Front Range

The Front Range Division is currently meeting by Zoom. Schedule and contact information are at the end of this note. Please join us. We have members and friends logging in from as far away as Portland, Iowa and San Francisco.

Our Zoom meeting in July featured layout tours by Rich Gibson. Rich attended a series of operating session in Montana. We were surprised and impressed with the quality and number of layouts in in the Big Sky state. He started with a layout named the Bitterroot Northern owned by Larry Brumback. It modeled the Northern Pacific and Milwaukee Road. Next was Kirk Thompson’s Northern Pacific - Mullan Pass located in its own rather large building. This layout can be operated in two eras by switching out power and rolling stock from the steam era and changing to modern diesels. The third layout was John Roger’s Maine Central featuring the mainline from Portland to Bangor, Maine in the steam era. This railroad included some 2’ gauge track as well as standard gauge. The Burlington Northern Marias Pass region from Whitefish to East Glacier was modeled by Jim Ruffing in a large two level layout with a small amount of three levels. Era was right after the BN merger thus a large array of motive power could be featured. The fifth, and final, layout was the Milwaukee Railroad modeled by Dave Hegeuroth. This layout features box cab electric power from Avery to Missoula, MT. The lumber and wood product industries are featured.

Some photos of the layouts are below thanks to Rich Gibson.

A wonderful layout under construction was our August clinic. Glenn Gibson is modeling the Santa Fe in the Trinidad, CO to Raton, NM area. Glenn is building this layout in a separate building and used a model of the model to make sure it would all fit in the available space of 13’ by 19’. The location of the prototype allows the Colorado and Southern, Denver and Rio Grande Western and Colorado and Wyoming railroads to be included. The layout has three levels with one being a staging area. He used John Armstrong’s techniques of givens and druthers as well as John's squares method to design the layout. Glenn shared photos of the construction techniques, track plans for each level and control panels including describing the philosophy utilized for each decision he made. At this point trains can be operated on the mainline.

Photos by Glenn Gibson

In September, Stu Jones presented an interesting clinic on DCC. He discussed items such as the difference between DCC-friendly and non-DCC-friendly switches, wiring reverse loops and wyes and crossovers with all the pitfalls that can occur. Stu emphasized diagramming your track and wiring to eliminate problems and if problems do occur to check wiring against the diagram to resolve the problem. Another problem covered was turntable wiring. Wire resistance versus diameter and length was a helpful subject he covered.

Stu Jones diagrams

In normal times the Front Range Division meets the third Monday of the month at 7:00pm at the Colorado Railroad Museum in the Delay Junction building.

The meetings start off with a clinic, followed by a “Show and Tell” session and is concluded with a short business meeting. We do not hold meetings in August and December. In August, we have the FRD picnic and in December we have a Christmas Party off site. Both of these have been cancelled this year.

However, we do meet by Zoom the third Monday of the month at 7:00pm. Click on https://zoom.us/j/220781378 if you have downloaded Zoom which can be done at https://zoom.us/support/download. Anyone who wishes to join us please feel free to do so.

Paul Brennecke

Superintendent

Front Range Division - NMRA