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!