My introductory chapter is now on line. I will be adding additional segments from time to time.

Yes, as you go, you can add pages to the article.

Bob McCown said:
Yes, as you go, you can add pages to the article.

That makes it easy. This will become part of my winter tasks.

Ronald Simpson said:

Bob McCown said:
Yes, as you go, you can add pages to the article.

That makes it easy. I will consider adding this on to my list of winter tasks. Those of you not on MLS would not be familiar with this 12-year-old project that now appears to be about half-way completed .

Ron,

Even for those of us familiar with your efforts it would be nice to have all the info in one place and in an easily accessible format. I hope you can do this article.

Richard Smith said:
Ron,

Even for those of us familiar with your efforts it would be nice to have all the info in one place and in an easily accessible format. I hope you can do this article.

I have been looking for a way to accomplish this. It appears that LSC may provide that means. I estimate this project to be about 60 percent complete, although all the existing lines are now operational. The remaining segments will be brought down closer to ground level (all the track now in place is seven feet or more above ground and is accessible by a series of catwalks where practical).

Upcoming projects beyond the mythical Northern Exposure town of Cicely, Alaska include an Alyeska Pipeline construction camp of the type I worked in 30 years ago, an open-pit mine styled after the very large scale which can now be found in modern-day Alaska plus three historic communities from the days of the Klondike gold rush–those latter all tied together by the Klondike Mines Railway.

All connecting railroads except the KMR will be in 1:29. The KMR was narrow gauge. These upcoming projects have to be at or near ground level (I may keep much of this raised above ground anyway) to be practical because they all involve mining and oil on a relatively large-scale. The road names to be in operation next year include my original historic Copper River & Northwestern Railway and then several modern (although sometimes defunct) mainlines: The Alaska RR (passenger and freight consists); the Great Northern (passenger and freight consists); Sante Fe (passenger); Milwaukee Road (passenger) ; and Canadian Pacific (passenger). The remaining ones for the 2009 and 2010 season will include the Northern Pacific (passenger); Amtrak; and, finally, the Klondike Mines Railway, which was mixed freight and passenger.

There are strange things done under the Midnight sun by the men who moil for gold;
And the arctic trails have their secret tails that would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, but the queerest they ever did see,
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge that I cremated Sam McGee.

Robert Service

Ronald,

(or do you prefer Ron among friends?)

I’ve intermittently followed your trail, and look forward to this new creation. You do great work. I’m curious how you will work the GN, NP, SF and MILW into scenes about Alaska. This should be fascinating.

Steve

Steve Featherkile said:
. . . how you will work the GN, NP, SF and MILW into scenes about Alaska. This should be fascinating.

Steve

You haven’t seen the television series “Northern Exposure?”

Wonderful. I love it when someone thinks outside the boxcar. And, your work is marvelous. Moose and the North Coast Limited.

Will this be in the articles section?

Steve Featherkile said:
Wonderful. I love it when someone thinks outside the boxcar. :D And, your work is marvelous. Moose and the North Coast Limited.

Will this be in the articles section?

More correctly, the North Coast Unlimited. The series will (eventually) appear in the articles section with discussion over here.

Note to webmaster: The BB code does not work with the commands [center][/center] or [hr]. Why not?

Ronald Simpson said:

Steve Featherkile said:
Wonderful. I love it when someone thinks outside the boxcar. :D And, your work is marvelous. Moose and the North Coast Limited.

Will this be in the articles section?

More correctly, the North Coast Unlimited.

It’s your railroad. Love your work.

Steve Featherkile said:
There are strange things done under the Midnight sun by the men who moil for gold; And the arctic trails have their secret tails that would make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, but the queerest they ever did see, Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge that I cremated Sam McGee.

One of my favorite summer camp stories. Every year someone says it at the friday night fire at scout camp.

I’ve enjoyed acting it out for my scouts, too. Another one I enjoy telling is The Charge of the Light Brigade. I set it up by telling the scouts all about a cavalry charge in the mists of the morning. And then sober them up by telling them that of the slightly over 600 who started the charge, only 197 were able to answer muster the next morning.

Cannon to the left of them, cannon the the right of them, cannon in front of them, stormed at with shot and shell, boldly they rode and well…

To paraphrase:

Bob McCown said:
There are strange things done under the Midnight sun by the men who toil for the copper . . .
.

I have always wanted to run personal tours from my place at Copper Center up to the Kennecott mines. The starting point would be my own Copper Rail Depot–home of the historic Kennecott model in 1:24 scale. It is about 3 1/2 hours by road from the CRD to McCarthy, the end of the road en route to the ghost town of Kennecott.

Ronald Simpson said:
Part I of my article is now available. Check it out and let me know what you think.

That first part and the second provide the context for the discussion of the actual large scale model railway.

Looks like my winter preparations are finally over. The first real snow, while not amounting to much, has finally covered everything, including, of course, the outdoor railroad tracks. Among other things, that means I will have more time to devote to THIS on line project.

Bob McCown said:
Yes, as you go, you can add pages to the article.

This is a great feature. Now that I have played around with it a little, it strikes me that more people should be writing articles.

Interesting start! I always enjoy your writing.

One problem, with Internet Explorer and VistaSucks ™, I can only see the words “Part I: The Background”
and just the very top of the first picture. I can read the full article using Mozilla.

Bruce Chandler said:
Interesting start! I always enjoy your writing.

One problem, with Internet Explorer and VistaSucks ™, I can only see the words “Part I: The Background”
and just the very top of the first picture. I can read the full article using Mozilla.

I’d like to see the explanation for THAT. I do not use IE, preferring Firefox Mozilla. Ironically, the article is written using FrontPage 2003, so it SHOULD be FULLY compatible with IE. Maybe there is someone out there who can explain what is going on and if there is something I can do to correct the problem.

The problem must be a code error in the first page…or something is incompatable with Bob’s site that IE doesn’t like. The second page displays just fine in IE. Both pages are fine in Firefox.

Bruce Chandler said:
Interesting start! I always enjoy your writing.

One problem, with Internet Explorer and VistaSucks ™, I can only see the words “Part I: The Background”
and just the very top of the first picture. I can read the full article using Mozilla.

Jeeze - And I only see the few rows of pixels of the picture with IE. It looks like a table size issue to me, but what do I know

Page two displays fine.

Nice Article Ron. I’m looking forward to the next installment.

Jon