This Memorial weekend, we were at Erwin’s house to enjoy his hospitality and his impressive collection of Dutched influenced DC model trains.
Below is a video from the event, which Juha put together. The video is password protected. The password is Don’s email (all lower case).
Hi ETE members!
Don and I received an email from Ian Lorentzen from the San Francisco
Chapter who closed with a short note about Don Fridlund’s death. Ian
thought we knew, so he didn’t include any details. Don and I are going to
try to find out more so we can send some flowers.
Don was an ETE SoCal member for years, a retired engineer from Disney and
proud of being a “cast member” for many years. He was very detail oriented
as is obvious in the job he did as he built the vineyard. The finest vines
were his own invention and very difficult to construct as I discovered. He
and his wife, Janet, were both retired and as Janet’s cancer worsened, they
decided they needed to sell their long-time house in Fullerton to move up to
Livermore to be closer to both of their adult children and grandchildren.
Mere months after their move, Janet passed away, but it did not drag Don
down. He joined the San Francisco Chapter of ETE and was very active, even
helping with Blackhawk, their multi-week show.
We in SoCal have missed him since his move about 5 years ago- his
willingness to do what was needed and his being at all the meetings. Even
Janet came to several. They really supported ETE. We will truly miss him.
I’m sure those of you who knew him would have wanted to know which is why I
sent this email. Those who didn’t, check out the vineyard next time it’s
out and look at the workmanship. It’s a little bruised from rides in the
trailer, but that doesn’t change the fine work.
I’ll miss the work day because of grandsons this Saturday, but will be
thinking about you. Have fun and think of Don Fridlund. He would have been
there if they hadn’t moved!
Cindy
A few members of the SIG met to build the new Station Module at Juha’s house on a recent Saturday.
Accomplishments of the day were the construction of the new longer station module (wood work) and we also started placing the round house, which was build by Max onto the layout. That started with a valuable lesson to read the instructions before applying power to something (we mixed up AC and DC and blew the LEDs, which are located in the round house).
Philip, Juha and Max will present the new shunting yard idea to the larger SIG membership at the next meeting on March 8th.
Our general idea is that the left side station module (wood work courtesy of Pete) will house the round house and turn table. We were thinking of adding some shunting tracks and maybe a diesel or coal re-fueling station. The long module portion (right side), will house 
to its left side a small freight terminal and 2/3 of the right side will house the passenger operations.
The module will have again 4 tracks (where as the two middle ones are the main tracks). The outer one towards the shunting yard / terminal will be connected in a separate power circuit to the old Digital system the club owns. This way we can have some yard action and have the long trains running on the main track at the same time.
The idea is to sell the shunting yard / turn table area as a Museum to the public. This is a very typical application, since actually train restoration clubs in Germany (and I have seen it in Switzerland as well) purchase old round houses from the federal train companies to restore old steamers or diesel locomotives, such as the V200 class trains. These clubs are periodically presenting their treasures to the public during festivals. Therefore, it is legit to run the ICE or Thalys on the main track and have old style locomotives on the shunting yard or even new style locomotives, which have been moved there to push “defective” locos around.
Post by Max.
The SIG met at Bethlehem Lutheran church to perform repairs to the SIG layout, especially on the Signal electronics, to discuss the new head amusement park ride module under Cindy’s care and also the group around Juha started working on the new train station module by taking the old apart.
The train station module is planned to have a compact shunting yard with a Marklin turntable (if we find an affordable unit) and round house (either Marklin or Faller) in addition to the buildings for passenger operations. Instead of the currently three modules, in the future, it will have two long modules.
It was also discussed that modules should have a uniform green coat.
SIG members were encouraged to adopt a module for refurbishment.
AND of course, we had some good looking trains running while discussing next action items.
The next SIG workshop meeting is on March 8th, however, there will be workshop sessions for the amusement park and the train station in between.
We had a great meeting here Saturday. We started with the SIG at 9:30. Plans and schedules were discussed for construction and upgrades to the modules. We will meet again on February 1 at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Encinitas to start work and to distribute modules for renovation.
The chapter meeting followed after a pizza lunch. The schedule for the year was developed and is listed below. Phil Smith stepped up and volunteered to serve as the chapter secretary to record activities and prepare items for publication in the Express. In addition, Max Moegling will be the new webmaster.
Dues for the chapter and SIG were collected from those attending. If you weren’t here and haven’t already done so, please submit your dues to me via mail. I would like to have all dues submitted and forwarded to National by the end of January. National dues are $20.00 if you want to receive the Express by mail, $10.00 if you choose to receive it electronically. Local chapter dues are $10.00. Please make out your checks for National dues to ETE. Checks for local chapter dues should be made out to me. SIG dues remain at $120.00 per family and checks should be out to Cindy. Thanks in advance for your timely submission of all dues.
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