Front Range

FRONT RANGE DIVISION

The February meeting clinic was a presentation by Bob Hochstetter on the Missouri Pacific Railroad in Colorado. He utilized the MoPac 1958 timetable to illustrate the railroad’s western most penetration to Pueblo. As I am sure every clinician has experienced, the computer sometimes does not do what you want. Below, Bob and Pat Lana try to tell the computer what to do and it is saying back, “You talking to me?” They did get is straightened out and Bob’s presentation was terrific. By the way, Bob’s new home layout is modeling the MoPac in N-scale and it is something to see. The FRD attendance continues to climb. 

Our March meeting was held at Pat Lana’s MRR house. We operated on the CRANDIC layout and had a wonderful time. His crew helped the FRD operating rookies run trains, sort yards, and dispatch. Only a couple of crews had to take drug tests for running red signals and, luckily, we had no cornfield meets. The session was interesting as there was almost no talking all evening as the crews were concentrating so hard on doing the right thing. The night passed way too fast. The FRD thanks Pat for opening his layout for a great session.

We had a little mixup in the clinic scheduling this month, however, we recovered with a slide show on winter railroad operations including snow removal utilizing plows on engines, wedge plows, Jordan spreaders and, finally, rotary plows. The clinic period was filled out with slides of various bridges. Paul Brennecke put together the presentation.

Our program features a show and tell period. Below, Show and Tell manager Carl Hopkinson organizes the evening's models. The models fascinate the attendees and there is always something to be learned. On the left side of the table is the free box where we give away the models, books/magazines, and other items we no longer need.

The Front Range Division meets the third Monday of the month at 7:00pm in the Delay Junction building of the Colorado Railroad Museum. Exceptions are August when we have our picnic, also on the CRRM grounds and December when we have our Christmas party at an off site location. All are welcome.

Paul Brennecke

Superintendent

Front Range Division-NMRA