The Union Lumber Company had a ranch where they raised livestock and grew vegetables and fruit for their lumber camps. The original Company Ranch was 9 miles along the Skunk Route from Fort Bragg,
COO (Chief Operating Officer) and President Chuck Whitlock have combined their talents to build an outdoor diorama showing Company Ranch Operations.
The cattle and horse corrals
Horses unloading at Ranch
Loading cattle at Ranch
No, it’s not finished – there’s no cow pats yet!!!!!!!!
Daughter Holly (she’s a sommelier) was in town for a very few days recently. As usual she prowls around the layout looking for what has changed since she was last here, Here’s what she spied:
Click on any photo to enlarge ……..
Club member Roger Thornburn recently sent out this e-mail to club members …..
“Chuck’s grand-son-in-law, Nathan, used his drone to make a video of the outside of the barn [wherein lies the MCMR&HS layout]. It’s now up on YouTube and you can see it here – https://youtu.be/TffFLF54jkI
I’ve also added it to the YouTube page on our website – http://www.mendorailhistory.org/1_home/youtube.htm .I think Nathan would like to get one from the inside as well!!!!.
Enjoy,
roger”
It’s a great vid.
I received this e-mail from Stephanie Perdue today:
“…….. Thank You…. and to Chuck for giving us the “VIP” experience. We had a great time and my father-in-law was thrilled to see everything. You guys are amazing and have done great work with your museum, we are honored to have met you and learned of your experiences.
Thank you so much Stephanie.
Next to the Pile Driver – see previous post – is the Caspar Lumber Company’s loading area. Here, logs hauled in from where they are cut and loaded onto flat cars for transportation to the Caspar Mill some twenty miles away. Here’s a gallery of action in the loading area.
Thanks to Frank Davis we have a Pile Driver on the layout as you can see from the picture below. Not the rail truck to the right of the pile driverbring in wood/fuel. This was built by Mike Aplet.
Pile Driver at work building a trestle bent
Like everything else on the layout we draw on historical photos to make our modelling as accurate as possible. Here is a gallery of photos of pile drivers showing the “real thing” at work.
This picture shows the Lineman’s Shack that Chuck Whitlock constructed. The materials were a door and a window from some other project and “planks” made using a bandsaw.
Lineman’s shack and outhouse
The outhouse does have a history. It was constructed by me whilst I was incarcerated in Stanford Cancer Clinic. I was bored out of my skull whilst in isolation for six weeks. To keep me from climbing the walls the doctors kindly allowed me to build the “biffy”. I made it all except the toilet holder and the toilet roll. These were made by the head of the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit who followed the construction process with avid interest!!!!!!! The minion? Well they are everywhere on the layout – donated, bought, made with a 3D printer. We do have a sound card for the Minions singing. Alas we do not have a sound card for the Outhouse.
These pics arrived on a USB. The postmark was New Orleans. And that’s all I know. Any road – here are the pics:
For quite some time there weren’t any seagulls on our Point Cabrillo diorama.
Point Cabrillo diorama
Then I arrive at our layout and noted that there were two seagulls flying on the face of Point Cabrillo:
Two seagulls flying at Point Cabrillo
Chuck Whitlock liked what he had “raised” and the the next time I photographed Point Cabrillo ……..
Three seagulls on the cliff face
three seagulls. Another day and another had hatched ………
Four seagulls
That’s all there were for a while. Then there was a sudden explosion of seagulls ……
Count ’em – twelve
Twelve flying around!!! Now does anyone know how to model guano?
Daughter Annalise came to town last week armed with her camera. One essential port of call was our layout wherein she could see the progress since her last visit. Here’s the pics she took. Click on any thumbnail to invoke gallery.
