Chuck Inlow suggested I do a little write up on the Northern Pacific Railroad Historical Association national convention. This years convention was held in Wallace Idaho. It began last Tuesday 9-13-2016 and ran through Sunday 9-18-2016. The majority of events were Wednesday through Saturday.
These conventions, for those who have never attended are jammed full of speakers on the local history, speakers on general NP stuff, and tours. Saturday is set aside for discussions on modeling NP. This was a unique convention and the club officers took a bit of a chance because this convention location has no working railroad operations. The participants are used to being treated to some real railroading. So it was left to tours on buses. Another issue would be that the host of the convention wanted to have a very local flare and focus very heavily on the early railroading history of the area.
With that said most all of the speeches were associated with very early pre 1900 history. This included my love the Coeur d’Alene Railway and Navigation Company, early NP history, as well as local history from neighboring Montana and a particularly interesting speech on A line through Yellowstone that never was.
Our very own Craig Townsend gave that speech to a packed and interested room. This was the culmination of his research for his Masters. An excellent presentation on a very interesting subject from a very interesting angle. In the infancy of the transcontinentals and in the infancy of the National Parks what role would railroads play in reaching the parks and more important how much power would they have to go through the park. The problem being no one really knew what it meant to be a National Park. Anyway it was a very good presentation.
For my part in it I was one of two tour guides (the other being one of my mentors John Wood) on one of the tours that followed the route of the CR&N. Even though John and I have become friends, it was an honor that he respected me enough to ask that I participate. It was his show and he is the recognized expert on railroading in this region and for him to treat me as an equal was quite gratifying. But I digress. I was also asked to play chase vehicle to the main tour on Friday which traveled a portion of the CD branch from Missoula to Wallace. I was just supposed to follow along and pick up the lost if needed. I ended up with my own audience as a conversation on some logging equipment began. What started as a convo between myself and another turned into a group of about 30. I had not given much thought that many of these people had no idea what steep mountain logging looks like. We discussed modern logging techniques and even gave and impromptu class on tree identification, which I found humorous at a railroad convention. Never would I have thought my dendrology education and experience would be used in such a manor. It was fun.
My main purpose at the convention was to give a talk on modeling the CR&N. I didn’t want to give a stale “this is what I built” talk. I wanted to get into how I know what to build. So my topic was “Forensic Modeling: Unlocking the Hidden Secrets of Prototype Modeling” it is a marriage of historical research and modeling. It covered various sources of information available to a prototype modeler and how to put the research together. I was honestly surprised at the interest this generated. I feared it would still be stale, especially since most of these NP modelers were more modern main-liners. I purposely did not limit my examples only to rolling stock or locos. I did a large portion on accurate structure modeling and how to make that happen when information is limited. That was a huge hit. I lead it as a more interactive discussion than a speech and this part garnered a lot of audience participation. What was great is how little people had thought about this approach and It was a very well received topic. One older gentleman had approached me after and shook my hand and said in all his years attending the conventions that my presentation was the most useful modeling talk he had ever attended. That’s pretty high praise when I was told later that he was a competition modeler.
Over all the convention was very well received. The host, Shauna Hilman of the Wallace Northern Pacific Depot Museum, did just and excellent job. She had a tough time getting the bid. The main detractors was no working railroad and our early narrow theme. At the end of the convention one of the officers and main resistance to the location approached her and said this was one of the top three convention he had attended and that the narrow theme was unusual, unexpected, and overwhelmingly successful.
It was fun. On a personal note I gained several very promising leads for research. And for any of you interested in the LGB Iron Mountain “Helena” Marty Johnston of the Narrow Gauge Chaos did a fantastic presentation on the Iron Mountain mine and has from relics of the cars reverse engineered the ore cars from that mine’e ore train and has completed a set of cad drawings for all the parts. These should be available in the near future but he is holding tight for now until he can publish.
