Mike Stoner's SPSF Owens Valley Sub and Phoenix, Trains in Flagstaff &Sedona, AZ

This past weekend and week I had to go to the Phoenix area for a conference.  But first I visited with my good friend Mike Stoner who lives in Sedona.  We didn't have much time for a lot of activities but made great time with that we did have.

The first thing we did was visit Verryl Fosnight's Union Pacific Railroad.  OMG this is a BIG railroad!  Still being built it is housed in a huge warehouse building.  Here are some photos and you can see more details at the Yahoo Group, Wyoming_Division.

From there we drove to Flagstaff to see a few BNSF trains and that we did.  4 trains in all.  It was getting dark by then so we headed back to Mike's house for an update on Mike's layout.  Mike is building his 2nd railroad (the first got flooded in a friggin' water leak) and the new one is going to be awesome too.  Here are a few photos.

More GP60's!

Mike Stoner and me at dinner waiting for Brandi, his GF.  Until she showed up, we were getting weird looks here on Valentine's Day!  LOL

Mike's layout under construction...again!

Mike hand lays his turnouts!

He's a details oriented guy.

This is N scale!

Mike uses McHenry couplers and body mounts them on all equipment.  He likes these over MT's because MT's tend to have too much slack and bounce, causing strange things with the cars.  I agree, however, I'm not spending time body mounting anything!

The next morning I drove down to Phoenix to my hotel for the next 4 night.  Luck me, my hotel was right next to the UP tracks and at a RR crossing too.  My colleagues didn't think it was very exciting because 2-4 trains came by each night!  There's something comforting about a train horn in the middle of the night...to me anyway!  LOL  Here are a few photos of Phoenix, although most of the trains I saw were in the dark from my hotel room in the comfort of my PJ's.

This and the photo below are of a gypsum board mfgr yard.  Seems like they waste lots of board.

Yet another UP train in the night.

Frank Kenny CPRX

Third day of Portland Crew Visit

Today is the third day of the Portland crew visit.

The morning started out fine, with Kent taking the van to take the guys to Starbucks and then back later to pick me up.  In the shuffle, I forgot to pick up lunch and didn't discover that until we were already arriving Joel's!  I had to go back to my house and pick up lunch and then back to Joel's.  Once back at Joel's, the crew was operating the layout and all was going well.  The op session was running fine...so far.

Here are a few pix.

Owner of the NYO&W, Joel Morse

We finished the op session and grabbed lunch and then off to Bob Grech's Western Pacific RR.  Bob has a very detailed layout, along the level of George Selios' layout.  Here are a few photos.

Bob Gretch, owner of the Western Pacific

After Bob's, we went to Mark Lestico's Cascade Line railroad and visited and ran a couple of trains.  I think I wore out most of the Portland guys so much that we mostly discussed Mark's railroad and various other aspects of operations, modeling, etc.  Here are a few photos.

Owner of the Cascade Line, Mark Lestico is on the far right

By the time we left Mark's house, I think everyone, including me was bushed.  We stopped at Applebee's for dinner (never again) and then off to the airport.  Oh, and Phil, Dave and Kent decided they would spring on yet another minor detail about the Loconet on my layout.  I don't quite have details, but I'm getting the idea that they want to re-build it!  They seem to be breaking it to me in little bits.  I'm open to any HUGE project they want to throw at me as long as they let me know when they are coming over to help!  ;-)

Frank Kenny, CPRX