Victorville's Barrio, and Assembling More Layout Sections

It's now time to visit the E Street barrio in Victorville, and then I'll report on the assembly of Sections 10 and 10A in staging.

My original layout plan had nothing but riverside trees and bushes beyond E Street on the far side of the tracks, but then I realized that there was an entire neighborhood over there, called the barrio.  I have some space to model that row of old buildings, so that's the new plan.

There were three significant establishments along that part of E Street: a church in a Spanish-style meeting hall near 3rd and E, a second-hand furniture store at 4th and E, and a propane dealer on the near side of E, between 3rd and 4th.  The rest of the buildings were small homes, many of which are still there.

We can only get peeks at those signature buildings in the backgrounds of various old photos.  Here's a Chard Walker photo from 1950, when a double-ended UP gas turbine was testing on Cajon Pass:

 

 

To the right of the loco, you can see a few propane tanks (a larger one behind some smaller ones) at the propane dealer (Southwest Gas), and beyond that you can see the scalloped facade of the old church (Emmanuel Temple CME).

Here's an earlier 1946 photo by Fletcher Swan showing a different view:

The Santa Fe's El Capitan was eastbound through town behind an E6 pair, and to the left you can see the three small propane tanks of Southwest Gas (the larger tank was not yet there), and behind the tanks is the facade of the second-hand store, named Carr's Furniture during most of my time period.

Since the Southwest Gas propane dealer was on Santa Fe property next to a spur track, I assume that it received its propane from tank cars that were set out there, so that's another industry that I can switch. 

We can also zoom in on a c.1945 aerial photo for a view of these barrio buildings:

Near the left edge you see the scalloped facade of the church, and near the right edge you see the facade of the second-hand furniture store.  Just below the facade of the church, but across the street, a row of shade trees partially hide the propane dealer, but a couple of its tanks are visible.  The other buildings on the far side of E Street are small homes.

Here's part of a 1938 aerial photo, showing the three small tanks and the office of the propane dealer beside the tracks, before they planted shade trees on both sides:

The propane tanks and office are at the right, the church is the large building at the bottom, and the second-hand store is in the upper left.

When I began to research the barrio, I got in contact with old-timer Felix Diaz, who had written the book "Footprints from the Barrio."  I found that he and his friends had also drawn a large map showing all the buildings in the barrio and who had lived in them.  Here's a very small section of that map, showing just the part that's included in my layout plans:

In the lower right, the depot is building 160, the Santa Fe Hotel (up above) is 150, La Paloma cafe is 151, the water tanks are 159, the section houses are 157, 158, and 161, the long bunkhouse is 155-156, the propane dealer is 153, the second-hand store is 136, and the church is near 129 (near the upper left).

Here is the part of my track plan for modeling the barrio:

You see E Street running through the middle, with the church between 3rd and 4th, the propane dealer across from the church, and the store at 4th and E.  The track closest to the propane dealer was also the outfit spur, where the section gang's work train was parked, and the next track in was East Storage, a double-ended storage track.  E Street and the barrio are actually on a removable hatch cover, for emergency pop-up access to this area, which is distant from the aisle.

As for the small homes in the barrio, many are still there, and by using Google Street View, we can see a few typical homes:
 

In general, they have gently-sloped roofs, stucco exteriors, and light colors.

This concludes our barrio visit.  As for progress on building my benchwork, I assembled the small Section 10A on the floor, but then I realized that it would be easier to do the assembly work up on a work table, so I set up my two sawhorses with a 4x8' sheet of plywood as the table top and assembled the large Section 10 there:

 

Then I tried to clamp all four sections together on the floor, but I found that there were gaps around Section 10A, so I unscrewed parts of 10A, rearranged the boards, added a short filler, and reassembled them to fit perfectly between Sections 10 and 11.

I decided to add two more joists into Section 9, as they were spaced too far apart.  But the outrigger frames on each side of 9 were in the way of using the drills, so I had to unscrew them, add the joists, and then re-attach the outrigger frames.  Time and again, I've been thankful that my boards are not glued together.

The next step was to use a large 5/16" drill bit to drill bolt holes through all the mating surfaces, two holes per surface, and I bolted the sections together using 2"-long 1/4" hex bolts, washers, and nuts I had bought:

In this view, Section 9 is on the left, with its extra joists, Section 11 on the right is bolted to Section 9's triangular outrigger, Section 10 is in the distance, and Section 10A is in the right distance, all bolted to their neighbors.  The plywood tops are still loose on the bottom of the frames, but they will someday be screwed to the tops of the frames.

I think the next step is to turn each frame on its side while I attach its legs to it.  There is still a long way to go, but I'm anxious to stand these four sections up on legs and lay some staging tracks and wire them, so I can see some locos and short trains go back and forth on the tracks.