Pocatello Model Railroad and Historical Society, PMRHS.

Members newsletter and information page

Open to the public every 3rd Saturday of the month. 10 AM until 2 PM

Open every Saturday after Thanksgiving in November and ending the Saturday before Christmas Eve 10 AM until 2 PM

There is no admission charge but we will gratefully accept donations

Special arrangements will be considered for groups but please appreciate
that we are unpaid volunteers and it takes a minimum staff to open up.

Hobbyists and other interested parties may visit on work nights, Wednesday 7-9 PM,
(except the last Wednesday, our business meeting) but please do not expect trains to be running.

Subject to change at any time, call before traveling far.

from the Club...

We have lost another great friend and member, Richard "Dick" Harmon. Dick passed away May 02, 2007. Dick was a true railroad man, a Dispatcher, then Manager of Safety and Rules, for the Union Pacific, He brought a wealth of knowledge, contributions and friendship to our group.

Note: Business meetings are held the last Wednesday of every month.
Members are encouraged to attend and make their voice heard.

  • Please work to keep our layout room clean! Remember that we are open to the public and we want to leave a good impression with visitors so that they will come back for another visit and possibly join our club. If you see something that needs to be cleaned up, take the initiative and do it yourself, don't wait for someone else to do it!
  • Original standards called for a power strip for each module. That hasn't been the case recently. When building new modules or modifying old ones, please make sure that you follow the module guidelines to insure that all the modules are compatible with each other.
  • Please ID all of your equipment on the layout! Things have been fairly relaxed the past few years, but the move showed the fact that not everything was identified and finding the owner(s) can be very difficult.
  • Help and/or ideas are needed to make shelving to store equipment.
  • Help and/or ideas are needed to make room for more guages (G-guage for instance) along the wall.
  • Just a reminder - members are allowed to have no more than three (3) modules unless covered by the grandfather clause. Older members covered under this clause who have more than three are encouraged to voluntarily remove excess modules if there are newer members who would like to add their own modules into the layout.
  • Just another reminder - club owned modules should have scenery applied in such a way as to be removeable and replaceable.

    • 05/08/07

  • Historical replicas. The Inkom Cement Plant is complete. The Pocatello Roundhouse, and Coal Tipple is completed. We have acquired several Intermountain kits that are very close matches to the PFE icing platforms that once existed in Pocatello. The prototype could ice 85 reefer cars at once so selective compression will be essential! Tracks are in place and the Ice House is under construction. Still in the planning stage is the long gone Tie plant and Ramsy Transfer and a plan to integrate it all. Under consideration is a replica of the Wheel Shop. We've got a zillion wheel sets to populate it.

  • Operations-1. The long range goal to make the layout "operational" instead of "round and round" continues to move forward. The old non-functionable double ended yards without drill tracks have been converted to two overlapping yards, the Pacific and the Basin, each with a usable drill track. For point-to-point operations, the layout is "unfolded" with the Pacific Yard on the West end and the Basin Yard on the East end. The Pino Staging Yard can feed either end. The 36 feet of module behind the yard backdrop will become branches of off each end, probably logging on the Pacific end and coal mining on the Basin end. This will not prevent round and round operation for open houses.

  • Operations-2. Progress is being made toward realistic operations using a Dispatcher to control "single-track" traffic. #2 main wil be blocked at strategic locations effectively converting it to sidings and industrial leads during "OP" sessions. Gone is the practice of leaving modules as dead storage or equipment display. Industries and townsites now have names and will be actively switched.

  • DCC- As we expected, DCC is rapidly making inroads with some very nice equipment coming on line- with sound yet. The Pacific and Basin yards have been difficult to work due to all the analog toggle switches. They are now DCC only and many toggle switches are GONE! Primitive analog will be around for mainline and staging yard for quite a while yet. We have added two more three-amp boosters for a total of five. We have five DCC radio cabs plus the two in the command station. Three analog Aristo radio cabs are adequate because of the inherant limitations of analog control.

  • N guage layout has come alive with a new member who is an avid N-guager.

  • G guage has been rebuilt to level the trackage and make way to mix other guages. Scenery will be minimal, just adequate to keep equipment from crashing to the concrete floor. The primary purpose of this layout is to show guage options to the public and to provide a test bed for our public service.
  • New/old members are welcome to help out.

    • We are currently running a contest to record the names of the new 3000 series Cryotrans cars. Lists are posted in the PMRHS office, so spot the car, and write it down on the sheet. Winners will have as much chance of winning $1 million as they did with the recent fast food board game contest.

    Officers: 
    President  Larry Gilbreath 
    Vice President  John Dingman 
    Treasurer  John Dingman 
    Secretary  Ron Ferrel 
    Board Members: 
    Larry Gilbreath
    Dick Harmon
    Mike Wilson

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    Copyright © 2001 - 2007 PMRHS all rights reserved
    Edit Date: 05/08/07