Chris, As part of the Frisco nation, you are eligible for either (1) a personal guided tour or (2) a group tour that will probably be part of the Frisco meet itinerary next year. Let Mark or I know when you are available although you could also get a good tour from Keith Robinson (klrwizkidd) or John Moenius (Boomer John). We might as well operate when you visit again so plan on the day. Others interested in West Bottoms, 19th St, Rosedale, etc tours are as welcome as Chris. But you have to tell us. Tour IT on the Frisco! Rick
Chris, To top off a tour we also know the location of Rosedale Bar-B-Que. No tour of the West Bottoms is complete without a quick bite of some great Q. After all, Columbia is only a quick one and a half hour trip on I-70. Come for the day and have some fun. To reinforce Rick's comments, the group of Frisco folks keeps growing in Kansas City. We really enjoy meeting new folks and showing them the town. All are welcome. Hope this helps. Thanks! Mark
Chris, I was not able to get your link to the Sanborn maps to open to determine the date you were viewing. The Santa Fe originally operated 2 freight houses in the West Bottoms. The inbound freight house was located at 1403 West 14th Street. It shows on the Sanborn maps dated 1906 - 1917. This later changed hands as the Santa Fe's business dwindled and they consolidated operations into the former outbound freight house at 1319 and 1325 West 13th Street Terrace. This shows in the Sanborn maps dated 1939 - 1949 and March 1951. Later around 1960 a new "modern" freight house facility was opened to the west in Kansas City, KS in Argentine Yard on Kansas Avenue. At that time the freight house in the bottoms was closed and operations were moved to the "new" facility. Hope this helps. Thanks! Mark
Mark, that helps quite a bit for the time frame I'm modeling. I'll see if I can fix the link. The one downside to the digital library is that it typically only has the older maps. I may have to find a lunch break this winter and see if the MU Library Special Collections will pull a newer, hard copy map for me to view and sketch some notes. The Library of Congress "American Memory" pages includes some neat Jack Delano B/W pics of KC freight house doins in the early 1940s but there's not many good photos of the building itself. Even at this early hour: BBQ sounds perfectly fine to me for breakfast. Best Regards,
Few things in life can top KC BBQ at any hour. Let us know when you are headed towards KC Chris. Hey that reminds me, Andre owes us a visit as well. If you are out there Andre, some of us will be on the Central Division this Saturday. We will get some photos for the archives. Are you working this Saturday?
Hi Rickster! Nope... not working. BUT... what is your itenerate for Saturday? Was intending to ride one of my motorcycles... but who knows? Andre
Andre, We have a big enough crowd that we reserved an AM lounge car. Don't know all the details but I believe we depart Springdale at 8 am. Not sure when we get into Van Buren but I know we take the return trip and get back to Springdale at 6 pm. Should be some great photo ops on my first run over the SLSF Central Division. Looking forward to the trestle and the tunnel. Thought you might be driving (the train) this Saturday . . . . . .
Should hit VB around 10:30 or so. FWIW: If you can, sit on the east side of the car on the trip down to Van Buren. Reason: That puts you looking toward the valley when going over the big bridges. West side looks up the hollows. Both views are good... but it's more fun (to me) seeing the vistas first. What are you and your group's plans for passing your time at VB? Going to hit the shops or what?
Good luck gettin' that private car. The train was packed with people riding to see the fall colors up there in the mountains. Lots to do in downtown Van Buren(My hometown¤t residence) . Wish Dave's Hobbies & collectible hadn't moved out. Now there is no train store in Van Buren. Have fun & Ship it on the Frisco!!! Murphy Millican
Our A&M lounge car (105) was pretty nice. Our group was 40 people so we took up the whole car and had a dedicated steward who entertained as well as kept us fed and watered. Nice trip, friendly crew, great scenery. All in all, a nice day. The sun made a rare appearance and I got to take my jacket off while touring Van Buren. Keith "klrwhizkid" Robinson and Mark "Mark" Davidson were also on the trip and took more photos that I did so I expect an Album or two to pop up in in the next few days. I highly recommend the A&M trip when you are in the NW Arkansas area. PS Murphy, you were right, it was packed last Saturday. We had more room in our lounge car. Good thing we reserved it.
