The Oregon Lower Valley Railroad (OLVRR)

  Our lives changed after I finished college and my military obligations. I now had a full-time job at Freightliner. My interest in trains became active again, and I focused on American Flyer and S-scale, which I was familiar with from my childhood. I didn’t have space to start a layout, but I began exploring new possibilities with the American Flyer items I had gradually acquired from Goodwill and other places, to replace my original train, which my father had given to neighbor kids when I left home for military and college. At this time, American Flyer was effectively history because the company had gone out of business, but it was not yet collectible, so starting my collection was not difficult or expensive. I decided that stock American Flyer locomotives, cars, and track didn’t look very realistic, and could be improved upon. I worked in the direction of “hi-rail”, which is defined as a compromise between ‘tin-plate’ toy trains and highly accurate scale models. Stock toy t...

For seven or eight years I had little time to be actively involved with model-trains. Now, I think of these as “gap years.” During high school and college, my active military service, and the years with a new family and home, other interests and necessities took precedence over a train layout. I spent a lot of time studying in high school, but a new creative interest took hold when a friend, Terry, and I became the ‘hardware’ guys for school plays. We built props and sets, and created lighting and sound effects. We were creating believable illusions, and I have since learned that those skills are relevant to model railroading. I met my future wife, Sami, working on plays, and our friendship occupied part of my time as well. Right after I graduated from high school Terry and I had a marvelous train experience. Terry’s dad was a retired Southern Pacific railroad employee, and he arranged for us to ride in a helper locomotive to the Siskiyou Mountains summit south of Ashland and back. I...

By the time I was six years old, I shadowed my dad as he did various projects around the house, soaking up how to do things and how to use tools, from small repairs to significant remodeling projects. He maintained a work shop in our basement, well-stocked with both materials and tools. I loved to tinker with things there and often left his area in a big mess. I remember many stern scoldings. At some point, he made me a small but usable work bench and gave me some basic tools I could call my own. By the time I was about ten I knew I wanted to use my newly acquired skills to make a train layout for my American Flyer train; one that didn’t have to be picked up and put away each time I played with it. With some pleading, I was allotted a space for a small layout in the basement family room. The layout was built from a scrap piece of ¼-in plywood the size of a single bed, left over from my dad dismantling a bunk bed. The size of the plywood limited the track arrangement to an oval with an...

  We lived in Newfoundland for less than two years. Next, we moved to Chicago. It had a whole new set of wonderful landmarks to explore; museums, libraries, parks, swimming pools, and amusement parks. The city’s elevated train (know as the EL ), ran right behind our second story apartment. Its rattling, thundering song became part of the background of my life. We didn’t have a car, but got around by EL. That wonderful train ran above ground most of the time, but occasionally the tracks dove beneath the streets. Without warning the train car would go pitch-black and the train noise would become deafening. I always took those opportunities to sing at the top of my lungs. It fascinated me that no one could hear me because the train’s loud noise drowned everything out. I tried not to get caught singing when the train raced back above ground.   The summer I was eight my family went on the magnificent California Zephyr train from Chicago to visit my grandmother in Cambria, on the Ca...

Don has asked me to write about my early train experiences. Whereas his were all train-watching experiences, mine involved the thrill of train travel. In 1952, when I was five years old, my family moved to Newfoundland. We lived in a rented house in Stephenville next to Ernest Harmon Air Force Base, where my father worked as a civilian for the United States Air Force. At age five I had already moved with my family six times. Each move was exciting to me. Together with my sister and brother, I would explore our new home to find out all about it. In Newfoundland in the winter there were huge drifts of snow in which to dig snow caves. There was a light house that had a revolving beacon. It made waves of white and red light on the ceiling of my bedroom. There were rocky, cold beaches where men huddled around fires to keep warm. There were moist bogs with a startling variety of wildly colored mushrooms. One of the fun things about this new place was the railroad and the giant trains tha...

Here, I must digress from trains. As I have mentioned, anything with wheels has always attracted me. When I was a kid I loved toy trucks too. I received several wonderful trucks in my early years. The first one was a yellow Doepke toy road grader. It was exactly like my older brother’s, except his was orange. He had allowed me to play with it occasionally. I was ecstatic to get one of my very own. With my new toy I became quite the civil engineer, creating roads in our back yard with pavement made from dirt and water. After a few days of playing, some paint on my new toy chipped off, and I discovered orange paint under the yellow - it was my brother’s orange road grader! I guess he had out-grown it My Dad was co-owner of the Marshall-Wells hardware store in Ashland, and sold these big sturdy toy trucks. I would go with him when the store was closed. He would let me play with those wonderful toys. He must have seen how much I loved them because over the next several years I was gifted a...