This is a FaceBook video from the Northwestern Pacific RR Historical Society. It shows a vast assortment of items that can be seen in the Historical Society, located in Petaluma, CA. Click on the image to watch the video.
This MOW shack with a door clasp was a scratch built structure I did for the 2018 PCR convention.
The video was done to prove the door clasp actually worked and the door opened.
The shack won first place in open structures.
by Dave Croshere
The history of #17: The locomotive was originally Don Crabal’s engine. Don was a very meticulous modeler. Some said he was so neat you could heat off of his layout floor. He was a good guy and, amongst other things, the reason we meet at Monroe Hall.
His Layout was the Hessel & Lone Pine (H&LP) After Don’s passing, #17 went To Steve Skold. At a Christmas party at his house he gave it to me.
When I received #17 it was in need of a slight amount of attention. It was set up as an oil burning loco and my layout is all coal locos. So that is one change I made. Because of a Vanderbilt tender it was easier to install the speaker in the front of the loco shell,. The sound decoder I used had the capability of four light functions.
I like to have an engineer and a fireman in the cab, as was appropriate. I saw a layout in the South Bay where all the engineers had cigarettes, which lead me to the idea of a lit cigar. I drilled a very fine hole in his mouth and out the back of his head. Put a groove down his back to conceal the finest fiberoptic line. I had to carve the hand and fingers to conceal the fiberoptic which scaled out to a three inches diameter cigar. The engineer is sitting on a box with an LED light which shins up the fiberoptic, as ash of his cigar. The cab just nearly could fit a six foot fireman so of course that’s what I did. The fireman is standing with his coal scoop, and he has a more than average girth for this situation. With this kind of detailing a cab light seemed appropriate for the situation.
As an honor to Don, I left the popular H&LP call sign.
