Turn-Key Restaurant Opportunity

The March Milwaukee Road Meet (formerly the “Milwaukee Kent Meet”) is a gathering for slides, movies and discussion and socializing. All are welcome, as in the past this is a free event. Bring your photos, artifacts, models, memorabilia and other items for display.

The meet was originally scheduled to return to the Maple Valley Library.  However, the library recently canceled the reservation due to a remodeling project.   Cascade Rail Foundation is pleased to provide an alternate location for the meet this year at Pacific Northwest Railroad Archive (PNRA), where Cascade Rail Foundation is a member organization.  It is also the new home of the Boeing Employees Model Railroad Club.

This is your chance to get together and see some photos and presentations by some of the renowned Milwaukee Road photographers and historians in the Pacific Northwest.

 

 

Saturday, March 30, 2013 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. — Pacific Northwest Railroad Archive 425 SW 153rd Street Burien, WA  98166

IMPORTANT NOTES:

• The archive facility does allow for sales of your memorabilia, paper and model railroad items.  However, space is limited.
• Parking is also limited.  Please park on the street if you can.
• The event is FREE, although a $3 donation applied to the Cascade Rail Foundation Milwaukee Road archives program is suggested by the organizers.

You can download a map with directions here: PNRA_Directions

 

We recently opened a non-profit account on eBay. This means that you can directly donate a portion or all of the proceeds from selling an item to Cascade Rail Foundation through eBay. eBay will then reduce the fees they charge the seller by a corresponding amount. For example, if you donated 20% of the selling price to us then eBay would reduce the fees they charge you by 20%.

We also have opened an account to sell items directly on eBay, which should broaden the potential market for our t-shirts and other products we sell to raise funds.  Click the image below to find us on eBay.

 

 

MARCH UPDATE: Success!!! Thanks to the Friends of the 5057, we met the $3,000 fundraising challenge by raising $3,100 before the deadline. Thank you! We’ve paid for the locomotive and now we are raising money to move it up north and start the cosmetic restoration.

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We’re very grateful for all those who helped us successfully meet the $1,000 fundraising challenge in December.  This month, we have an even bigger challenge.

Our anonymous donor from last spring is back with another $3,000 challenge.  From now through Friday, March 1, the donor will match every donation we receive for the 5057 Project (dollar for dollar) to a maximum match of $3,000.  If you donate now, you can double the impact of your contribution!

We are very close to having the $15,000 in hand to complete our purchase of the 5057 by the March 1 deadline. Successfully meeting this challenge will help us meet this deadline and also give us a running start toward our next milestone: moving the 5057 back to its home territory for a cosmetic restoration.

 

 

Happy holidays everyone!  We wish you a healthy and prosperous 2013!

 

Credits: original photo by Brian Ambrose, photo editing by Tom Kermen, design by Paul Krueger

 

The Cascade Rail Foundation Volunteer of the Year for 2012 is Gary Pember.

 

 

Gary is a former Milwaukee Road employee who worked for the railroad as a locomotive mechanic in the Tacoma shops.  He has long been a friend of Cascade Rail Foundation.  This year Gary has been especially active in supporting our work.  He has been a regular volunteer helping to organize our archival collections at Pacific Northwest Railroad Archive in Burien.  Gary has also been very actively supporting our project to bring the 5057, a Milwaukee Road diesel locomotive, to the South Cle Elum.  For the 5057 Project, he created the work of art we are giving to people who contribute more than $505.70 to the project.  Gary and his wife Lori also donated the special, large size prints of the artwork.  In addition to these contributions, he has also been there for us when we needed a bit of information or some encouragement.  Gary even washed the lunch dishes at our fall meet!

 

 
While Gary is the recipient of the Volunteer of the Year award this year, he is not alone.  CRF thanks all of its partners in preserving the history of the Milwaukee Road in Washington.  THANK YOU!

 

Thanks to our great volunteers, we are making steady progress toward organizing and cataloging our collections.  We are working on a web site that will help you search our collections and, in some cases, see the digitized material.

 

If you’re in the Seattle area, consider joining us to help out.  We generally meet on the first and third Thursday evenings of each month at the Pacific Northwest Railroad Archive in Burien, WA from 7:15 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.  Contact Paul Krueger for more information at kruegerp@nwlink.com.  The more people we have helping, the more we can get done!

 

Help us bring the 5057 home for the holidays…
… and the rest of the year too!

