Victorville's Lower Narrows, and Starting Some Roadbed and Track

This time we'll visit the scenic Lower Narrows outside Victorville, and then I'll report on my progress with laying the first cork roadbed and preparing to lay some tracks.

Last time we completed our visit to the Southwestern Portland Cement plant, so the next area to visit is the scenic Lower Narrows.  At this location the Santa Fe railroad passes over the Mojave River on a pair of through truss bridges built at different times (so one is taller than the other).  

Here's a photo of a fan trip behind a pair of Alco PAs at the bridges:

And here's a side view of the bridges, with rocky scenery all around:

Note the electrical transmission lines coming into the area.  They run to the adjacent Victorville Switching Station, as seen here:

 

This is a large complex of electrical towers, as can be seen near the bottom center of this 1953 aerial photo of the Lower Narrows:

Just above the switching station, the railroad tracks can be seen crossing the Mojave River on the two bridges.  Even closer to the switching station, a branch line departs from the mainlines and winds to the upper left on its way to George Air Force Base.

Here's the 1956 USGS map of this same area: 

 And here's the part of my track plan where I model this area:

The two bridges over the river are in the center of this scene, with the Switching Station just below there on the right (compressed to fit).  Note the branch to George AFB just above the Switching Station.  The Mojave Northern track is hidden behind (or inside) the removable cliffs behind the mainlines as it climbs up to the left to the quarry scene we saw last time.

Note the gas station and cafe in the lower left part of the scene.  These are special to me, as they are where my friend Jack Dykstra as a boy used to visit his aunt and uncle (their last name was Rosso) and watch the trains go by in the Lower Narrows.  Jack sent me this photo of the place for modeling it:
 

The gas pumps were not yet installed when this photo was taken.  Note the electrical towers again.  If you look back at the map and aerial photo, you can find these two buildings in the notch where the winding branch line to the air base crosses Route 66.

Here's a nice view of a Santa Fe passenger train running beside the rocky cliffs of the Lower Narrows in the 1960s:

And here's a modern view of the bridges and the scenery behind them, thanks to Paul W. Brown:

 

This completes our tour of the Lower Narrows, which is the final scene on the main part of the layout.

Meanwhile, I've been making some progress on the layout.  I decided to use the new three-track stub yard in Section 9 as my practice area for laying roadbed and tracks.  With the track centerlines carefully drawn in and the turnout locations marked, I began laying cork roadbed for the three tracks, using DAP Alex Plus caulk as the glue.

First I glued down the cork halves along the far side of each stub track, and then I came back and added cork halves to the near sides.  At the two #6 turnouts, I cut and fitted the cork into the wedge part of each turnout shape, but that was difficult to do well, so I sent for some cork turnout pads from IBL to try next time.

Here's what Section 9 looked like after all the cork for the three-track stub yard had been glued down:

 

My friend Jim Coady advised me to paint the cork a light gray color to give it a ballasted look, since I won't be using actual ballast in staging.  So I bought a can of light gray latex paint and brush-painted all the cork.  To cover up some sloppy areas along the edges, I added a strip of tan paint along the outside edges, as seen here:

 

I decided that each of the three stub tracks should have a rerailer track for adding rolling stock to the layout, so I marked the locations for the three rerailer tracks as well as the two turnouts and pinned them down temporarily.  Then I carefully cut and fit all the Atlas code 100 flextracks needed to make up these three staging tracks.  This was my first time using rail nippers and cutting off the ties at the ends where the rail joiners go, but I gradually learned how to do it.

I temporarily pinned down all the tracks to be sure they all fit together as planned, and I added three insulated rail joiners near the turnouts to create a separate DC block for each track (the other rails will be the common rails).  Here is the current state of the stub yard, with all the pins in place:

Note that there's a rerailer track near the entrance to each of the three tracks.  I filed down some of the removed ties to fit back under the rail joiners, but that was time-consuming, so I may buy a bunch of the smooth ties for future use.

The next steps are to glue down the tracks and then add the wiring.

The Cement Plant's Mojave Northern Railroad, and Drawing More Track Lines

This time we'll visit the Mojave Northern Railroad, operated by the Southwestern Portland Cement Plant of Victorville, and then we'll look at some progress and revisions in drawing more track lines on the plywood tabletops.

