Santa Fe's 1948-1953 El Capitan Train in Victorville & Progress on C Yard Wiring

This time we'll cover the Santa Fe's all-coach El Capitan train in Victorville during 1948-1953, and then we'll look at several more weeks of slow layout progress, mostly on wiring the C Yard tracks.

Let's begin by looking at a color photo of the eastbound El Capitan (#22) approaching Summit behind F3 set #24 in the early 1950s:

I gave a talk about the El Capitan train in 2009, and this was the slide covering the 1948-1950 version of the train, when it first began daily service:

Here's the train's detailed consist during 1948-1950, along with possible HO models:

Regarding the 3477-3479 Baggage-Dorms, Walthers added an HO model of these in 2016.  They also added a model of the 3246-3248 Chair-Observation cars, which was also a welcome addition for HO modelers.

Here's a 1940s Santa Fe ad with a Stewardess Nurse posing behind an El Capitan observation car, as one nurse was assigned to each train for the traveling families:

And here's a Stan Kistler photo of the eastbound train passing San Bernardino's West Yard Tower area in December 1950:

Here are the next changes that happened to the train, during 1950-1953:

And here's the train's detailed consist during 1948-1950, along with possible HO models:

Besides the 3477-3479 Baggage-Dorms and the 3246-3248 Chair-Obs models mentioned above, in 2016 Walthers also added an HO model of the 1566-1577 Lunch Counter Diners.

Here's a photo of the westbound El Capitan (#22) behind F7 set #40, east of Las Vegas, NM, in the early 1950s:

Regarding the schedules of the El Capitan through Victorville (it did not stop there), it began running daily on Feb. 29, 1948, with #21 going through at 4:25 a.m. and #22 at 4:20 p.m.  But on Nov. 29, 1948, these times changed a bit to 4:27 a.m. and 4:25 p.m.  These times remained unchanged for the rest of this time period, except that #21 began coming through at 4:12 a.m. on April 27, 1952.

I don't need to model #21, as it came through at night, but #22 was part of the afternoon parade of eastbound passenger trains.  I could use the newer Walthers cars for some of these, plus the SFRHMS kits for the chair cars.  The 1954 train will become easier to model.

In a later blog post, I'll cover the 1954-1956 versions of the train, when it got a Big Dome car and then the Hi-Level cars.

Now I'll include here my weekly layout progress reports from Feb. 24 and March 9.

On Feb. 24 I wrote that I'd been lazy for the last two weeks, not working much on the layout.  But I'd just heard that the NMRA has chosen Tacoma, WA, to host their national convention in 2027, just two years from now, so I have some new motivation to get my layout into a presentable state by then.

This week I finally got all the feeder wires cut and inserted into their holes by the rails of Tracks C7, C8, and C9 (stub tracks for storing diesel sets), as seen here, beside the masking tape between the rails:

In the photo above, Tracks C7, C8, and C9 are the tracks on this side of the post, while the earlier Tracks C4, C5, and C6 are on the far side.  All now had their feeders ready to be soldered to the rails, a job that Bill Messecar sometime likes (?) to do when he visits me.

Rather than run all the feeders to the outside edge of the layout, I've decided that they will run to the nearest edge, which for some of these will be the edge along the central pop-up area.  I will run bus wires along these edges and then over to whichever control panel controls those blocks.  I realize now that I should invent and apply labels to each feeder wire and to each new bus wire, and I should make diagrams of them all, so that I can keep track of what connects to what.

I spent most of the previous week finally getting back to the plans for the Victorville Boiler House, which stood inside the wye there.  This project has been on hold since June of 2022, when Jim Coady had made the latest drawings for me.  I studied all the photos again and came up with my final changes, which I sent to Jim this week.

On the wye side of the building (which will face the aisle), I marked in red ink where I want the freight door moved to:

And on the opposite side (the mainline side), I marked how I want the single human door made into the size of a freight door (but later I asked him to make it a double-wide human door instead of a freight door):

I also marked where to move the internal walls to match a Santa Fe drawing we have, but I'm not including that drawing here (no one will see those walls anyway).

