 Hi, this is Jeff Schultz of Model Railroad Hobbius Magazine. We're here at the Willamette Model Railroad Club in Clackamas, Oregon with David Biedermann, the president of the club, and Rick Andrews, who has the honor of being the remaining charter member of the club. So Rick, give us a little bit of the history of the club and how you ended up in your present location. Well, we were formed in late 1984 and we got a clubhouse which was an old garage off of Holley Street on 99 near the bomber. We designed a layout and we're getting ready to build it until we realized that the lease was month by month and there was a possibility that the building was going to be sold. So we decided, let's find another place. One of the members was a captain for the fire department which shared the parking lot with this community center and he said, I've got a spot. It's 27 by 30. The only catch was that it needed to be excavated out so we could actually have a layout. So we did that and it took us, I think, three months to excavate it out and we put the layout in the 27 by 30 foot space. There was another basement beyond this that was also 30 by 30, I believe, but that was going to be a harder excavation project. So we had this layout in this current basement until 19 or until 2003 when there was a flood upstairs in the kitchen and it flooded 90% of the ceiling and we realized that we were going to have to eliminate the layout in order to fix the ceiling so it was decided at that time, okay, since we're going to do that let's go ahead and go into the other basement and do that excavation project and five years later we actually got it done and this is where we're at right now. We started benchwork construction in early 2009 on the current layout. So when you say excavation, how much material are we talking about here? Well, I don't remember exactly. I've got the stats but I don't remember the exact numbers but all I can tell you is that we took out approximately 32 full dump truck loads of dirt in five, about five years. That's what we did. Okay, and since Oregon has a tendency to grow rocks any of significant size? Yes. We had quite a few that were rather huge. Luckily, we were able to expedite the project when one of the members had a friend who had a pneumatic jackhammer which was if we here were not going to use that we would have just stayed in this room and had a different layout. But the pneumatic jackhammer helped quite a bit and we took out some major rocks. In fact, we have four of them out on the courtyard. Those are the significant rocks. The last rock that was taken out of the back basement, the last rock that was taken out of the front basement and there was some other rock and I can't remember what that was. I think it was the, I can't remember now but we had some huge rocks that were in here that we had to pull. So, okay, David, how about how much complete is the layout? Well, currently the layout is about three-quarters complete. We have about 500 feet of mainline that we expect to have when we finish it. Currently it's about 350, 370 operating. As you can see perhaps in the video we're currently finishing the last quarter of the four quarters of the room. And when it's done 550 feet and that's just mainline only? That is just mainline only. We have two major yards. We have a major helix for moving out of the staging yards and then of course there are many spurs and short rails everywhere. So what sort of staging is this going to be? The railroad runs from Albany, Oregon to Bend, Oregon and beyond and we stage from those two towns. So in terms of staging we have approximately between five and ten trains staged at any given time running both directions. We have built this and designed it in such a way we could run in a circular pattern if need be but it's not intended to. It's a point-to-point railroad. So are trains being made up on the fly during the session or is it all staged prior to the session or a combination thereof? When we begin a session we'll have three to four trains ready to go but we run a dispatch here so dispatch is in control of the railroad and how many trains are coming out at any given time. From that point forward in a full session there are approximately 40 trains that will go out so we stage the first four or five but then the rest of those are being made and they're actually operating. Okay and Rick, why did the club pick this particular locale prototype, well freelance prototype to model? Process of elimination. We decided when we were doing the excavating the core group we were going to make sure that we weren't going to make the same mistakes that we did on the first layout. One of the big ones was the concept of the layout the original layout was just mythical. It had towns but there was no rhyme to reason. The scenery was vaguely in western Oregon but if you'd asked somebody where in western Oregon it would be the answer would be well in the western part of western Oregon. It wasn't anything that was specific. So the idea was to have some kind of a locale that either was something like the Columbia Gorge which was already taken. We thought about the Siske line that was too far south the Lamont pass would be neat but it wasn't operationally oriented which is also what we wanted. That was a big prerequisite. So finally one day I was perusing through the internet and I came upon the Bear Creek in South Jackson and I looked on his website and I saw he had a map of Oregon and he had a line cutting straight across from Toledo all the way to Ontario and I thought well that's interesting. What if? And then at that time I didn't even know I knew the SP Mill City branch was just a branch and I didn't know it actually had they had surveyed it over San Iamb Pass and they were actually the actual idea was to connect with Ontario. So finally I saw that and I thought well that's kind of interesting. So I looked in Tom Dill's book and Ed Austin's book SP in Oregon