How I got here

The most import thing to keep in mind is that real trains never held any real interest for me until lately. It was model trains that got me. Two in particular, the original layout at The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and Joe Fugate’s Siskiyou Line.

If I did a website on the Museum’s layout I couldn’t do half as good this one. His story as a kid is my story too. http://www.midnightrailroader.com/museum1.htm The only other 2 things I saw were the WWII U Boat the dinosaurs - once. When I think of trains this is what I think of.

The other layout is Joe Fugate’s Siskiyou Line.
http://siskiyou-railfan.net/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.26

I first saw Joe’s layout on the cover of the January 1997 Model Railroader (MR) magazine.

I saved this issue for a scratch building project in it. The more I looked at the cover the more enchanted I became. I never did build that project.

I had two failed layouts in the time between 1997 and now. Sort of anyway, one never even got a stick of wood cut. In July 2007 I found Model Railroader’s contest runner up of the Red Rock and Northern. It was the dream plan I was looking for. I also saw that MR s subscribers could download a copy of the plan from the MR data base. Few changes and it would be perfect.
http://s90.photobucket.com/albums/k256/ratled/?action=view&current=RRNChanges.jpg
While I was there, I found they had a MR forum.

I made my first post in the forum on the Red Rock and Northern in October 2007.
http://cs.trains.com/forums/1229526/ShowPost.aspx

In November I saw a post in the MR forums by Joe Fugate. I didn’t know then that he was the guy who had that January 97 cover shot. I followed his link at the bottom of the post. Once I got to his site I found out who he was. It was down hill from there. I read everything on his forum and bought all of his how to video’s

http://model-trains-video.com/index.php This is the best money you can spend on making you a better modeler. I also bought all of the Live Op’s videos too. I couldn’t get enough of the Siskiyou Line!!

The Siskiyou Line site is where I learned the secret to a satisfying layout - quality of run.

http://siskiyou-railfan.net/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?2337.10

The more I read about Operations and The Quality of Run the more I knew what I was missing in my previous attempts at layouts. I applied this more and more to my dream plan – The Red Rock and Northern. The more I applied this to the RR&N the more and more the plan changed. It changed until the final version became a plan of it’s own. You can still see the ancestry of the RR&N in the current plan. At this point I have to stop referring to this as the RR&N and call it what it is – The Southern Pacific’s Klamath River branch line.

Why the Klamath River? Just before I discovered that January 97 MR cover, a friend taught me how to pan for gold. That too festered a life of it’s own and in the summer of 2004 I took a dredging class on the Klamath River. This is an environmentally friendly way to mine for gold that improves the river habitat at the same time. You can learn more about it the New 49’ers site. http://www.goldgold.com/

I now spend my summers there enjoying the area. I am anywhere between Hornbrook on I-5 to almost Hoopa along the Klamath River and The Bigfoot Scenic Highway – Highway 96. As I would take breaks along river I would look up and think how much this reminded me of the cover shot on MR. I could squint and see that trestle bridge with that Cotton Belt coming around the corner. It took me back to those days as a kid watching the trains go at the museum.

When I found the RR&N plan I was going to marry the Klamath River and the RR&N together and make the Sierra Pacific RR. It was going to be a freelanced spin off of the sale of the Western Pacific. As I learned how well applying Operations and the Quality of Run was working, I was also learning how well modeling a prototype works. I also learned about protolance – thus the Southern Pacific’s Klamath River branch line was born. I have learned a lot about the history of both the Klamath River basin and the Southern Pacific. Unfortunately I have limited space and can not do the concept justice. I do know that there will be a larger version someday and that will encompass everything that’s missing.

In the mean time, watch how this continues………..

You can always look at pictures here…… http://s90.photobucket.com/albums/k256/ratled/Klamath%20Line/