Welcome to the Seventh Division, Pacific Northwest Region, National Model Railroad Association (Canada). The Division geographically consists of British Columbia, the Yukon Territory and part of the Northwest Territories west of 120 degrees longitude. There are approximately 300 members living mostly in the southern part of British Columbia who form a camaraderie and share a keen interest in model railroading.
A collection of slightly used On30 equipment is for sale, preferably to be sold as a lot.
All is in excellent condition, only 2-3 years old and hardly used.
Asking $450 for the lot.
Hal Werneburg
Saanich, B.C.
250-298-6693
wernebur@ucalgary.ca
At Grand Rails 2012, there will be a drawing for four cab rides from among the participants in the Little River Railroad tour. The cab rides will be in the railroad's #110, a 4-6-2 Pacific built by Baldwin, during its trip to Quincy and back. The train's consist will contain a WWII troop car, two converted stock cars, and three cabooses. In addition, the Little River RR's two other locomotives will be on display for photographs. In fact, you can even climb on them!
More convention news: The Grand Rapids Model Railroad Historical Society is producing an HO-scale model of a true local railroad landmark: the Bridge Street Signal Tower. The prototype, still standing near the convention hotel, was built by the Grand Rapids & Indiana Railroad to stand guard over the railroad's crossing of five streets. Only 100 of these craftsman laser-cut kits will be available at a special Grand Rails 2012 Convention price of $65. Members can see photos and get a brief history of the crossing tower at www.gr2012.org/towerkit.htm .
The 4th Division of the Pacific Northwest Region has signed on as a co-sponsor of this year's Narrow Gauge Convention in Seattle. The 4th Division will be signing up members for the NMRA throughout the event.
Because the NMRA's Online Archives has been such a rousing success, several prominent photographers and collectors have begun to donate portions of their collections to the NMRA. The first is noted author/photographer Louis A. Marre, who's donated hundreds of large-format negatives of many subjects. Gregory Sommers has also donated a large collection of freight car slides, and David Lange has donated a large number of scanned images from the collection of the late Jim Morris. Watch for these exciting additions to the NMRA Online Archives in the near future. Hopefully continued donations to The Diamond Club will cover the cost of scanning and preparing the images.
And an important repeat from last month: Grand Rails 2012 is looking for volunteers who'd be willing to donate an hour or two of their time at the convention doing things like contest room security, helping with registration check-in, silent auction set-up and tear-down, and bus loading. If you're interested and have an hour or two you'd like to donate, contact Mark Baldwin, Vice Chair of Volunteers, at gr2012volunteers@gmail.com for more details.
If you have any questions or comments about any of the above, please send them directly to a Director or Officer. You'll find those addresses at www.nmra.org or in NMRA Magazine.
We have had a somewhat unusual request and have decided to post it here in the hope that someone can help Gerry in his search.
"Time prevents me from building a large layout but I miss tinkering and having fun For months now I have been trying to purchase a previously built operational layout that would fit in my library/den The floor space available is 18 ft x 12.5 and is best suited for a walk around layout versus wall mounted I Know it is a long shot but would any of you have any leads for me that I could follow up? I am located in Kelowna. Thank you."
Gerry McParland
gerrym@westwoodfinecabinetry.comThe dust is still settling on our Spring Meet - Goldpan Express 2012 - held in Quesnel on April 6-8th as I write this a few days later, however on all accounts the meet was very successful. We attracted 116 registrants including vendors and spouses and enjoyed a public show total attendance of 1325 people, about 6% of the area population.
You may watch a short video of the meet at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7b5wLh2XX3M
I have added an RSS feed to the site, for testing, however we do not have a real "blog" on the site due to various limitations. The RSS feed XML file and these blog post entries are maintained by hand instead of by blogging software, so there will probably be some "gotchas" when I slip up from time to time. The main purpose for adding this feature is to see if it is of any help for the members to keep up to date with events and annoucements within the 7th Division. Right now, there are no real policies around what can be posted in the blog, so I guess if it is of general interest to the membership, then I'm happy to add it.
For further information on what an RSS feed is and how to use it, please see here.
I am currently working on restructuring and redesigning the web site to bring it up to date with modern web standards. While a lot of the work will be "under the covers", there will be some visible changes in the hope that the site will become more useful to the members. The unseen changes will enable the pages to be more easily changed and updated, as well as providing the foundation for more services in the future. I am also trying to ensure that the pages will display well on non-PC devices, such as smart phones and tablets.
This main home page has the new look that I am working towards. All of the pages will get updated as I get to them.
Any feedback from the members on what doesn't work, what you don't like, do like, or want to see on the site is very much appreciated. At the moment we are unable to host any large volume of files, due to considerations on the hosting servers, but this may change in the future, depending on the desires of the membership. Russ and I feel that the web site should be a more useful tool for the membership, but we need your feedback and ideas to make that happen.
Please send any comments or feedback to either
Russ Watson, or the webmaster,
Greg Madsen. Thanks.
The Division sponsors several Model Train shows each year. These include shows
in Nanaimo, Victoria, Burnaby, Vancouver and other areas of the province.
Check the Timetable for more information.
For more information on events, and places to visit, click on a location on the map
below.