and I actually read about the history and I thought well what if we change history a little bit what if the line actually made it and our railroad actually had the line over the San Iamb Pass. Siske line no. Anyway so that's how it started. That was the seed that was planted in my brain about doing a design like that. We ended up having a design off of four different layout concepts. One was the SP Valley line. One was the Siske line and there were two San Iamb Pass lines. One was a double decked San Iamb Pass line which actually ran from Toledo all or Uquina all the way to Ontario. Yeah and then my line which was my idea which was dub San Iamb Pass light because it wasn't double decked it was only single decked and my concept won and then we went ahead and started building and as far as did you mention something about the scale? No but why not? Well we always wanted to do HO so we just stayed with HO. That was the most popular scale with all the members so we weren't going to change it. So how did the name Columbia Cowlitz and Western come about? Cascade and Western. I think if I remember right way back when we first started we kind of had name the railroad contest and we had a bunch of names and that one was the most popular. That's pretty much what I can remember. So it just basically happened and everybody liked it. Yeah exactly everybody liked it. Okay Rick how'd you pick which era? I mean it looks like you're in the mid to late 70s here? 1979 and the membership picked the era. We had the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s and so we just kind of voted on it and it came down to the 50s and the 70s and the 70s went out and originally it was going to be 1975 but then we thought how about making it at the end of the decade because that would add center beams and also the covered auto racks as well. So we ended up in I think it's September. September 79 is the era. Specific. Okay local railroads you had in that kind of general times on the Burlington Northern, the Southern Pacific, the Union Pacific, even the Milwaukee Road if you go a little further north go a little back further back in history you've got the SP&S in this area. Were any of those railroads a particular influence or a combination of them? Oh not really. We connect with the SP in Albany which is staging and the Burlington Northern Albany which is staging and we connect with the BN also, the BN Oregon trunk in Bend which is also staging and we also kind of change history a little bit and say that Milwaukee Road actually came down and crossed into Oregon and came into Bend so we have a connection with Milwaukee Road too. As I've noticed, you run a pretty eclectic set of motive power here then everything from big Alcos to little EMDs. Yeah it's kind of the railroad kind of picked up orphans from other railroads basically I believe is what the concept is. But we do have some would be some current power for that time which is running our hot shot trains and they're the ones if I don't even think on the video that was shown but the current power has a little different paint scheme. It's red, black and white whereas the older units have the blue and gray and white scheme on them. So you've got your own transition going on? Yeah and we're kind of sort of like the SP&S you never know what color is what. Okay, David? Construction. You've got it kind of doing in multiple phases here how did that come about and is there a time plan and how well are you meeting that if there is? Well the construction started in this area that you can see behind us here. This is Coleman. Equally we were starting with the staging because obviously that's how the railroad runs and then we simply followed on around the corner through Irwinville and on into Lebanon and on. As each crew got farther and farther along another crew would start up behind them. So everything is in stages. We're not actually trying to do all of it once we're actually doing pieces. So after the track work was in here then along came the ballasting, along came the turnouts which are a whole separate crew and we continued on through then scenery and the goal initially was to get operation up as quickly as possible. So I would say that from the time we started this which was approximately three years ago we were up and operating in six months had it all the way through to the end of Lebanon and then we just continued to proceed. At that time we fairly well formed that there were really four phases to what we were doing. This being the first phase taking us to Lebanon the second phase continuing on around into Lyons and terminating there at Shelburne. Then the major phase then started from that which was to take continuing on past Shelburne into Lyons around the Corn East, Lyons up through Fox Valley around the corner into Mill City coming around the gates. So Mill City basically was a lot of the second phase and then we continued in behind us here. We have the staging area that is the other end of the railroad at this point. Now we have started to finish this last quarter of the space which is phase three. We anticipate we'll have this running probably in about six to eight months. Our goal is to have the entire railroad operating in time for the 2015 NMRA convention that will be here at Portland. It's all run very, very well. We've been able to actually exceed our expectations partly because we have a very reasonable general manager as far as the construction and gives us deadlines that we can meet. And we've got a really good group of people working here. There are approximately seven or eight crews. The members get to choose which crew they want to be on. Each crew has a foreman. The foreman is responsible for the overall progress and success of that particular group. And all of the groups have done really, really well. As we can imagine, we've had some turnover in three years, but new people have stepped up to take over the crews and to join new