Meet your Callboard Staff

This month:

DOUG WHETSTONE

Assistant Editor, RMR Callboard

Hello Gandy Dancers. At the annual Rocky Mountain Region (RMR) board meeting in Albuquerque, I volunteered to be the membership chair for the region and following the meeting, I was appointed assistant editor for the 'Callboard' to help the new editor, Jeff Wright. Later, Jeff contacted me and ask if I would be willing to write up a brief blurp about myself so that all of you will know a little bit of my background, or at least recognize my name when you see or hear it. So with that in mind, what follows is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, with an occasional embellishment here and there. I think they call it - artistic license!

I currently serve as the superintendent for the Southern Utah Division (Div 20) and have been in the position for about 4 years. Prior to that, I served for a number of years as the president of the Color Country Model Railroad Club (CCMRC), a local club in the Saint George area of southern Utah.

I served in the USAF for 22.5 years, retiring in 1988 in Anchorage, Alaska. While in the military, I never had a model railroad primarily because I didn’t have the space and I moved around frequently. For example, I went to England in 1974 on a three year controlled tour and was transferred 9 months later to the island of Crete, Greece. In 1992, my wife and I left Alaska and moved to our current home in Saint George, Utah. I went to work for the City of Saint George in 1993 and retired in April of 2012. I am now officially, permanently retired. There will be no Walmart greeting done by this gandy dancer!

I built my first real railroad model layout after living in Saint George for several years. It was a 4 x 8 I constructed following an article titled “The Soo’s Red Wing Division” that appeared in the December 1994 issue of Model Railroad Magazine. After using this layout for 7 to 8 years, I got the urge to move on to something larger, so I sold the Red Wing Division to another club member and started the rigorous task of designing and building a room-sized layout. My “train room” is a 13' x 18' room in our basement. The railroad is called the Ozark and Green Mountain Short Line. I won’t detail the construction of this layout here since I am documenting the process in a blog. If you are interested in seeing what the O & GMSL is all about, you can check out the blog at dougstrainroom.blogspot.com. If you have a railroad documented in one form or another and would like to have it linked to my blog, please let me know. I am always looking for another follower.

That’s my history in a nut shell. I look forward to serving the members of the RMR as the membership chair and assistant CallBoard editor, as well as continuing to serve my own division as superintendent. If you see me at one of the regional events, please introduce yourself to me, and if you pass through or visit the Saint George area, please let me know and we can set up some home layout tours. As summer draws to a close, may God bless you with a safe and enjoyable Labor Day holiday.

Doug Whetstone

CallBoard Assistant Editor