Camp Alpine Season Opener

One train show a year

Dawson Station was invited back for it's third showing at the annual Willamette Cascade Train Show. This was the last event we did, so it had been in storage for a full year. Luckily it powered up and ran fine.

This is Conner, who I met the first year I did this event. He is inspecting the code and making a few modifications for me. He is sharp.

The local TV station was there doing a story. I've seen this lady at a number of events and it was fun to hear her story: http://www.kval.com/news/local/Loco-for-Locomotives-Model-trains-on-display-148463095.html

It was a great event. If I could do only one, this would be it.The layout got a lot of run time at the hands of some of future railroaders.

From Micro-fluidics to Monster-fluidics

On Friday our department took a break from micro-fluidics to tour Oregon State's world-class Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory. We were given the deluxe tour by the acting director, Professor Solomon Yim.

The facility receives significant funding from the National Science Foundation and collaborate with institutions around the world to conduct research projects which can take a half year or more to complete. They had an experiment in progress in the 2D wave channel, and we got to talk to the principle investigator and see the instrumentation setup.



In the tsunami basin, they simulated a couple of different wave types for us. Here is a link to a video where they simulated a tsunami striking Seaside, Oregon.

Afterwords, the boss bought us lunch and then we returned to our warm office, ready to delve back in to the nice, safe world of micro-fluidics.