The Gap Years

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. It was a warm summer afternoon. The crew gave us a spot on the end of the train. We rode in the last of three trailing helper SD-9 locomotives. An engineer and fireman were in one of the other units, but we had our locomotive cab all to ourselves. It was a tremendous thrill, feeling the air through the open windows, hearing the sounds, and feeling the awesome power of the locomotives, each 16 cylinder and 1750 hp, as they pulled the grade.

Our mighty locomotive

Part way up the Siskiyous, pushing hard

After about a half hour into the ride we saw a tunnel ahead, which turned out to be a LONG tunnel. Suddenly the air in our cab filled with diesel exhaust! Our faces were smeared with the grime. At the summit, the crew uncoupled and readied the pusher locomotives for our return to Ashland, which meant that our locomotive was now the lead locomotive. The engineer and fireman joined us in our cab. Looking at our faces they smiled and said something about forgetting to tell us to close the windows before the tunnel. I think it was our initiation ritual!

The Tunnel

To avoid the draft, I joined the National Guard at the beginning of my senior year of high school, and the resulting weekly drills further limited my hobby time. After high school graduation, and our memorable train ride up the Siskiyous, I did my basic training and technical training in the Army. I learned to operate Army radios and send and receive radio teletype. These lessons enhanced my electronic abilities, which was another skill that was relevant to modeling. The Army was my first experience living away from Ashland and home. It was definitely all work, and no time for hobbies. I served in Fort Ord, California and in Fort Gordon, Georgia, which allowed me to enjoy glimpses other railroads I had never before seen.

The fall after active duty, I started college, with my major being engineering. The demands of college studies continued to keep a lid on train hobby activities. However, I kept the spark alive by riding my bike ten miles to a hobby shop in the next town to buy model train magazines, a dummy HO F-7 locomotive, and a couple of cars. I displayed the cars on my desk shelf in my dorm room. Two friends across the haul did things in a much bigger way. They had a continuous track around three walls of their dorm room, and had probably thirty or more HO freight cars on display.

Sami and I married at the beginning of my junior year of college. We rented a small house, and to support ourselves we both worked, she full-time and me part time while carrying a full class load. We worked in campus dormitory cafeterias. Again there was no time to pursue hobbies.

After collage graduation I took a job as a Manufacturing Engineer with Freightliner Trucks in Portland, Oregon. I designed production tools, such as dies and fixtures, and developed production methods and processes, more skills that were relevant. At first we lived in a rented house, and started our family. We later settled into a home of our own in NE Portland, and model trains gradually moved back into my life, eventually in a big way.

Stay tuned for more of the continuing journey.