This week I took a short road trip with Dave Jasper and Tom Lennon to visit
Rusty Westermier in Western Iowa. The road trip itrself was pretty uneventful,
lots of time to talk, we saw Governor Romney's campaign caravan going the other
way on Friday, we didn't bother to tell him where we were going because who
needs all the strap hangers he has behind him anyway.
Rusty is looking great, his health is much better and Floy is going to bring
him to the S Fest next week. We had time for some talk and also time to work
on his layout. It is huge, solid benchwork and a great start on track. He
suffers the same challenge many of us do, he builds and then gets a "better
idea" and unbuilds to make changes. Still we left him further along than when
we arrived so that is good. Saturday, Dave Jasper and I did a little more work
on the layout and it was time to leave to visit another layout in Wahoo
Nebraska. I really had second thoughts about it as I would like to have spent
another five hours or so on the layout to see if I could get the trains running
up to the meat packing area but off we went.
I snoozed on the way over there and woke as we pulled in. Going downstairs, I
was a bit groggy and when I saw the display rack, I was disappointed, I thought
we were going to see S. No, here was a nice GE U50C, a string of 60 foot Cryo
cars, an AC4400 with double deck autoracks behind it. Looking into the train
room, I saw a 4-12-2 Union Pacific locomotive pulling a train as well as many
other items that could not be available in S. Then Tom Lennon asked if I had
any idea Rusty was going to pull this on us? This was all S. Man the nerve of
that guy building all this stuff that is not available, he surely doesn't spend
enough time complaining on the internet.
It was pretty amazing, I guess if you looked at each model really close, you
could see they were not perfect, still the skill required to take two Mikes and
splice the chassis to make a 12 coupled engine that ran that nice was a feat in
itself as was taking the guts of a trainmaster to create a huge U-boat ot
modern GE locomotive. Oh did I mention, he had a reefer with 14 Pacific Rail
Shops reefers behind it? Built up that is, I have seen 14 PacRail reefers
before but that was on a shelf unbuilt in boxes, never on the rails.
Well, I was impressed, the visit and the trip to Rusty's was well worth the
time and reminded me I needed to get back to work. A last detail on the visit,
we were stopped by a BNSF freight train a couple miles down the road and Tom
pointed out how none of the freight cars had flat panels, the construction of
the car had resulted in the panels between ribs or other supports to be bowed
considerably. Who would ever build a detail like that into their models?
Arriving home, I had a package from Monster Modelworks. It included some of
the new cobble stone and weathered brink material they are offering. This is
really neat material and I am looking forward to creating a scene on the layout
with it. I received a small sample of the O scale cobble stone and it looks
just like the foundation stone I have on some of the S Scale resin structure
kits I build a few years ago. If you have not looked at the Monster Modelworks
site, do so, I am lobbying for the brick freight house flat in S, I may be the
only one in the world doing that but if anyone else in interested in it,
letting him know might be helpful.
Short week, next Friday early, we leave on another roadtrip, east this time to
the S Fest. We will miss seeing Chuck's smiling face, seeing Art Doty with his
latest Gilbert find but hope to see some of the other old gang for a chance to
sit around and talk about what is wrong with each S manufacturer and what S
really needs to grow. Of course when all is said and done, again more will be
said than done and it will be us that does the growing, older and perhaps
wiser.
Carry on, I know you will.
Ken Zieska
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