7th annual Northwest Santa Fe Mini-Meet -- Saturday, April 22

John Thompson and Bill Messecar held their 7th Annual Northwest Santa Fe Mini-Meet on April 22, 2006, at the Boeing Kent Recreation Facility near Seattle. The mini-meet featured a clinic by John Thompson on "Postwar Super Chief Consists and HO Models," along with a detailed handout of his research. Darrel Gordon, a retired Santa Fe engineer who now lives in the Seattle area, spoke of his experiences operating trains over Tehachapi and the Valley Division during the 1950s. Tom Green, a very knowledgeable Santa Fe modeler, gave an unscheduled clinic on building AMB depot kits.

After lunch Bill Messecar gave his clinic on "Santa Fe Stock Car Operations & HO Models," which was an update of the same clinic given by Matt Zebrowski at the Kansas City 2001 SFRH&MS Convention with the additions of recent stock car models by Intermountain and Sunshine. Jim Hayes spoke about building Santa Fe resin freight car kits and covered some of the recent releases by Sunshine. Jon Harrison, a professional model builder living in Portland, gave a clinic on "Building a Summit Depot Model," based on the recent Showcase Miniatures kit release with a number of corrections. The meet concluded with an excellent slide show by Doug Nighswonger of Santa Fe steam & diesel locos.