 

Since the 5057 left the roster of the Milwaukee Road, it has spent many years away from its ‘home’ territory.   This holiday season, you have a special opportunity to help us get closer to our goal of bringing the locomotive back to the former Milwaukee Road right-of-way.  A donor will match new donations we receive by December 25 dollar for dollar, up to $1,000.   If you donate now, you can double the impact of your contribution!

 

Thanks to the generous ‘Friends of the 5057’ we’ve made a lot of progress this year.  We’ve raised over $20,000 to bring the 5057 to Cle Elum and we are within $5,000 of meeting our next fundraising milestone by March 1.  This would make us the proud owners of the 5057.  How much closer can we get to this goal by the end of the year?  Put the 5057 on your gift-giving list this holiday season!

 

 

 

We held our fifth annual meet at Cedar Falls on October 27. During the morning, attendees displayed their Milwaukee Road models and socialized. Some photos of the models on display are shown below.

 

 

After a catered BBQ lunch, we reconfigured the room and began presentations. Paul Krueger provided a brief update on the activities and plans of Cascade Rail Foundation. Then Mike Faletti narrated a presentation of slides taken by Carl Sonner. These images depicted Milwaukee Road operations in the mid-1970s around St. Maries, ID, as well as on the nearby Elk River Branch and the Washington, Idaho & Montana. We also had the opportunity to see photos Carl took in the same area after the shutdown of the Pacific Coast Extension, showing operations on the St. Maries Railroad. Allen Miller followed with a presentation of photos illustrating the former Columbia Division (originally Cle Elum – Avery, ID) through the years. We ended the day with a presentation of Milwaukee Road freight car slides brought by Kyle Carlson.

 

(more…)

 

 

Parking is free at the depot again for visitors to the South Cle Elum Rail Yard Historic District!

Since the State Legislature enacted the Discover Pass program in July 2011, people have needed a Discover Pass displayed in their car to park at Washington State Parks.  The Discover Pass costs $10/day or $30/year.

Last spring, the Legislature revisited the program and gave State Parks some flexibility in the way they implement the Discover Pass. Recognizing that the Discover Pass was hindering the successful operation of the Interpretive Center, State Parks changed the way they are managing the parking lot at the depot.

The depot is not open for regular visiting hours until next summer, though we can sometime accommodate visitors if you contact us in advance.  The interpretive trail in the rail yard is always open during daylight hours.

If you’d like to rent the depot for a special event, let us know!

 

October 27, 2012
10:00 am	to	5:00 pm

LOCATION The 2012 meet will be held on October 27 at the Cedar River Watershed Education Center near North Bend, WA (aka Cedar Falls).  We’re planning a full day of presentations and model displays.   AGENDA In the morning we’ll have tables set up in the room for the displays.  At lunch we’ll take most of the tables down and replace them with chairs for the presentations. For lunch, we’ll have the same BBQ sandwiches we’ve had in past years available for you to purchase.  Lunch is $11.  If you don’t want to partake in the BBQ feast, feel free to bring a brown bag lunch.

Milwaukee Road models on display at the 2010 meet

Presentations we’ve lined up for this year include:

• Allen Miller: Columbia Division (Cle Elum to Avery)  Allen will share his encyclopedic knowledge of the Milwaukee Road in Washington as he takes us on a tour of the Columbia Division, featuring the early years of the Pacific Coast Extension.
• Mike Faletti: Slides taken by Carl Sonner. Carl can’t join us, but he has been kind enough to loan some of his slides featuring Milwaukee Road lines in Northern Idaho to Mike for this presentation.  One of Carl’s photos was printed on the cover of the 2nd Quarter issue of The Milwaukee Railroader.

We’re still working to confirm another presentation and we’d like to add at least one more if we can.  If you have some Milwaukee Road material you’d like to share with us in a presentation or if you’re a former Milwaukee Road employee willing to talk to us about your work on the railroad, please get in touch with us.  If we can’t squeeze you in this year, we’ll keep you in mind for next year!

If you’re bringing something for the model display, you can download the forms (below) and fill them out before you arrive.

We’ll have the Cascade Rail Foundation Company Store at the meet too.  In addition to our usual CRF t-shirts, we’ll be selling our 5057 t-shirt and 5057 postcards.  We’ll also have some Milwaukee Road books from Merrill Publishing for sale, including their reprint of an Idaho Division condensed profile book, their Lake Michigan to Puget Sound booklet reprint, and also Milwaukee Road Steam in the West.

 

PLEASE NOTE:  This is NOT a swap meet.

 

ADMISSION
Admission is $3.00 this year.  Or FREE if you bring one or more Milwaukee Road models you’ve built (or are in the middle of building) to display.

 

We hope you can join us!

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