crews, and it has just gone swimmingly, frankly. All right, guys, you've got what I would call floating staging. In fact, I see you've got it named USS Granite Mountain now and there's a USS Lions on it previously. Tell me how that came to be, what the reasoning behind it was and how it's worked. Well, when we got the layout started, the idea, well, actually we got into a dilemma, and that is we wanted to operate because we hadn't been operating for, what, five years. And we were getting operating withdrawals. We were able to go to other layouts and operate them, but there were a lot of guys that were getting, you know, they were like that. And so we were trying to figure out, we can't really, we don't want to build the whole layout at once because that's going to take a long time and we're not going to be able to operate. We had staging over here and we moved west geographically through Tallinn where you see here and moved that way. So the idea was, well, why don't we do it in phases and why don't we have the other end be mobile staging, if you will. So one of the members came up with the idea, well, why don't we build an aircraft carrier with, like, three tracks on it that was the length of our longest trains and we could just move it as we progressed the layout around. So that's what we did. The first phase, which is the USS Lions, which is right in front of me right here, was over in Lions as a three track staging. So we ran trains from staging in Albany to staging in Lions. And then we moved it angularly because we wanted to start phase two and we wanted to start with Lions working east up the hill so we made it at an angle so we could get Lions started but still be able to operate trains. Once we got phase two started, we pulled it out, brought it in here and finished up the bench work and now it's at its present location and it's last location, the USS Granite Mountain now. And once we get phase three in, we'll be taking it out altogether and it'll be scrapped. So we were able to satisfy our operating fix and still be able to do bench work. So what has been the biggest challenge of building this layout so far, and aside from 30-odd truckloads of dirt? I don't know what would be the biggest challenge. I was going to say, I mean this is smooth. It's been really smooth. We've actually had some bonuses. We actually found out that when we were doing the valances, when we were mapping out the valances, we found out that the both rooms were a foot wider each way which helped great with the design. Thankfully it was a foot wider and not a foot narrower. The only other, I guess you could call it a challenge, in the back room there are nine posts and we couldn't take them out because they're load bearing, they're supporting three beams. I think the biggest challenge is that we miscalculated where the coordinates of a couple of those posts were. And it turned out that we had track instead of going behind the post, it goes in front of the post and we have another one over here set between the backdrop and the track of six inches. Well, the post is three and a half inches back. So those have been the only two real setbacks. The other challenge was designing the layout is trying to get it to meander around the posts and you're going to have your minimum or maximum mainline radius set by the distances the posts are and we wound up having to have 30 inch maximum. We couldn't have anything more than that. Plus the IOA space is a challenge because of the posts and we had a 30 inch minimum pinch point on IOA. So we have a lot of pinch points and there's going to be more when we get phase three in there but the decision was made, we want to put a layout in here so this is what we're going to do. So when we have operating sessions we have a limited amount of, we try to keep it just having the crews in here and not have a lot of spectators and it creates bottlenecks. Yeah, I guess if there's a challenge is trying to keep people when we're actually operating is trying to keep the engineers and conductors who are off duty out of here because they want to come over obviously and follow it around and that's probably the biggest challenge. Challenges we're having way too much fun here. I know I've been guilty of that myself usually with a camera. Okay, tell me a little bit about the club and how many people you've got, membership, how is it meant, handled, things like that? We have a 30 member limit on the club which right now all slots are filled with either active members or probationary members. It's all word of mouth. I was talking with somebody the other day saying you don't advertise or anything. I said we don't have to. We are the only club in this region that I know of other than private layouts but the only large club which actually operates a railroad. Other clubs are show railroads and they're beautiful in their own right but they don't operate like we do. We have a full-time dispatcher here when we're operating. We're running four to five road crews at any given time during operating session. Two local crews, two yards. And then of course people staging trains and doing ancillary support tasks. So there's a lot to do. We attract everyone. We actually are starting to have a waiting list of people who would like to join the club. Membership is generally speaking of all ages. We have people in their 20s, 30s and 40s. A lot of retired people as you can imagine. So we have a nice cross-section of people. We have people who work for the railroad. We have people who don't have anything to do with the railroad but just enjoy model railroading. So it's a nice cross-section. We have a lot of talents. A lot of talented people in this club. Yeah, electricity, computers, modeling, scenery, track. It seems like we just draw the right people at the right time. And that's one of the reasons why there really haven't been any building challenges. The crews have just been right there to step in and go.