DWP
The beginnings of the DWP, or how I remember it happened.
Written by Gerrit V (Founding Member)
A long time ago ,in another century, actually in 1986 AD there was a group of
model railway enthusiasts, who got together to form a club. During this early
period in time members were gathered from the Winnipeg Model Railway Club,
to form an “N” scale group. One of these members was CNR electrician Earl
Yack. Earl was an outspoken person who could make his presence known by just
being in the room. Earl set WinNtrak group standards for our module curtains,
sewn by his wife, Florence. H e also mandated a dress code for members, a red
shirt and grey club vest. Many more standards were to be followed by club
members, because, if you were out of uniform or ran your train in the wrong
direction you were told to shape up. A colour code was also set up, 2 colour dots
were to be placed under your rolling stock in case of derailment so that
ownership could be identified. I don’t think Earl thought of this standard but he
made sure you followed it. So was Earl, a go getter and pusher for a club with
standards to be proud of.
Earl was our show chairman, or show director, whatever we called them back
then. Understand this was before the club even had a constitution, we did have
operating rules though, and of course the dress code.
Proud we were too! One weekend we set up our modules at St. Vital Shopping
Centre along with a modular “HO” group from the WMRC and we impressed
everyone with the skill and precision we followed. We {Phil McLelland} used a
construction level on a tripod to level our modules. Off course the weekend
before when we set up on the unfinished floor of Phil’s garage, we learned we
needed to have our modules level to run flawlessly. Anyways back to Earl as
show person. He lined us up at different malls and the malls paid us to be there.
“Oh the good old days.” We would ask local hobby shops to supply a train set
that we could raffle off that weekend and we would donate the money to charity.
The club put on mall shows in Dauphin, Portage la Prairie, Winkler, and a local
store would donate the set or provide funds for it. The funds paid by the mall
would be divided up by club members to offset hotel costs. When we were in
Dauphin Earl would provide bed and breakfast to several members since by this
time Earl had retired and moved to Dauphin lake right next to the golf course. I had a relative on a farm just south of Dauphin where he stayed and another
member whose name escapes me right now also had relatives in town. We did
this for several years on the Easter week
school break and had access to the mall on Good Friday to do maintenance to the modules such as painting the modules on the
backside all the same colour. Now that Earl
moved to Dauphin he added a 16 x 24 foot room to his home to accommodate his new “N” scale empire. Plans were drawn wires were strung and work crews were set up to start this railway empire. The work crews consisted of Frank Smith, also a former
railroader, Ray Kindrat, Collin Anderson, and of course Earl himself. Work progressed to all track was in place and the scenery was about 60% complete.
Sadly Earl passed away in the year 2000.
The layout was to start a new life by being transported to Winnipeg to a new
room built in the basement of Gooch’s Sherbrook store. The disassembly was to
take place in 1 day. Mr. Gooch rented a 5 ton truck and asked for “volunteers” to
go to Dauphin. Dave Gooch packed his golf clubs, he was not to be seen before
lunch in Dauphin, and Bill Rudachek and I made up the rest of the team. Arriving
at Earls house Bill and I set to marking all the wiring under the layout ready to cut
at the modular joints in the layout. Earl had built the layout in box form, joining
the boxes to form the table top. At each box joint the wires had some slack that
when cut could be joined later with terminal strips. This took all morning to mark
the wires and unclamp the boxes. Earl had made homemade “C” clamps to join
the boxes. These same clamps are used today on the DWP. When lunch was
called Dave showed up from the golf course and we crawled out from under the
layout. Florence, Earl’s widow, had prepared a great lunch. She commented
“what did you guys do all morning?” as no progress was shown. We explained
that Bill and I had prepared things under the layout and Dave had gone to play a round of golf, but that after lunch things would change. Sure enough things did change after
lunch. As soon as one module was pulled
away from the wall all the others soon
came loose. A little note here, Don’t fasten
your scenery to the wall, since it will be destroyed when you move. An idea is
to paint the sky and background and
cover the finished area with plastic and
build your scenery up to the plastic.
Once the scenery is dry you can pull out
the plastic that protected your background. This also allows you to add photo details to
your sky coloured back. Plans are never made to move a layout, but portions may be kept for a future project. Earl had covered the back of the layout wall with hard board and curved the inside corners to avoid sharp corners. This was also removed and reinstalled at Sherbrook. The room at Earl’s also had 2 windows these did not occur in the basement and therefor more hardboard was bought to fill the void. My full-time job required me to travel the Canadian National Railway territories this included several trips to Virginia Minnesota home of a CNR. Railroad the Duluth Winnipeg and Pacific Railroad Co. It was on one of those trip that I
“acquired” a decal used on their trucks that had the DWP logo. Hence the name
of the layout was born. The Dauphin Winnipeg and Pacific Railway. It has had the
Sherbrook Subdivision, the Portage Subdivision, and now the Rosser
Subdivision.
Most of the original layout has been transformed or sadly gone. Things like
Kindrat Siding have been saved and used elsewhere, the station at Collin is still
used as are some of the original Dauphin structures. These structures were built
or modified by the original group of four. Sadly Frank Smith passed away in
2004. Collin Anderson pays us a visit when his time allows,, He scratch built the
station between the elevators on our present DWP as well as the brick plant in
the West loop. Ray is still an active member and contributes his skills on club
layouts plus his own modules.
The present DWP layout now consists of 2- 1940’s modules built by Colin A. 2-
grain related modules built by Doug Reid a new yard of approx.. 12 feet 2- end
loops built by Bill Rudachek and an inside corner built by Robert Vandekeere and
finished with the skills of several talented members. The New home layout of the
WinNtrak Model Railway Group the DWP is and was the work of many members
past and present and is still a work in progress to be enjoyed by many.