Victorville's Depot Area and Losing My Benchwork Helper

We'll continue our tour of Victorville by visiting the depot area, and then I'll report the news that Ted, my close friend and benchwork helper, will be moving out of state soon.

Victorville's depot area included two industries and the depot itself.  From left to right, as seen from Route 66 (D Street), there was the block-long depot with a park in front of it (Forrest Park), then Hayward Lumber (later Gibson Lumber), and then the Peterson Feed Store.

Here's a great action view of the depot area, as shot by Jack Whitmeyer from the 6th Street grade crossing, looking toward the Upper Narrows:

And here's an excellent view of the block-long depot, as seen in 1958 (from the Chard Walker collection):

Note the wig-wag crossing signal at the grade crossing, and the lower roof over the depot's restrooms area, which was added during WW2 and later removed.  The whole depot was shortened at the freight house end during the 1960s.

Like last time, here is part of a circa 1946 aerial photo of the area, shot from the opposite side of the tracks, with Peterson Feed at the left edge, then Hayward Lumber (the larger building), and then the long depot right beside the tracks, with the 6th Street grade crossing to the right of the depot (the only grade crossing in town):

Behind the depot you can see Forrest Park (with a white tennis court on its left edge), and behind there was the main shopping district of downtown Victorville (which I had once hoped to model, but it's now off the front edge of my layout).

Here is a similar view, taken from a 1950s color postcard (the depot had a red roof):

 

My friend and fellow Victorville modeler, Wayne Lawson, is building an excellent N-scale model of the depot area, as seen here:

The depot is on the left, behind the park, and then we see a mock-up of Hayward Lumber (with a prototype photo below it), and then comes the Peterson Feed Store (also with a photo below it).

Here is the part of my track plan that has the depot, the lumber yard, and the feed store (compressed a lot to fit in the space):

Note that there was a very short spur into the lumber yard, with a ramp for end unloading.  I don't think the feed store did business with the railroad.  The track closest to the depot was called the house track, and freight cars were spotted there for unloading into the depot's freight house section (as seen in the 1958 depot photo above).

Now it's time to cover the progress (or lack of it) on my layout.  I got word from my friend and benchwork helper, Ted Argo, that he and his wife were going to move out of state sooner rather than later.  So he will be busy getting his house ready to sell and dismantling his own layout, rather than helping me with mine in the near future.  

I have put out notices asking for new helpers with my benchwork, so we'll see what happens.  In the meantime, I'll see if I can assemble all the framework for Sections 9-10-11 for the staging room loop in the coming week.

I decided that I should get a dedicated stand for my miter saw, so I shopped around and bought and assembled one from Harbor Freight.  It's a Chicago Electric model, to match the brand of my miter saw.  I moved an old desk out of garage to make room for a work area there, so I can build my benchwork out of the weather.  Here I am with the new stand for the miter saw, in the new garage work area:

 

Planning ahead for when the lower deck is in place, I did some measurements for how much track will be needed for a double-track mainline loop around the lower deck, and I placed some orders during the Labor Day sales for 75 pieces of Atlas flextrack, 75 pieces of Midwest cork roadbed, and ten #8 Atlas turnouts and powered switch machines.  (Atlas code 100 track is good enough for the lower deck.)

More track and turnouts will be needed for the staging yards themselves, but I'll figure that out later, after I make precise drawings of the lower deck staging trackage.  Right now I only have a rough drawing from 2016.  There is so much to do!

More Victorville Industries, the Layout's Helix, and Benchwork Progress

Let's continue our tour of Victorville by visiting the next industries along the tracks, and then we'll discuss the revival of the helix in the layout plan and a little more benchwork progress.

Last time we visited the Victorville Lime Rock plant, and as we now move railroad east from there, we come to two oil dealers, Standard and Shell, and across the tracks from them was the large Texas Quarries granite mill (later Allied Granite).  