I'll report back when Jim has completed these changes, and then I'm hoping that Bill Messecar will still be willing to build a model of it for me.

I spent part of that weekend with another free trial of Newspapers.com, downloading more articles and ads from old Victorville newspapers.  Here's one I haven't shown you before -- a 1957 ad for the Emanual Temple CME church in the Barrio, which you may recall Craig Wisch has built for me:

I was interested to see that their ads misspelled "Emmanuel" with just one "M," the same way they misspelled it over the front door to their church.  But in the 1960s they corrected the spelling in their ads, and I think they had moved to a new building by then.

Meanwhile in Victorville, Craig Wisch had been working very hard on an S-scale model of the brick building that stood at the corner of 7th and D Streets, across the street from Hayward Lumber and Peterson Feed.  It was named the Vandever Building, and it included the Bowers Drug Store until about 1946.

This was his latest photo of his model, which was not quite complete:

And here's an old postcard photo of the actual building, for comparison:

Thanks to Craig for sharing with us his wonderful work in cardstock!

I planned to work harder in the next two weeks.  Then on March 9 I wrote:

I was more productive in the past two weeks, getting all the feeder wires ready to be soldered to the rails.  After I had cut and inserted them in their holes by the rails, I decided to remove some of them and have the adjacent track sections soldered together instead, saving on some of the wiring complexity.

I tried to keep track of what was what by adding lots of labels on top of the tracks, naming the tracks and sub-blocks and feeder locations and future gap locations between diesel parking spots.  Here is one view of this, looking from the throat of the C Yard:

Then I began pulling the feeder wires toward the nearest layout edge and attaching a masking-tape label around the end of each wire.  Here's a photo of me on my knees as I was labeling the ends of the wires:

The labels are pretty simple -- just the name of the track, which is the same as the name of the block, followed by -1 or -2, etc. for the number of the parking spot it controls, followed by a -a or -b, etc., when there is more than one pair of feeders to the sub-block.  In this yard, the active rail feeders are white and the common rail feeders are green.  Sometimes only a feeder to the active rail is needed.

Here's a view of the labeled feeders that run to the inside of the pop-up area, when that is the nearest layout edge (look below the edges of the benchwork):

Bill Messecar was able to visit me on Friday morning, March 7, and he soldered most of the feeders to the rails and some of the rails together at the rail joiners.  I forgot to shoot a photo of Bill, but he said I should just use an old photo, so here's one from last year, when he was busy soldering feeders in the same area:

While Bill was doing that, I was making a red-ink drawing of where each feeder was attached to the rails and where it ran to the layout's nearest edge, along with its label:

I may add to this diagram later, showing where all the rail gaps are (or will be, as I still need to cut a lot of rail gaps to make the sub-blocks for the diesel loco parking spots).

Meanwhile, my architect friend Jim Coady sent me his final drawings of all four sides of the Victorville Boiler House, per my red-ink mark-ups from last time.  Here is one page of his file, showing all four sides in one view:

Many thanks to Jim for all his work on this over several years.  If I'm lucky, Bill Messecar may want to scratch-build a model of this for me.

Another helper over the years has been Don Borden, who recently made some changes I requested to the control panels I will want to build first.  Here is the latest view of the C Tower panel, which will control the mainlines in that one area, plus a few C Yard tracks that are adjacent to them:

And here's the other panel he updated, where most the C Yard tracks are located:

Craig Wisch in Victorville has continued to work on his S-scale model of the Vandever Building, which included Bowers Drugs before and during WW2.  The model is nearly finished now, but it still needs some final touches, he says:

Craig plans to model some of the other buildings that were along D Street, on the side opposite from the tracks.

That's all I have for now.  I still have more projects to do in the C Yard, so I will keep working there.

If you are in the area, please visit me and the layout when you can.

UP's 1956 City of LA Train in Victorville & More C Yard Progress

In a previous entry we covered the Union Pacific's 1954-1955 City of Los Angeles train, so this time we'll visit the UP's 1956 version of the train, after it had acquired its E9 diesels, and when, for the first time, in off-peak travel seasons it was combined with the Challenger train.  Then we'll cover some progress in laying more tracks in the C Yard of my staging deck, plus another visit to Bill Messecar's layout.