I saw the train saturday. I was on my way home from Wal-mart with food. I hope it was a good trip. I've rode the A&M a few times and it is an amazing railway. I feel good know that my hometown still offers passenger service on a short-line railroad, not much of that going on anymore. Ship it on the Frisco!!! Murphy Millican
KC Terminal-Themed Layout (2010 Update) Folks - Belated Merry Christmas/Happy New Year's wishes to all. Things have been profoundly busy with work and parenthood, but I'm trying to stay in the loop somewhat. 2010 is the year of tracklaying. Once the temperature in the garage gets above freezing, we hope to start laying some track in between repainting/redecorating my son's bedroom. If I had my druthers, we'll start the trackwork in Olathe first, so that we can do some local switching. However, my son may want to put in the full outer loop. I'll let him be the foreman. I read an old MR article on Robert Smaus' Los Angeles-based layout in a garage, which reminded me that our layout will have to focus on capturing the "essence" of those areas we want to model. A question for those who have installed backdrops. I'd figured I'd use masonite but I see that the current issue of RMC has an article on using aluminum sheet for seamless, easy-to-curve backdrops. Anyone have any experience or thoughts? Still working on putting together the FMIG newsletter index, along with some ideas for building a Frisco LDE catalog. Bits and pieces here and there to keep me busy...but I can't forget to spend time at the workbench. Best Regards,
Re: KC Terminal-Themed Layout (2010 Update) Me too. I used aluminum sheet for my backdrop. Someone gave about 30 feet to me 6 years or so ago. It is white on one side, brown on the other. I thought it was flashing, but it may have been leftover seamless gutter material. It's 24" tall. I put up simple wooden braces and screwed it to them. It curved nicely in the corners. I had some friends help me. The white side took paint very well, and I didn't have any seams. Wear work gloves, drink plenty of PBR, and find something to rest the roll of aluminum on.
Gary, please elaborate on the painting of your aluminum backdrop as well; colors, paint, techniques (esp. clouds). It looks great! Oh, also seams and fasteners!
The beauty of the Aluminum is that there were no seams. I just screwed it to the wood frame with drywall screws. THe RMC article has a clever idea of using a channel from vinyl siding to hold the aluminum. You can see my friend Denny painting the screw heads in one of the pictures; I didn't bother to fill them in, as they were at the top and bottom and out of the field of vision. As far as painting goes, I went to the local recyling center where they have used latex paint, and you could take whatever you wanted. I picked up a white primer and a blue color. The blue was a bit dark, so I mixed it with white until it looked like sky blue. We used brushes to paint white on the bottom third, sky blue on the top third, and mixed them in the middle. Then someone followed with a roller to smooth out the brush strokes. This approach left some natural streaks and cloud formations. After it dried, I used some torn pieces of sponge rubber, and dipped them in white, sky blue, and a tiny bit of black and sponged on the clouds. I tried to make them wispy at the edges, and gray/dark on the bottom. The worst that can happen is you wash it off or paint over it. I'm not happy with the scenery painting, especially the closest color, as it looks too green and "minty". I may repaint that part. I followed Dave Frary's advice, using some tube colors, but also the Michael's/WalMart small acrylic paints. Mix sky blue paint with your tree green or grass green colors to give the illusion of distance, using more for farther away, then a bit less the closer you get. You can mix yellow and black with green for the close in stuff, too. I've done some other painting like this for my friend's layout, but he wanted mountains: (That's me wearing my Kansas sweatshirt ) Sorry to hijack your thread, Chris.
On the contrary, this is precisely the type of information that I desire. Thanks for the detailed pics and specifics. I will kindly overlook the KU sweatshirt (nobody's perfect).
The C&S in Claremore, OK (where the Frisco went under assumed name) used a lot of the metal roll for their backdrop, possibly aluminum. I think George started using it around 1990. So any photos from there will show it.
I received word yesterday from Boomer John that he has track down and wired on his West Bottoms based SLSF layout. Excellent progress ! When can we see some pics?
Whoa, slow down there Rick. I have the first eight feet done, three turnouts. Not exactly your Northern Division. Pictures would not be too inspirational, except maybe sending someone into model airplane building. Let me get the freight house in and the 12th Street overpass finished. At my speed, ETA 2015. John
Interesting you mention the FRISCO Santa Fe connection in Olathe. There is actually a wye track onthe FRISCO side and the BNSF runs southbounds out of Argentine to that connection and trains continue south on the FRISCO, have also seen northbounds coming from FRISCO to ATSF tracks includingthe Barnum Bailey Circus train. That connection is also one of the last remnants of the Leaky Roof mainline! Dave Lindquist PS Have you thought of including Santa fe Jct as trains coming from 19th Street to Rosedale would have used that as well as ATSF trains. I worked on CNW and took trains out of 19th St on run through and we headed past Union Station so you could have trains with CNW power if you model the early 1980's
