Greetings from Bill Voogd and the 5th Division. Summer is here and I am certainly not enjoying the brutally hot weather
we’ve endured through most of July. But Fall, beautifully temperate weather, and the return of train shows is on the horizon.
The 5th Division has continued our joint sponsorship with River City Modelers on the fifth Thursday of the month clinics. Ron Edgar of RCM did an exceptionally nice presentation on programming decoders at the last clinic. Any month that
has five Thursdays has a clinic on the evening of the fifth Thursday at the RCM club in Spokane. The clinics start at 6:00
p.m., and RCM opens their extensive club layout for guest running a couple of hours before the clinic. Bring along a DCC
locomotive and have some fun. The layout runs on Digitrax, but if you have another brand of throttle, the club has extras
you can use.
Cory Bennett has taken over the position of Webmaster/Communications Director for 5th Division. As well as working
on an update of the 5th Division website, he has established a presence for us on both Facebook and YouTube. If you have
material for Cory, you can reach out to him at webmaster.pnr5d@gmail.com. Thank you for this valuable contribution, Cory.
With the highly successful 2024 Surrey convention in the rearview mirror, we are turning our attention to the May 2025
convention, hosted by 5th Division in Pasco, Washington. The convention committee, chaired by Bill Fassett, is meeting on
a monthly basis and excellent progress is being made in almost all of the areas. If you’d like to be involved, please contact Bill
Fassett or myself.
It is with sadness that we report the recent passing of Roger Pepper, who was a long-time member of River City Model
ers. Roger had been inactive the last two years due to health issues, but had played a major role over almost a decade in the
construction of the RCM club layout. Before moving to Spokane, he had played a similar role with the large San Diego mod
el train layout. Always tough to lose people who love our hobby that much, but their work will continue to be seen and appreciated at the layouts they impacted.
That’s all for now. I look forward to seeing many of you at future 5th Division events.