First, here's a color postcard view of the City of Los Angeles train, circa 1956:

This shows new E9 #961 with two E9B units leading the first section of Train 104, the eastbound City of LA train, an all-Pullman Domeliner, in Echo Canyon, UT.   It's a UP publicity photo.

Here now is lots of great information on the 1956 train, thanks to UP researcher Jeff Koeller.

COLA 1956 Consists and Motive Power

On October 30, 1955, the route for Union Pacific’s Cities streamliners and secondary passenger trains between Chicago and Omaha was changed from long-standing operating partner Chicago & North Western to the Milwaukee Road, with Chicago Union Station becoming the new eastern terminal. This shift didn’t alter the basic consists of the City of Los Angeles, which had been relatively static since the delivery of the dome-observation-lounge cars and dome-diners in early 1955. 

The only noticeable change was the substitution of a few Milwaukee Road passenger cars, such as baggage-express cars and coaches for C&NW equipment. Also at this time, The Pullman Company assigned new “Line” numbers for the various sleeping car routes (due to a slight difference in mileage and to the change of railroad company, which required new operating agreements).  

The Milwaukee Road was thrilled to participate in such a prestigious operation, for which it upgraded trackage and equipment, as well as ordering new diesel locomotives for the service. However, competition from airlines and automobiles (with access to newly constructed freeways) led to a general decrease in train ridership and the inevitable merging of railroad services. UP’s response was to consolidate the City of Los Angeles and Challenger Domeliners between Chicago and Los Angeles effective April 29, 1956 (see the consist chart for the Consolidated COLA-Challenger Domeliner, below). 

Thus began a pattern of Chicago-Los Angeles train consolidations for off-season travel, with the trains running separately during summer seasons (and some holiday seasons). The summer season typically extended from early June through mid-September. A major upside to this realignment was that on June 2, 1956, the City of Los Angeles became an All-Pullman operation for the first time in its history (see the related All-Pullman consist chart, below). 

The year 1956 also brought several new sleeping car types into the COLA consists that were built by the Pullman-Standard Car Manufacturing Company. These included the Baker-class 5 Double Bed Room-Club cars, the Placid-class 11 Double Bed Room sleepers, three additional Ocean-class 2 Compartment-2 Drawing Room-5 Double Bed Room sleepers, and the National-class 6 Roomette-4 Double Bed Room-6 Section sleepers. The latter cars replaced American-class sleepers that had been previously operating in Line 4349 between the Twin Cities and Los Angeles, which route was shortened to Omaha-Los Angeles on April 29, 1956. 

Also in 1956, the UP’s ten 9000-series Dome-Obs-Lounge cars were converted for mid-train service by blanking out the rear-facing windows, and by adding a standard passageway door and diaphragm to the end. The work began after the conclusion of the summer season and was completed by the end of October. Now classified as Dome-Lounge cars, they ran mid-train in the All-Pullman summer consists, but they could still be used in end-of-train service during the off-peak seasons when the COLA and Challenger were consolidated. 

The 1956 COLA Domeliners continued to be handled by UP’s amazing fleet of E8s and E9s. At this time, UP began a program to equip the E8s and E9s with snow shields over their winterization hatches. Milwaukee Road also contributed to the Cities trains power pool with 18 new E9 units (six ABA sets numbered 200A, B, C through 205A, B C). Delivered in February, April and May 1956, they were painted in UP’s standard colors of Armour Yellow and Harbor Mist Gray with red striping, lettering and heralds. Milwaukee’s E9s were subsequently renumbered to 30A, B, C through 35A, B, C in the road’s 1959 general renumbering.

Below are some photos of these trains, followed by captions written by Jeff Koeller.

Shortly after UP’s crack Cities passenger trains were transferred to the Milwaukee Road between Omaha and Chicago, UP E9 946 and a pair of E9 B-units were captured on film heading up No. 104, the eastbound City of Los Angeles Domeliner, near Elgin, Ill., in November 1955. 

