Link to our YouTube Channel.
Why are we making videos? There is no museum from Gualala to Rockport that you can go to get “the story” of the Redwood Empire’s logging history. When we had our previous layout, we spent many, many hours telling and repeating and repeating the history of the logging operations along the Mendocino Coast. Out of frustration we tried to produce a book. This didn’t work because we kept getting new/more information and revisions and printing were a costly pain.
Our book is now our website. It is extensible and it has enabled us to expand and add/delete new information as we have found/received it. To complete our “virtual” museum we are using YouTube to add mini lectures to bring to life the material in the website. Hopefully, together, the videos and the website will become a virtual museum for the Redwood Empire along the Mendocino Coast. Although we have our own YouTube Channel called MendoRail, we’ve also included the videos below. Don’t forget to check back for new videos.
This our first video of the layout filmed from a drone. Thanks to Nathan Mitnick for using and piloting his drone. This starts coming in from the west passing over the Georgia Pacific land and sheds, then a brief view of the Skunk Train tracks, and then looking at the outside tracks of our layout.
When “working on our railroad” a frequent question of our Shay locomotives is, “what sort of engine is that?” Visitors also remark, “that engine doesn’t look like the Skunk train’s steam locomotive #45.”
Haven, our youngest club member, made a movie of our electric three truck Shay in operation. Webmaster Roger Thornburn and I were so impressed by the movie we thought that if we added a “top” and a “tail” to Haven’s movie we could add it to our YouTube Channel which would address questions and comments from visitors about the Shays. You can view the movie below.
This YouTube video was not made by us – but about us. This is a video made by Louis W Bohannan of Alan Ahtow interviewing Tony Phillips, historian for the Mendocino Coast Model Railroad and Historical Society, for MCTV’s program, Coast Currents, in Fort Bragg, California.
Our fith movie is our most exciting so far. The “Day of Destiny” – our first run of a steam engine on the complete main track. In fact, we’ve now completed 2 main tracks, each over 370ft in length, each equivalent to 3.5 scale miles!
Our fourth movie shows the enormous progress we have made on our layout.
The original surveyor’s plan that Tony is talking about in the video can be seen here
Our third video is about the Ten Mile Branch – the railroad that Union Lumber Company built north out of Fort Bragg to the Ten Mile River Basin.
We chose the Mill Valley Drive Mill at Cleone (which in the good old days was named Laguna) as the subject of our second YouTube Video. Cleone is about 5 miles north of Fort Bragg.
Our first video introduced our new home in the Carpenter’s Barn in the Yard of the California Western’s Skunk Train In Fort Bragg.
Please contact us if you have any comment, feedback or questions about the content or functionality of this website