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.