The far side of the cement plant was where the Mojave Northern Railroad operations were centered.  The job of the railroad was to carry cars loaded with limestone rocks from various quarry locations into the plant, where the rocks were crushed and then used to make cement.  

Here's a great photo from the Orange Empire Railway Museum showing one of the Mojave Northern 0-6-0T steam locos with a string of loaded side-dump rock cars:

Note that each rock car has three bins full of rocks.  Each bin was rotated separately to dump out the rocks.

When the train of rock cars got to the plant, the loco pushed the cars up a wooden trestle to where the rock-dumping tower was located, as seen here:
 

Here's an early view of the end of the trestle, with the rock-dumping tower over the trestle, the rock crusher tower on the left, and the large pile of crushed rocks:

As we saw last time, in later years this open pile was enclosed in a very large building.

Let's go back to the part of the circa 1940 aerial view that shows the trestle and the Mojave Northern shops to the right of it:

We can see a string of loaded rock cars at the far end of the trestle, waiting to enter the rock-dumping tower, and to the right of there is the rock crusher and the open pile of crushed rocks.  At the bottom of the photo is the three-stall engine house, and other shops are behind it.

In 1947 the roster of three 0-6-0T steam locos was joined by two new GE 70-Tonners, numbered 5 and 6.  Here is one of them, numbered 5 and named Leonardt:
 

Here's a later view of both 70-Tonners, as photographed by Richard Steinheimer:

By this time the diesels had been repainted from light gray to dark green.  A bit of the trestle is visible at the far left, the engine house and the distant rock crusher tower are in the center, and the end of rock car number 38 and part of a steam loco are visible in front of the engine house.

Besides the change to diesels for doing most of the work, the cement plant also began using regular hopper cars instead of the old side-dump rock cars.  Here's a photo of a steam loco with a string of hoppers (from the Orange Empire Railway Museum collection):
 

The hoppers were not pushed up the trestle.  Instead, they were spotted at an unloading track built for them beyond the trestle, with a car shaker to help unload the rocks into a underground bin, as seen here:

 Here's the part of my track plan that covers this part of the cement plant:

Near the top, note the ramp to the trestle, and above that is the hopper unloading track.  The two circles at the end of that track are open slurry tanks.  Below them is the rock crusher and the limestone storage building, and to the left are the shops and the engine house (compressed to two stalls). 

The main track of the Mojave Northern leaves the plant at the upper left of this drawing, passes a short siding for storing rock cars, and then crosses a long, low trestle over the Mojave River.  

Beyond there the track is hidden behind a cliff as it sneaks through the Lower Narrows scene to emerge in staging, where it comes to a quarry scene called Dock 5.  In this drawing, the two quarry tracks are in the center, and the curving hidden track is near the right edge.  The track has to climb a grade to get to the quarry, just as the real railroad did:

 

Here's a distant view of a Mojave Northern quarry, with a loco and three rock cars on the left and a large electric shovel on the right:

This concludes our tour of the Mojave Northern Railroad and the cement plant.

In the past two weeks I drew in all the tracks on Section 11, using various poster board templates for curves and angles, as seen here:

I need to widen the benchwork a bit near Section 10A at the bottom of this photo, both for the outside curve and the inside curve.

I laid out all the Atlas turnouts and marked their locations, but some of the throwbars and switch machines interfered with adjacent tracks, so I had to move them a little to resolve the conflicts.

Before I could start to lay any cork roadbed, I discovered some serious problems with the design of the yard throat on Section 9, so I went back to the drawing board to make a lot of changes.  I also found that I have room for an extra three-track stub-ended storage yard near the front edge of Section 9.  Here is the revised plan for this area (somewhat hard to read):

Here's a current photo showing all the turnouts laid out in their proposed locations:

At the bottom of the photo I've added some scrap plywood to work out the track locations leading into future Section 8 there.  Section 9 is on the left, where I plan to use ground throws on the turnouts, as they are close to the aisle.  Section 11 is on the right, where the turnouts are shown with table-top switch machines, as this area will be inside the helix someday and not easily reachable.

I'm hoping that I'm finally ready to lay some roadbed and track in the coming weeks!