Ground-level photos of these industries are rare, so we will mostly visit them via old aerial photos and some scale models.  Here is a small part of a circa-1946 aerial photo of Victorville, showing the two large Texas Quarries buildings on this side of the tracks and the two oil dealers on the far side:

In this photo, you may be able to spot a tall stiff-leg derrick between the two foreground buildings, for loading granite blocks into railcars (a spur comes in from the right and passes through the open building on the right to reach the derrick area).  Across the tracks, Standard Oil is on the left, with its row of horizontal tanks, and Shell Oil is on the right, with a row of vertical tanks (only the first tank is easy to see).  The Mojave River is in the foreground, right beside Texas Quarries.

Here is a similar view from a small section of a grainy color postcard:

 

This area will become more clear when we look at the N-scale models of the oil dealers that fellow Victorville modeler Wayne Lawson has built on his layout (we are now looking from the other side of the tracks):

On the right, with the word "Victorville" on the roof, is the Standard Oil dealer with its row of horizontal tanks, and to the left is the Shell Oil dealer, with its row of vertical tanks.  A single spur served both dealers (but there wasn't really much rail business after WW2).  On the fascia are a couple of rare photos of both oil dealers, and on the right is a view of the two Texas Quarries buildings, with the derrick sticking up between them.

More recently, Wayne has added mock-ups of the Texas Quarries buildings across the tracks, as seen here (with no derrick model between them yet):

Here is the part of my own track plan where these industries will be located:

Now let's discuss my most recent layout progress.  The big event was that I polled my friends on Aug. 24 to see if they thought I should include the helix in the plan after all, instead of having two separate decks with no connection.  All the replies were strongly in favor of restoring the helix to the track plan, so I decided to go ahead and do that.  I went back to look at what the previous track plan looked like, before I removed the helix in favor of an 8-track staging yard:

Note that the helix is a rectangular shape with rounded corners.  It begins at the upper level as one track on the left edge, then splits into two, then three, then four for most of the four turns of the helix, dropping from 48" high at the top down to 32" high at the lower deck, where all the staging yards will be.  When it reaches the bottom, it gradually goes back to being just one track, which has to make a left turn (not shown here) to exit this staging room.

So the big news is that my dream layout plan (with helix) has been saved at the last minute, thanks mainly to advice from my friend and advisor Jim Coady.  My friend Ted Argo and I had already cut some plywood shapes for the 8-track staging yard (Sections 12-13-14), but we'll save that plywood for possible uses elsewhere on the layout.

In other news, I paid a company to clean the old basement carpet on Aug. 25, and on the 27th I placed an order with a carpet company to lay about an 8x10' section of new carpet in the alcove area, where the wall used to be.  They were able to come earlier than planned to install that carpet on Sep. 2.

On Aug. 28 I met Ted Argo at Lowe's again to bring home seven more sheets of plywood to complete the lower deck, plus ten more 1x4s for girders and joists and our first eleven 2x2s for intermediate legs.  We lugged it all into the basement and piled it up, as seen here:

On Sep. 2 Ted returned, and he cut out plywood sections 10 and 10A to complete the staging loop.  We laid out Sections 9-10-10A-11 on the floor of the staging room and trimmed them to fit together.  

Then we began work on the first of the framing, starting with a simple rectangle to support Section 9 someday.  We cut three 20" joists to fit between two 8' long girders and glued and screwed them into place, using two new corner clamps I had bought.  Here is Ted, posing with the result:

The final bit of progress was to estimate the total number of legs needed for the layout (about 84) and to select and order that many adjustable feet to go under the legs.  The feet arrived quickly, and we figure that the legs should be cut about 46.5" long to support the upper deck at 48" high (including 3/4" of foam board on top).

There is a lot more planning I have to do now, such as drawing all the girder and joist locations for the remaining layout sections (1 through 8), and drawing new plans for the lower deck staging tracks, and estimating how much track (Atlas code 100) and how many turnouts will be needed there.  The size of this project is scary!