It is hard to believe that the Scalefour Society was conceived amid great uncertainty and even vitriol, and yet, its newsletter has grown from a single page to this massive volume. Meanwhile, every issue that I have received in my short membership has taught me something of value. Congratulations to all the hard-working folks who have seen our older sister organization through to this point.
Aside from being a milestone issue, the 100th issue gave other reasons to be excited. In the previous number, it had become apparent that the Scalefour Society had suddenly become aware of Proto:87, and had solicited input from its membership on the question of whether a special interest group should be formed to study the new scale, and perhaps strike up a correspondence with the "Proto:87 SIG of the NMRA." This suggestion met with a mixed response in the correspondence column of the 100th issue. On the one hand, many seemed to feel that the Scalefour Society has a greater affinity with a Proto:87 group than it does with coarse-scale four millimetre modellers such as those who model in OO gauge. On the other, some members did not want to see the four millimetre influence become diluted with the addition of other scales, potentially more popular than the original.
While I think it is splendid for the Scalefour Society to promote Proto:87, I also think that the formation of another group would be an unnecessary duplication of effort. The Proto:87 SIG is open to anyone (and thus we are not allowed to use the phrase "of the NMRA") and so, I invited all Scalefour members to join the Proto:87 group if they are interested. I will continue to keep the lines of communication open with the Scalefour Society so that together we can push the edge of the envelope ever further.
Of course, I am also keeping in touch with the National Model Railroad Association. Last summer, I presented two well-received lectures on Proto:87 at the national convention of the NMRA in Long Beach. Apart from the occasional modeller who did not want to rewheel their thousand-car fleet just so they could relay all their track, virtually everyone was convinced by my slides depicting real trains with standard HO scale wheels.
Unbeknownst to me, the chair of the NMRA technical committee, Ron Gaines, was seated in the audience for one of my lectures. He was very excited about the prospect of adopting Proto:87 within the NMRA recommended practices, and asked that I write an article for the NMRA Bulletin on the subject. This I have now completed, marking the first step toward adoption of Proto:87 as an NMRA recommended practice. Even so, I still expect Proto:87 will take a year or so to be formally accepted.
Myself, I have no desire to wait that long. Surely all it will take for Proto:87 to meet general acceptance is for a few well-detailed layouts to be featured in the popular press. The pictures will speak for themselves and will convince more people than all the articles I can write on the general topic of Proto:87.
To this end, I have started on a layout which I hope will be suitable for publication at some time in the not too distant future. The subject is the northern terminus of the Pembroke Southern Railway in the small town of Pembroke, Ontario in 1906. This railroad ran from Pembroke to the village of Golden Lake some twenty miles distant where it connected with its lessor and operator, the Canada Atlantic. By that time, both lines had been purchased by the Grand Trunk which is in turn one of the precursors to the Canadian National Railway.
Pembroke was also served by the Canadian Pacific, and this more direct connection to the local major centre, Ottawa, provides the reason why in 1906 the northern end of the Pembroke Southern was really not much more than a couple of sidings. The small size of this terminus also makes it an ideal subject for modelling. With relatively little compression, I will be able to fit the station scene and supporting trackage onto two four and a half foot modules. What's more, there was probably only a single eight-wheeler stabled there at the time. Right now, I don't have any locomotives suitable for the era, but I think a single one is well within my reach. In the meantime, I will just have to suffer the anachronism of my diesel shuffling about with a handful of 36 foot wooden underframe cars in tow.
That is what I am up to. I think you can probably guess what my next steps are too. Starting with this issue, I describe how I am building track for the Pembroke Southern. Subsequent issues will examine turnouts, turnout control and locomotive construction.
On the other hand, I know very little about what the rest of the group is doing. While I have no desire to print feature-length layout descriptions (other publications can do it better), I would welcome short descriptions of your interests, accomplishments and plans. If I can print one in each issue, by the time we reach our hundredth issue, everyone who is reading this will have had the focus once. Speaking of our hundredth issue, if members such as Roger Miener, Malcolm Cross, Keith Norgrove, Joe Brook Smith and Peter Thomin continue to contribute as they have to this issue, some of us are going to need bigger mail slots by then. Thanks to all
