire.
Gustav:
I've participated in a number of your operating sessions,
They are extremely engaging and require concentration. Though
I'm having fun, I feel like I'm actually working on a railroad.
Jim:
After scenery, what I enjoy is operation. The friendliness of
the operators getting together for an afternoon is as enjoyable,
sometimes more so, than watching the trains move. If you build a
large layout, it doesn't come alive until you get enough operators
to run it.
I started operating quite some years ago and there were times I'd
have up to 12 people operating the layout. It got crowded in here
and there were too many trains moving around the layout; we
spent too much time waiting for someone's train to get out of the
way. Now I limit the number of operators to around six or seven.
I don't care how big a layout is, the mainline is never long enough
to fill up an afternoon just running trains. So we slow down the
16: Pete, the Border Patrol officer, questions a
suspicious individual on the Eaton station platform.
Station built by Peter Eaton
.
16
Jim Ferguson’s GN - 1
MRH-Oct 2013
