Large Scale Central

Train Mountain Today

General Discussion
#1

If your not familiar with Train Mountain here is there web site.

We drove over today with some friends and spent several fun hours enjoying all the activity.
If I understood one of the Docents correctly they had people from 44 states and 15 countries attending
( that’s running trains) at this years Tri-Annual event.
The Tri-Annual is a week long ( 9 days I think) event of fun, train riding, camping and catching up with friends in the hobby.

A few random pictures of the activities that caught my eye are below.

The unloading tracks.

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The Vendors area.

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Another of the unloading tracks

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Steamers always catch my interest.

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A train ride getting ready to depart.

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Another cool steamer.

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And who can resist a Goose?

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The turntable with, I think they said 95 leads.

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Another TT shot.

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A couple of shots of the coaling yards.

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Industries along the line

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From the back of the unloading bays.

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If you ever have the chance don’t miss attending a Tri-Annual even if it is just for a day or two.

5 Likes
#2

Rick,
Glad you could make it. After last summers trip, we stopped by Train Mountain as well and got a pretty good 3-4 hour tour of the place and a decently long train ride as well that covered the lower portion of the property. I really want to go back during one of the operations week events! I think you’d like that too!

TM is definitely a bucket list place for ride on trains.

#3

Craig,

This is truly amazing! I had no idea how many people were in this extreme end of the large scale hobby! Even if this is a fraction of the total participants, given the investment in terms of cash and skill obtainment, it is pretty remarkable!

Eric

#4

Looks fantastic Rick, thanks for the photos. The unloading area transfer table looks interesting, I’ll guess it slides the loco to wherever your pickup is parked?

#5

Great report. I was there in 2019 with the garden RR convention. Never did find the alleged gauge one layout…

Jerry

#6

The G layout is way down the hill near the overflow camping and parking areas. Hard to find unless you know where to look.

It is a huge layout but not very well maintained, in my opinion, but they don’t really seem to have enough interested help in G scale at this ride on oriented venue.

1 Like
#7

I’ll try and throw together a photo album of photos from TM from our visit last summer. Apparently there’s quite the connection between TM and Kitsap Live Steamers which I live about a mile from. Some of the people are on both board of directors kinda thing to dual membership. My wife keeps saying I should get involved at Kitsap but I say no because I know the slippery slope that it leads to but maybe I should just to get someone I know that goes to TM for the operation week.

Speaking of ride on stuff, a former co worker from the RR days is starting up a ride on train in Ellensburg over on the other side of the state. They are planning on doing train rides but also operations on a city park area. They are still in beginner stages of that layout.

Okay, here’s a few hundred photos mostly from my wife! I was too excited to take many pictures. Michelle said I had a big smile on my face the entire time. Click the photo and it should open the album.
Google Photos

#8

To give you a scale of how big the place is, the ride from the terminal area to the furthest point on the line takes 4 hours of running at 8-10 mph… There is a small group that does catered lunches out and back. We wished we knew about that but with our large group of 18 people we instead got a “school tour” that I helped set up.

Next door and connected to the TM track is a “smaller” group that gives public rides.

#9

Yes, it’s a transfer table. There’s a video of an unloading operation - try YouTube.

#10

That’s remarkable! Thanks for sharing the album!

Eric

#11

Well I might have started down the slippery slope of ride on trains. I found a TM Facebook group for people participating at TM, not just the “hey we are TM” group. I’ve already seen quite a few “hey I’m attending the triannual and don’t have a train” type of posts.

#12

Am I seeing a 7.5 scale T&M feed complex in your future, and Some Gp& boxcars???