Today’s consist features a 1953 AC&F baggage-express car from series 5631-5638, baggage-dormitory 5613 (converted from a baggage car in 1947), two Leg Rest coaches, a 1949 AC&F cafe-lounge, and a 1955 dome diner, followed by a couple of Pacific-class sleepers running in Coast-To-Coast service. Other cars would include Imperial and Pacific-class sleepers running between Los Angeles and Chicago, and a dome-observation-lounge car on the hind end. A.J. Wolff Collection.

This classic UP publicity photo shows No. 104, the consolidated COLA-Challenger Domeliner, at Mile Post 958, one and a half miles west of Henefer, Utah. Colorized for use in the company’s 1959 calendar, this down-on view provides a rare look at UP’s trademark snow shields that were applied over the winterization hatches of UP E8s and E9s beginning in 1956. 

The 15-car consist is headed up by E8 927 and E9 B-units 969B and 961B, followed by a Milwaukee Road B-E car, a baggage-dorm and a cafe-lounge (both by AC&F in 1949), three Leg Rest coaches, a dome-coach, a Pacific-class sleeper, a PRR 10-6 in UP colors (both are Coast-To-Coast cars), then the dome diner and dome-lounge cars, and four trailing sleepers. Union Pacific Railroad Photo.

Here’s a nice down-on view of UP dome-diner 8000 (at left) and dome-lounge 9010 operating in the westbound City of Los Angeles near Granite, Wyoming. Having the lounge car at the hind end of the train didn’t work out very well, as the sleeping car passengers preferred to have the lounge car next to the diner, where they could relax and have a drink while waiting to be called for meal service in the dining car. Thus, in 1956, UP converted their dome-obs-lounge cars for mid-train use as shown here in this fine scene shot by master rail photographer Richard H. Kindig. A.J. Wolff Collection. 

Sparkling clean Milwaukee Road E9s 201A and 201C are shown on the servicing tracks at the Western Avenue engine terminal in Chicago a few months after arriving on the property in February 1956. The pair just came in after bringing No. 111, the westbound City of Denver, into Union Station. Note that the red-and-white Milwaukee Road herald is conspicuously absent from the nose door;  the cab units received nose heralds within about a year.

These units are from an order for six A-B-A sets of E9s that the railroad purchased as part of its contribution to the Cities trains motive power equalization agreement with UP. The Milwaukee E9s operated system-wide as well as running through on UP trains to Denver and Portland. No photos have been found depicting Milwaukee diesels on the old LA&SL route west of Salt lake City (also, Southern Pacific handled all trains between Ogden and Oakland Pier). Jim Shaw photo.

With majestic Mt. Ogden as an impressive backdrop, this UP publicity photo from the Fall of 1956 captures No. 104, the eastbound City of Los Angeles-Challenger Domeliner, coming around the curve past the old stock pens at Peterson, Utah, Mile Post 975.49. The train is running “left handed” on the eastward main with the passing track and the stock yard siding nearest the camera, while the westward main and center passing siding can be seen to the left of E9 949’s nose. 

E9 B-units 963B and 951B help propel a typical 15-car “consolidated" consist upgrade. The first car is a Milwaukee Road baggage-express, then a 1949 AC&F baggage-dorm, followed by the dome coach and three Leg Rest coaches, a 1949 AC&F cafe lounge, two unidentified cars (probably the Coast-To-Coast sleepers), then the mid-train dome diner and dome lounge. The last four cars are sleeping cars of various capacities. UPRR Photo.   

Modeling the 1956 COLA

In our last installment on “Modeling the 1954-1955 COLA” we discussed the various Walthers HO Scale models that can be used for replicating a mid-1950s City of Los Angeles. That segment featured a detailed chart of the Union Pacific “Cities” Series passenger car models that Walthers has produced. By referring to that guide and the two consist charts included in this article, an accurate 1956 COLA can be assembled. 

