Workshop member Jim Martin had just settled down for a long winter's nap, when out on the lawn there arose such a clatter. He picks up the tale...
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We here at the S Scale Workshop hope the holiday season is turning out to be all you wanted.
This year I was the recipient of an unexpected and heart-warming Christmas gift, from not quite the North Pole, but from well up that way.
I have written numerous times in the Dispatch - the magazine published by the National Association of S Gaugers - about my friend Nicholas Deely. His layout, The Athabasca Northern Railway, was featured in the August/September 2014 issue. (That issue is free for all to read on the NASG website - so are many others! Look for the "Back Issues" section on the page about the Dispatch magazine.)
New England born, medical studies and internship in Canada, and now retired from medicine in Fairbanks, Alaska: Nicholas describes himself as a hybrid North American. And he loves the North. His Athabasca Northern has to be one of the most uniquely-themed layouts you will find in any scale, let alone a minority scale such as ours. A section of the Alaska Railroad is represented, along with the barren lands of northern Manitoba on the run to Churchill.
The Athabasca Northern is replete with northern iconography; snowy mountains, tundra, Hudson’s Bay blankets, First Nations people, trappers, moose, elk, polar bears…images I have not seen on another layout in any scale.
Nicholas and I have become good online friends, but I was not prepared for the package I received just before Christmas: a self-produced hardcover book of images of the Athabasca Northern.
The next big surprise was just inside: The book is dedicated to me!
I cannot begin to describe how this touched me. Neither Nicholas nor I are getting any younger, so perhaps it’s time I started thinking about a trip to Alaska.
Happy New Year everyone!
- Jim
Go for it Jim, go to Alaska!
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