Bob Johnson and his U.P. Butte Line in the May 2015 Issue

[NP2626]

I read this layout article with much interest, as I model Northern Pacific's Butte Short Line.  At the end of the article it talked a little bit about Bob Johnson stating that Mr. Johnson was a boat designer and builder living in Bellaire Bluffs Florida and it made me wonder if this isn't the same Bob Johnson who is the founder of Island Packet Yachts, probably the best sea going sailboats being built today!  Island Packets are built in Largo Florida, just a hop skip and jump away from Bellaire Bluffs; so, I have to believe he is one and the same!

 

Most of you will have no interest in this information.  However, an interest I have which supersedes my interest in Model Railroading is my interest in sailing, so it is of interest to me!

I also found the article on battery Power and radio control very interesting!  I think over all this issue of Model Railroader was excellent!

[mlehman]

I've been looking forward to that article, because it's almost always a better result to model something more digestible than the ol' Transcon, it's been done to death, so why notdo  something that resembles the RRing we more commonly see next door or down the road, although I sure going to Butte will be more interesting than the sedate landscapes of the Midwest. Being from Rio Grande Land, not exactly a fan of Uncle Pete. But the concept here sounds very interesting, so need to check my tablet soon to find out what was said and shown.

I'm interested in battery power, too, mainly something cheap and easy to hack into my Bachmann 1:20.3 Shay. I take it the article is more about smaller scale battery power, but probably good insights into state of the art anyway. Just need a beefier decoder is all.

[Onewolf]

It was an excellent ariticle and Bob Johnson's layout looks great and I would love to see it in person at some point.

I was also very interested in the Butte Line article because my original plan for my new layout was to model a UP single track mainline route with a major division point yard on one end. I had decided on the route north from Pocatello through Idaho Falls/Dillon and the Big Hole river.

I have subsequently changed my mind (probably) to model the UP route north/west from Ogden.

I live near Orlando, but I am familiar with the Belleaire Bluffs area because my grandmother/uncle lived there for many years.

[Burlington Northern #24]

I really liked both layouts in this months MR, the auto rack article was also very nice.

[mlehman]

Oh yeah, it's a Butte, err, beaut!

Bob did a beautiful job on this. Very effective use of backdrops and perspective. Not too crowded, but still a convincing trackplan. And we share similar tastes in what we consider the good stuff. NCE. Diamond Scale. Cripplebush RubberRocks.

[Northern Pacific Runner]

I noticed in Bob's layout drawing that he is showing the Butte NP station. Wonder if he has done it. I model in S and spent the last week doing some selective compression and drawing out some of the elevations. Looks like all the windows would have to be scratch built. Not sure it will happen anytime soon for me. NP 2626 are you going to model it? Bob's layout looks fabulous.