Model Railroading > Russ Simpson

My old boyhood friend, "Russ Simpson", has been pretty sick lately.. Everyone knows "Simpson Products Company" for the past many years from when he first started commercial production of kits, on School Street in East Oakland, CA.
For the past several years, Russ has been living in Placerville, CA...
Russ and I were in the same classes together in the Oakland school district from Grades 1 thru 12...
We met each other in "Miss Ann Southworth's" first grade classroom, Room 7, at Jefferson Elementary School. It has been a lifelong friendship ever since.

Russ would come over to my house after school, and we would "play" trains with my grandfather's rolling stock on his basement steam railroad...
He was always impressed with my grandfather's workmanship and because of THAT, and his keen interest in a multi-point "puzzle switch" on the layout, he decided there and then to go into the commercial hobby business...

Just how 'sick' is my ol' buddy ??
Let me quote from this past week's e-mail message to me, that I received after sending him a package of complimentary videos.....

""I've been able to gather sufficient data now to draw and build the South Pacific Coast-- High Street, Alameda passenger shelter. I emailed you about it some while ago..

My problem was heart failure, a stroke and heart attack all trying to kill me at once. I am doing better and expect to do even better still over the next few months.""
Russ......

Please keep Russ in your thoughts and prayers as he recuperates at home after just being released from the hospital...

KRK



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/16/09 10:27 by KeyRouteKen.

My thoughts are in Placerville after reading this. Many years ago in the early 1990's a friend of mine, Jim Larsen, and I visited Russ on business. Russ was a gracious host and gave us a tour of his shop along with several tales of the various artifacts from past projects and some 'sneak peeks' of some future projects. Being a professional model maker (Russ even did some model making for the movie industry if I recall), Russ showed us several techniques and methods to mass produce plastic and resin parts and components. Russ was extremely helpful in regards to the injection plastic die making process. I remember being awestruck by a short segment of extremely highly detailed track that was being made for EMD (Electro-Motive Diesel) for the purpose of photographing a model of a new locomotive that EMD was producing. It was very realistic looking even though it was mostly plastic and wood with some metal rails.

I remember we left his shop with our heads chock full of fresh ideas and several boxes full of Simpson products for our upstart (although short lived!) large scale (1/24th) model railroad company, the Fiddletown and Sutter Creek Model Railroad Company. The castings that we purchased from Russ's company and used in our kits were the best. Our kits used scale milled lumber, Simpson Products door and window castings (along with some other castings like smoke jacks, etc.) and scale metal roofing (real metal!). These were craftsman kits and required a little more skill than 'shaking the box' (even though our's were packaged in plastic bags!) We always felt that the Simpson castings we used in our kits set our products apart from the others. Unfortunately both my partner and I were forced to move onto other more profitable things like actually working instead of designing and building model kits.

Russ also had some rails (25lb) that entered/exited the shop. We briefly caught glimpses of where the rails disappeared outside the shop, but I don't recall any motive power or rolling stock being present.

Thanks for the update Ken. I wish Russ a speedy recovery.

Erik Young
Sonora, CA



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/16/09 19:40 by SandingValve.

Part of one of Steve POlkinghorn's get togethers was a tour
of Russ' shop, totally fascinating. Get well Russ,we lost Dale
and people such as he and yourself are getting hard to find.