November 6 Meeting

This month the meeting will be at 7:30 p.m. as usual but across the street from the Activities Center, in the Fellowship Center. This room is located on the east side of the main building. Ken Wiggins will present a program on "Santa Fe Motive Power - Early Diesel." The program will be a salute, so to speak, to a falling flag!

National Model Railroad Month is November

To commemorate this event, we have several programs lined up:

Nov. 4 -- We've canceled the Mall show and in its place Neil Burrus has arranged a trip to Slaton. We will meet at the Highland Baptist Church at 9:30 and car-pool to the Harvey House in Slaton. The Slaton RR Historical Society will have a speaker to meet us and give us a guided tour of the building, including future plans. Lunch will be on our own.

Nov. 11 -- We will meet at 11 o'clock at the Santa Fe Depot in Amarillo to have a guided tour of the SF yard, round house, and turntable. We will have lunch together at the Depot restaurant, followed by a tour of the BN yard. Our guide will be Dale Worley who worked as a conductor on the Santa Fe, in particular when the motive power was the Madame Queen. We plan to return to Lubbock around 3 p.m. There will be a sign-up list at the November meeting for car pooling and to give the restaurant an idea of how many to expect. If you plan to attend this event but cannot make it to the November 6 meeting, please call Nancy Reed so that we can include you in the count.

The Santa Fe Depot Restaurant is located just 2 blocks east of the Civic Center (where many of us have already been to enjoy train shows). The address is: 401 S. Grant. The telephone number is: 373-2558. We are expecting several tables set aside for us near the tracks so we can watch the trains during lunch. Feel free to drive up early on Saturday or stay after 3:00 to do some railfanning on your own but be sure to meet at 11 o'clock at the restaurant to begin our guided tour!

Nov. 18 - Home layout tours here in Lubbock. Neil Burrus is arranging the sites and there will be more on this at the meeting. He has selected four new home layouts for us to see.

Nov. 24-25 -- We will be setting up the HO modules at The Science Spectrum for the Christmas holidays on Friday and Saturday morning. Trains will be running until sometime in January.

Down the Track

The December meeting will be on Monday the 4th at 7:00 p.m. This will be our annual Christmas party so be thinking of what you will be bringing for the "Hobo Gift Exchange." We are trying to arrange to have it at The Science Spectrum but the location is still pending. Please note the time change, however!

The Board of Directors

met Wednesday, October 25. In attendance were: Nancy Reed, Bob Batson, Don Warren, Gregory Motte, Henry Crawford, Neil Burrus, and Ken Wiggins. The nominations for the slate of board members for 1996 are as follows: Bob Anconetani; Jim Baker; Henry Crawford; Jerry Dukes; Jeff Ford; Jan Genung; Jon Hays; Dr. T. H. Holmes; Rip Maples; Gregory Motte; Don Payne; Ron Pederson; Ken Riediger; Jack Seay; Sherman Stein; and Ray Zipps. At our meeting in December, we will vote for eight members from the slate and accept nominations from the floor. The ninth member is the out-going president. If you are unable to run for a position on the board, please call either Nancy Reed or Bob Batson. The term of office begins January 8, 1996.

New Product News

from Ken Riediger -- It has been about 3 months since I have updated the new products. Last time, I mentioned the Proto 2000 SD-7. Each new loco that Lifelike puts out in this series gets better and better. The detail is awesome and it will be out in "N-scale" soon. We have the Burlington and SP paint schemes in stock plus undecorated; more road names will be out soon. Atlas has their second series of U33/36C locomotives out. Three new road names we have in stock are: SP, GN, and NP. Athearn has new locos out also. They are the late GP50, with the angled blower housing; three road names are for Santa Fe and three for BN in three different paint schemes. Santa Fe's GP60's and EMD demonstrators are also in the store. Also from Athearn are several freight cars -- 40 ft hicube boxcars with new road names, more flat cars, etc. E&C Shops new Johnstown Coalporters are in with other cars in new road names. Several new vehicles are in stock from Athearn and other manufacturers. Atlas' new EVC caboose is in stock with roads of MN, ATSF, and GN with others in a second series to follow. MDC has a new set of fallen flag road names in stock. The 1996 calendars are in from Trains, Model Railroader, and Macmillan. The Macmillan calendars are: BN, ATSF, SP, and UP. The SP is a first-time offering for Macmillan. Walthers has their EVC caboose out with BN and ATSF in stock. If you buy directly from Ken, he will give you a 20% discount off the retail price or you can go to the store and get the standard 5% discount. Either way you can go by the store, Interstate Hobbies/Don's Hobbies, 5101-B 34th Street and see the new products.

BNSF Merger

Most, if not all of you, already know the merger of Burlington Northern Inc. and Santa Fe Pacific Corp. has taken place. The merger of the railroads -- Burlington Northern Railroad and Santa Fe Railroad -- has not taken place yet. They are in the process of negotiating with the various unions involved, and planning the hows and wheres of joining the two railroad companies. The new system has 31,000 miles of track extending from Canada to Mexico, and from Birmingham to the west coast. The merged railroads will have 45,000 + employees, 4,300 locomotives, and 97,000 freight cars. At this point the new company is ahead of projections for the third quarter, even with the merged company only together for eight days of the quarter. The ICC blessed the union on 20 July verbally, gave their written approval on 23 August, and the company officially merged 22 September. According to the Amarillo newspaper, Amarillo is set to gain 46 new railroad jobs because of the merger and the combined system will use the larger Santa Fe facilities there in Amarillo. Local railroad employees that I have spoken with, both BN and Santa Fe, say they have not heard how the merger will effect their jobs. However, the BN people think they will end up moving to Amarillo.

All intermodal trains from D-FW's new Alliance yard are to be routed on the BN route through Wichita Falls to Amarillo, avoiding the trackage rights over UP from Ft. Worth to Sweetwater, then back on the Santa Fe's transcontinental main. Also rumored is that some of the coal trains will move from their BN routing to the Santa Fe route and be able to bypass D-FW.

How will the proposed UP-SP merger affect BNSF? Well, UP-SP has been negotiating with BNSF in order for them not to oppose their merger. In the deal, BNSF will get 3,900 miles of trackage rights, buy more than 335 miles of track, and, most importantly, would have access to the Texas - Louisiana petrochemical business. The routes include Houston to Memphis, Denver to central California, and British Columbia to San Diego. BNSF would also have better access to freight moving between Mexico and the USA, and low sulfur coal from Utah. I personally feel the UP-SP merger could benefit BNSF more than it would hurt it. BNSF would lose its role as the largest railroad in the USA.

Back in August, BN had VMV paint one of the SD70MAC's in a commemorative paint scheme combining the colors of the BN executive scheme with the Santa Fe's warbonnet. Some have nicknamed it the "war-vomit" or the "barf-bonnet". The official word is that this was a commemorative unit painted by BN people and that the official paint scheme of the merged railroad has not yet been decided. Rumor has it that the red and silver Santa Fe scheme and BN's executive scheme will survive, with all locomotives in other than those paint schemes getting the yet-to-be-decided new paint scheme.
-- Ken Riediger

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