All posts by bsullivan

The Passing of a Legend

News

From the B&ORR Yahoo Group:

It is with regret that I must pass on the news of the passing of William W. “Bill” Duvall of Chevy Chase, MD on June 13, 2007. Mr. Duvall was a member of the NRHS and contributed many photographs to the B&ORRHS 2007 Color Calendar.

Friends will be received at Pumphrey’s Bethesda Chevy-Chase Funeral Home June 16, 2007 from 3pm to 5pm. You can view and sign the family guest book at http://www.pumphreyfuneralhome.com

Bill DuvallThere are many of Bill’s photos up on my website in the gallery. He was a kind, generous fellow, very welcoming and supportive of what I was doing. He openly lent me access to his original slides so that I might scan them and post them online to share with everyone. He had a real knack for photography and when I visited him he gave me a slideshow or two of some of his best work. The shots I saw were jaw-droppingly awesome from a railfan’s perspective. Thank you Bill, you will be missed.

RMRRS came, saw(ed) and conquered (worked)

Georgetown Branch related links

A group of guys from my train club (Rockville Model Railroad Society) met at my house last night and helped work on the layout. Accomplishments:

  • Broke down some old benchwork from a members’ old layout (sorry Andy, but it will find a new home elsewhere on the layout – everything, including screws, was salvaged)
  • Built a box frame for the benchwork at one end of the room
  • Sanded the section of spline roadbed that is complete
  • Planned the addition of a small section of spline roadbed to join the existing stretch which is the location of the Government Mapping Agency siding (paper, etc.) and placed an order for some CVMW flexible turnout kits to use here. (There is a slight curve and a conventional straight or curved turnout will not work properly.)

Next up will be installing the siding, installing the box and building out the benchwork, starting the upper deck and working on the helix. Photos from the evening will be posted soon in the Gallery.

Welcome!

News

Greetings and salutations. Thanks for visiting the new Georgetown Branch blog. I’ve set this up as part of a massive redesign of my GB online efforts so that I might translate my progress to the online community more effectively. Programming in HTML can be tedious and when I’ve got little tidbits of news and info to share, I often will divert my attention elsewhere instead of posting updates to the site. So, I’m implementing this new blog, an updated Gallery and a revamped website. All of which will go live very soon. So stay tuned and keep sending me your stories and photos!

ps. Don’t be creeped out if you see old entries here on this new blog! I’m migrating all my old journal entries to the blog so they will be viewable and searchable.

Layout progress & a couple photos

Georgetown Branch related links, History, News

Well, it’s been a long, long time (once again) since my last update here. If you’re regularly checking the Gallery page then you know that I’ve been posting some progress photos of the layout construction. I’m about half way done with the helix but it’s slow going. Mainly due to the addition to my family- a new baby girl! Born on 7/5/06.

In the meantime, I’ve done a couple other things GB related. I was lucky enough to gain access to a wonderful collection of old GB photos and documents which has helped greatly in my research. I also took a tour of the Georgetown Waterfront to document all the changes that are occuring there. And, I’ve posted a couple photos from a site visitor in the Gallery.