Social Singles Train Day in May

When
31 May 2022
5:00 PM
Location
El Jimador Restaurant, 107 DeSoto Center
Registered
29 registrants

Registration

RSVP

Registration is closed

All aboard to see Boomers Rock Singles member, Rick Dorsey's amazing railroad display.

Train display viewing 5:00-6:00pm

Dinner at El Jimador Restaurant, 107 DeSoto Center, 6:15

Due to limited parking at Rick's house we ask you to meet at the El Jimador parking lot between 4:45 and 5:00 and carpool to Rick's at 44 Acceso Circle. See below for information about the train. It's incredible!

After being awed by Rick's train display we'll meet up for dinner at El Jimador. Even if you can't make it to Rick's you're welcome to have dinner with the group.

If you have questions contact Linda Puckett, 405-627-6840

COTTONWOOD CANYON MODEL RAILROAD

By Rick Dorsey

The COTTONWOOD CANYON railroad is an “HO” scale (1:87) model railroad I started in early 2015. It’s a fictional mountainous railroad somewhere in northwest Arkansas set in the year 1960. Although model railroads are “never finished”, as of April 2022 this one is more or less complete and completely operational. The trains are radio controlled with sound...and some locomotives have over 20 individual sound effects. There are 53 hand thrown switches, mostly lighted building structures, and many of them have interior details. The construction has been a one man operation from start to finish. The layout is L shaped and approximately 34X34 feet with two large peninsulas. It is completely free standing, and there is approximately 120 feet of hand painted Masonite backdrop which I am constantly repainting to blend the background with the foreground. The scenery consists of mountains and valleys made with Styrofoam and a lot of sawdust mixed with Elmer's glue, painted and covered with scenic material. Rocky areas are made from Plaster of-Paris castings. The deciduous trees come from a weed that grows primarily in Scandinavia, sprinkled with colored “flock”. I make the conifer trees with floral wire and hemp, twisted with an aircraft rivet tool and also “flocked” with fine green material. Bushes and brush are made with black upholstery stuffing and furnace filter fibers. I also use real black dirt which I “collected” from the edge of a cornfield in southern Illinois, and a clay colored dirt I could only find on an access road in Arkansas’s Quachita State Park.

The “Flex-track” comes in 3ft sections which are soldered together and painted with an air brush, mounted on foam roadbed, and completed with gray colored ballast... (a tedious and time consuming job that most modelers hate doing). Most of the locomotives and the rolling stock are “weathered” using both an airbrush and powdered pastel chalks. The buildings are all “kits” some of which have more than 200 parts, and are also weathered. Many of the signs on buildings and billboards around the layout were made on my computer, and the neon lighted billboards and signs are made possible with the latest mini LED and fiber optics.

The cars and trucks, with a few exceptions, are from the 1940's and 1950's. In real life, by 1960 almost all of the steam engines were history and diesels took over but some still survived as “yard switchers” and many have a second life today, rebuilt and used for tourist “fan trips”.

Boomers Rock is a 501(c)7 non-profit organization.