The following HO Scale models will need to be used for the 1956 COLA: Walthers 932-9510 UP PS 5-2-2 Sleeper “Ocean” Series; Walthers 932-9520 UP PS 5 DBR-Buffet-Lounge; and Walthers 932-9500 UP PS 11 DBR “Placid” Series. The Omaha-Los Angeles “National” series sleepers have not been produced, but an American-class 6-6-4 can be used as a substitute (these cars operated between the Twin Cities and Los Angeles, until being replaced by the National-class sleepers after their delivery in November 1955-February 1956). Also, we are still expecting the announced, but yet-to-be-released, UP Club-Lounge model from Walthers. 

Checking the COLA schedules through Victorville in this year (these trains did not stop there), the westbound train passed through town at 6:33 a.m. until April 24, 1956, when it changed to 6:28 a.m.  The eastbound train came through at 7:21 p.m. all through this time period.  I can model these trains in HO with the set of Walthers UP cars.

This concludes our coverage of the COLA train, as 1956 is the last year in my modeling time period.

Now I'll cover my layout progress reports from Jan. 19, Feb. 2, and Feb. 9.

On Jan. 19 I was ready for another layout report, as I'd been working on cutting and fitting the turnouts and track sections for staging tracks C7, C8, and C9, which (like the rest of the C Yard) will be for storing road diesel sets (usually four F-units or three E-units).  The tracks were now temporarily pinned down, and they are the three tracks branching off in the center-right of this photo:

My next steps were to glue them all down and then to insert feeder wires.

My friend Gary Jordan up in Mukilteo had finished painting a pair of brass GE 70-Tonners for my Mojave Northern branch line out of the Victorville cement plant.  I assumed those locos were a light gray color, but then I found a railfan color movie from the late 1940s that showed that they were a light blue color, so that's how the models are painted:

Mojave Northern #5 was named "Leonardt" and #6 was "Merrill" (those names were low on the sides of the cabs, as seen above).

That week I received a box from Craig Wisch in Victorville with the four cardstock models of Barrio buildings that he has recently built for me.  It turned out that the much larger house was accidentally built in S scale (his normal modeling scale), so I have mailed it back to him.

I arranged the remaining three buildings into a small Barrio scene, along with a couple of styrene models of small houses to fill out the scene, and with some other Barrio buildings that were near the 6th Street grade crossing:

From left to right, we see a small styrene house, then the Barrio's CME church, then a blue styrene house, then Carr's Furniture store, then a cardstock house, and then the old jail, sheriff's office, Santa Fe Hotel, and La Paloma Cafe.  The Victorville Depot on the right should be down much farther, across from the hotel.

Here's the same scene, looking from near the other end:

From right to left, we see the Sheriff's Office (built by Bill Messecar), the old jail behind it (built by Craig), a small Barrio house (by Craig), the Carr's Furniture store (by Craig), a blue styrene house, the CME church (by Craig), and a brown styrene house.

I mentioned to Craig that I will have space for about five more Barrio houses, so he says he has some idea for mass-producing them, after I send him more photos from Google Street View.  Right now he is building for himself (in S scale) the Bowers Drug Store, as seen in this old postcard view at 7th and D Streets:

I had some fun searching for Barrio news and ads at Newspapers.com with a week-long free trial.  One of my discoveries was that before 1953, the Carr's Furniture store was named the Victor Valley 2nd Hand Store, as seen in this ad I downloaded:

This gave me the idea of making a thin sign board with this name on it to stick in front of the Carr's Furniture lettering on the store model when I'm operating in years before 1953.

On Feb. 2, I reported that I was now on my bi-weekly schedule of email layout progress reports.  The previous week of Jan. 20 was largely spent using a free trial week at Newspapers.com to download dozens of stories and ads about the Victorville Barrio.  Last time I told you that Carr's Furniture had been the Victor Valley 2nd Hand Store before 1953.  This time I discovered that the La Paloma Cafe had been Carmen's Place until late 1949.   Here's their old ad from 1948:

I also looked for any stories about the Rosso Cafe and Texaco Station at the Lower Narrows.  Among the finds was this 1945 ad for the cafe:

I found that the Santa Fe Hotel (across from the depot) had a long history of name changes, from the original Lark Hotel to the Hawkeye Hotel to Brewster's Tavern to the Santa Fe Hotel, then to the Hayes Apartments by 1955.

