[or-roots] PDX web site

[Leslie Chapman]

Funny that idea hadn't occurred to me, especially since I suggested to
someone the other day that they might find an answer to a RR genealogy
question by contacting a relevant Model Railroad organization.

Since I have let my subscription to Model Railroader lapse I may not have
access to all their links anymore but it is worth a try.

I know that in the interest of developing the history of the prototype that
is the basis for a typical modeler's layout they often do extensive
research. It is interesting that a lot of guys who do "free lance"
railroads, which are essentially made up of whole cloth will still do a lot
of research on the real railroads in the area they are basing theirs on.

I've always been to lazy and poor to do much research, but have actually
built but never completed two different layouts; one based on the Old Slow
and Easy from Cottage Grove to the Bohemia country and the other one (which
is still in my basement minus the bridge across Smith River) is the Longview
Portland and Northern; Gardiner Branch. I had thought when starting on that
one since my son and I were doing it with a christmas gift from his Uncle
Jerry I converted into an N Scale set that we could actually model the
entire line on our sheet of plywood, mill site and all so I was a bit
chagrinned to discover the main building of the mill to scale would have
taken up most of the sheet!!

I seem to vaguely recall having seen the Pixie before, but it  might have
been somewhere else. I know when my parents and I traveled the length of the
Oregon coast when I was bout 8 or 10 we stopped at several "touristy" places
along the way. So the restaurant might have been one of them. I know I never
made it to Pixieland as that would have been around in my college years and
I still remember them fairly well.

Of all the links on the PDX site I checked out though the red electrics was
most fascinating; what a great commuter railroad system we had and then tore
up to sacrifice on the altar of "freedom of the highway!"

Les C

-----Original Message-----
From:  Chris & Bill Strickland
Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2009 2:55 AM

Leslie Chapman wrote:

>Hmmmm maybe I'll just leave it as a mystery.
>

Les -- maybe you need to hook up with some railroad fanatics -- there's
folks out there that study railroads, their lore and history and people,
just like you do the history of your family.  They are numerous and
shouldn't be too hard to find.  Many are retired rails that just
couldn't get enough of  "the job" -- often guys that just wish there
were my dad, an SP locomotive fireman and engineer, hired June 1941,
retired 2 Jan 1980 and instead of playing railroad for the rest of his
years, he played golf (and was very good, esp if there was a bit of
money involved) and he and Mom traveled a bit -- no railroading though,
he was retired from that.  Also there are any number of low volume
number (limited distribution) local railroad histories, things like 'The
Dunsmuir Centennial Book' and  Bowden and Dill's 'The Modoc' and
websites such as http://www.pdxhistory.com/html/interurbans.html ...

PS:  Remember Pixie Kitchen?  http://www.pdxhistory.com/html/pixieland.htm