Inside Victorville's Cement Plant, and Preparing for Laying Some Tracks

Last time we saw the front side of Victorville's cement plant, so this time we'll go inside the plant.  Then I'll report on preparations for laying the first staging tracks on my layout.

We saw that the Southwestern Portland Cement Plant near Victorville was already huge by the 1940s, and here's a wonderful aerial view looking into the plant in about 1940:

Near the right edge you can see the Route 66 highway and the mainline tracks of the Santa Fe.  Just to their left is the front row of cement silos and the bagging building.  To the left of that are the original silos and the warehouse.  Then comes the long clinker pit and then five kilns in a row.  Behind the kilns are the mixing building and the office building.  To the left of the kilns are the shops and then the curving ramp up to the rock dumper and crusher.  The open storage pile of limestone rocks is beyond there.

Here's a 1956 USGS map of the plant (the aerial photo above was shot from above the oil tanks shown on this map):

The long building to the left of the words "Cement Plant" is the covered storage for the crushed limestone rocks, which were still out in the open in the old aerial photo.

The sidings here were named Leon by the Santa Fe until 1945, but the railroaders continued to call this location Leon until much later.  The rail lines curving off to the upper right were part of the Mojave Northern Railroad, which was the cement plant's own railroad for bringing limestone from quarries to the plant.  We'll visit that railroad's part of the plant next time.

Here's a smoky aerial view of plant from 1953:

I'll repeat here my track plan for modeling the plant, for comparison:

Here's an inside view of the plant from the back side, circa 1940:

The tall silos in the left rear are the ones we've seen from the highway in previous views.  The shorter silos in front of them are the original ones.  The large building in the foreground holds the offices, and to the left is the electrical substation for the plant.  Beyond the rooftop of the office building we can see the long traveling crane structure over the clinker pit.

Here's a view showing part of the large limestone storage building on the right:
 

And here's one more view, showing the area where the oil storage tanks were located (oil was the fuel that was burned in the kilns at that time):

 

It will be quite a project to model all of this, even with the help of the Walthers cement plant kit.

Turning now to progress on my layout, it's been slow due to all the Christmas preparations and events.  Mostly I've been drawing the staging loop track lines in pencil on the plywood tabletops, in preparation for laying some roadbed and then track. 

I made a large template out of poster board sections for a 36" radius curve that covers more than 180 degrees, and I placed it in the correct location on Section 10 for drawing that curve, as seen here:

 

I'm using shorter poster board templates to draw the curves that fall outside and inside of the 36" radius curve.  I'm using 2.25" as my track spacing on the curves and also on the straightaways.

I drew all the straight track lines on Section 9 and marked the exact locations for each turnout, as seen here (with lots of flextracks added for clarity):

For staging, I'm using Atlas code 100 tracks and turnouts, and I'm using Atlas powered switch machines beside the turnouts (as seen here), because looks are not as important in staging.

I began splitting Midwest cork roadbed sections and laying them along the track centerlines in preparation for gluing them in place next week:

I'll cut the cork to shape under the turnouts, and I'll make cork pads to support the switch machines at track level.

I think everything is about ready for installing roadbed and track next!

Victorville's Cement Plant, and Finishing the Staging Loop Benchwork

We're going to leave downtown Victorville behind now and begin a tour of its nearby cement plant.  We'll also look at the final steps in finishing the benchwork for the lower deck staging loop.

A short distance timetable east of Victorville is its very large cement plant, which was named Southwestern Portland Cement (SWPC) until recent decades.  We're going to look at the front of the plant as seen from the highway this time.

Here's an early 1950s view of a westbound Santa Fe freight passing the plant:

Note the sign board on the right, the tall cement storage silos, the bagging building with all the windows, and two lower silos beyond that.

Here's a great view of the entire track side of the plant as it was before expansion in the 1950s:

From right to left, we see the row of large silos with a "headhouse" along the tops of them, then the bagging building, then a lower warehouse partly behind the bagging building (the two lower silos had not been added there yet), and then a long traveling crane structure over the clinker pit.

Clinkers are the marble-size balls that are produced by a cement plant's kilns, and at this plant they were stored outdoors in a very long clinker pit.  

Most clinkers were ground into cement powder to be shipped out in covered hoppers or in cloth bags in boxcars, but some clinkers could be shipped in or out of the plant as is, depending on demand at other cement plants.

There was a spur track over the clinker pit, where open-top cars could be loaded with clinkers, or where they could unload clinkers, using a bucket device on the traveling crane.

Here's a late-1950s view of the plant from the highway (Route 66), when more silos had been added at the far end:

From this view we can also see the original cement silos that were hidden behind the newer silos, and we can see some of the buildings inside the plant. 

Here's one last view of the plant in the late 1950s, looking from the other direction:

The newer silos fill the left half of the photo, with the clinker pit behind them.  The older half of the plant fills the right half of the photo, and that's the part I plan to model.  Note the highway (Route 66) in the foreground and the Santa Fe mainline tracks beside the silos.

Here's the part of my track plan that shows most of the cement plant trackage, which is somewhat compressed from all the tracks that were actually in the plant:

The big four-track curve on the right comes in from the Victorville scene on the other side of the backdrop.  Right beside the mainlines at the bottom of the plan we can see the silos, the packing house, and the two lower silos, and behind that row we can see the original silos, the warehouse, and the clinker pit with its spur track on a ramp.  We'll visit the interior of the plant next time.

Because this scene is so deep, I plan to add a raised platform around the post, so that operators and see and reach into the scene as needed.

Turning now to progress on the layout benchwork, after the notches for the legs had been cut in the plywood tabletops, I removed the plywood to work on the frames one more time.  I bought a belt sander and sanded down any joists that were not perfectly even with the adjacent joists, so the plywood sheets could lie flat on top.  The belt sander worked great, and I posed for this photo:

 

Then I put the tabletops back onto the frames, aligned them as well as I could, clamped them down, and drew pencil lines above the centerlines of all the girders and joists underneath, so I'd know where the screws could go.

I decided to use just screws and no glue to attach the tabletops, and I decided to mark spots for the screws that were about 12" apart (an arbitrary distance, with no guidance found in any books). 

At each screw location I drilled a pilot hole, countersunk it, and drove in a screw to hold the plywood down to the frame.  Section 9 needed 33 screws, Section 11 got 19 screws, Section 10A got 10 screws, and finally (today) Section 10 got 25 screws.  Here's a view of the results, shot from above near Section 11 (look for the screw locations):

So the benchwork for the lower deck staging loop is finally done, and next week I can begin marking the locations for the roadbed and track!