I sent all the newspaper clippings I found along to Craig Wisch, who shared them with local historian Marcy Taylor.  Craig is still busy building the Vandever Building with Bower's Drug Store in S scale.

Then I got to work on laying staging Track C5 beside the previous Track C4, for storing diesel sets.  Here's a shot taken when the track had been glued down with caulk and partly weighted with water bottles:

Later I drilled holes beside that track and inserted all the feeder wires needed, but they are not yet soldered to the rails.

I was disabled for part of that week due to a tooth extraction by an oral surgeon.  But I did visit Bill Messecar on that Friday morning and picked up the model of the Rosso Cafe that he has now completed:

While I was there, I realized that there was one corner of his layout that I had not yet photographed, at the far right end of his LA Union Station shelf:

And to the right of there is a small extension with a model he calls Argo Lumber, named after our friend Ted Argo, who moved to Oregon several years ago:

On a shelf directly under Argo Lumber is a model scene with three buildings that are all part of a Fine Scale Miniatures kit (Skinner's Row), which he built for fun and added scenery, figures, track, and cars:

Very impressive!  When I got home from Bill's, I set his Rosso Cafe model beside Don Hubbard's Rosso Texaco Station model, just as they will appear in my Lower Narrows scene (but I later used some white chalk to cover the weathering you see here on the sides of the cafe):

Then I got to work on the next C Yard staging track, Track C6, gluing it down with caulk.  This shot was taken when I was partway done gluing along the track, which is moved aside to make room for spreading the caulk:

I did finish the caulking and adding the water bottle weights and the ties under the rail joiners later that day.

I kept plugging away and then wrote another report a week later, on Feb. 9.  My plan was to skip any report that weekend, but I had some progress photos to share, and I wanted to change the cycle so that my bi-weekly email reports don't land on the same Sundays as my now-monthly blog entries.

That week I got to work on the next three stub tracks in the C Yard (used for storing 30" diesel sets), named Tracks C7, C8, and C9.  I began by gluing down Track C7, as seen here from the stub end, which ends in the lower right corner of this photo:

The white caulk will dry clear later.  The adjacent Tracks C8 and C9 were shorter (space for only one 30" diesel set in each), so I glued them down at the same time, as seen here from the throat of the C Yard:

Tracks C8 and C9 are the ones on the right, with all the glue and the push-pins still in place.  I added the water bottler weights after each of these photos was shot.

Meanwhile, Craig Wisch in Victorville continued to work on his S-scale model of the Vandever Building (with Bowers' Drug Store).  He has now gone back to his master plan to model all of the downtown side of D Street (Route 66) in S-scale, so there will be no more HO models for me for a while.

My friend Jack Dykstra, who as a boy used to visit his aunt and uncle in the Rosso Cafe during summers and watch all the trains run through the Lower Narrows in back, told me that their names were Randolph and Marion Rosso.  

He showed me a photo of a painting that used to hang on the wall in there, advertising Acme Beer, and he suggested that I make a billboard for that beer.  I found a website with a detailed history of Acme Beer and their labels and ads, and I picked out this 1940 ad by Vargas as a good one for my billboard:

On that Saturday afternoon my friend Jeff Koeller visited my home and toured my layout for the first time.  He showed me all his research for UP's 1956 City of LA train, which I hoped to feature in my blog a week from now (that's this one).  I asked him to pose beside my layout, with some of the HO models of buildings in the scene:

I had arranged many of the other building models on the other side of the layout, as seen here, with the Texaco station on the far left and the La Paloma Cafe on the far right:

He spent over two hours here, and we both enjoyed all the conversations, including his ideas for a small C&NW layout set in Chicago someday.

I got back to work on the new C Yard tracks, marking with masking tape where the feeder wires should go and then drilling the holes for inserting the feeders later, as seen here:

I planned to continue work on the C Yard in the next weeks.  Please let me know if you can help me with anything, either in person or remotely.

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