Revisiting the Upper Narrows, and Wiring the Stub Yard

Last time we completed our tour of all the scenes planned for my Victorville layout, so I've decided to start on a new tour, using some new photos.  As for layout progress, I've wired and tested the three-track stub yard on Section 9, so I'll report on that too.

Earlier today I sent out a request to my friends to see whether any of them would like to help me build any of the structures I'll need for my layout.  I mentioned that Bill Messecar has already built me a couple of structures.  Recently he completed scratch-building the long and complex Victorville depot, compressed to fit my space but still very long.  Here's the track side:

And here's the street side:

Note that both sides have an operator's bay, because they moved the depot across the tracks in the 1920s, leaving the old bay now facing the street and building a new bay facing the tracks.

Previously Bill had built for me the Campbell Sheriff's Office kit for my Barrio scene:

 

If you'd like to contribute to this worthy cause of filling my future layout with structures, please contact me.  I will supply photos and plans, and I'll pay all costs for kits and supplies.

As we go through our 2nd tour of Victorville scenes, I will point out various structures that will need to be built.

We'll start our new tour at the Upper Narrows again, where the Santa Fe mainline tracks and the Mojave River pass between two spectacular granite cliffs.  Here's a westbound Santa Fe freight after passing through the Upper Narrows:

Here's a westbound UP freight led by a gas turbine passing an eastbound Santa Fe freight that's heading through the Narrows and into Victorville:

Here's a view of the westbound Super Chief passing through the Upper Narrows on its way to Cajon Pass and Los Angeles:

 

On the Victorville side of the Upper Narrows we find the landmark Rainbow Bridge, as seen here behind an eastbound Santa Fe freight entering Victorville:

 Here's a later postcard view showing the bridge and the cliffs of the Narrows:

Here's one final postcard view of the bridge, looking downstream, with Victorville just off the left edge of the photo:
 

Here's one idea for modeling the bridge, by kit-bashing a couple of Atlas Curved Chord Truss Bridge kits, as the size and shape is not too far off, although the diagonal braces would have to go.  Here are some kit parts laid on top of the HO scale drawings for the bridge:

 Let me know if you think this would work, or how would you build it?

 Here's an old photo showing the future scene using mockups:

The cushions in back represented the cliffs of the Upper Narrows, and the blue towel represented the Mojave River.  The kit in the foreground represented the Victorville Lime Rock plant, which we'll visit again next time.

As for layout progress since last time, I soldered most of the rail joiners, and I soldered 22-gauge feeder wires to the outsides of the rails near both ends of each of the three tracks in the stub yard.  I connected the feeders to 14-gauge bus wires using suitcase connectors just under the front edge of the benchwork, for easy reach.

I got out an old Athearn F7 that had been in its box for over 50 years, and it started right up and was able to run back and forth on each of the three tracks, controlled by my new MRC Tech 7 power pack.  Here's a photo of me in the background running the loco in the foreground (a milestone moment!):

The next step was to lay down more cork roadbed for the other five tracks on Section 9.  I thought the IBL cork turnout pads I'd bought would save time in cutting all the wedge shapes needed under turnouts, but they are not nearly long enough to help, so the wedges of cork will still be needed just past the pads.  Here's a recent photo of the turnout pads and the cork roadbed, but they are not yet glued down with caulk, and the wedges still need be cut, as you can see:

 

So, I'll keep working toward the goal of having all the cork and all the tracks laid and wired for Section 9 and then for Sections 10 and 11.

 

George Air Force Base, and Laying the First Staging Tracks

This time we'll tour George Air Force Base (Victorville Army Air Field) and then look at some progress in laying my first tracks in staging.

George AFB is the final scenic area of my future layout that we can tour, as the rest of the layout will all be in staging.  In fact, George AFB will probably be just a couple of storage tracks in staging, adjacent to the Mojave Northern quarry staging tracks, unless I live long enough to build a model of the air base itself.  I was in the Air Force long ago, so I'd love to have an air base on my layout.

Last time we were touring the Lower Narrows and saw that a branch line to the air base departed from the main line there and curved through the Lower Narrows scene and off into staging.  In real life, that branch line wound its way up a steep grade to the air base, which was on a plateau northwest of Victorville.

Here's the sign board that was at the gate into the base in later years:

 

The base was built as an Army base during World War II and was named Victorville Army Air Field.  Here is one of its aircraft hangars, with a C-47 inside:

During the war the base published a periodical called "Bombs Away," as seen here:

The Army switcher, which was a GE 45-tonner after the war, would come into Victorvile to turn on the wye periodically to equalize its wheel wear, as all the tracks on the base curved in the same direction.  Here it is at the Victorville depot in 1947, as photographed by Chard Walker:

The base became part of the newly-formed US Air Force in Sep. 1947, and eventually the base switcher got USAF blue paint.  This is a GE 80-tonner that may have worked there, built in 1953: 

The usual operation was that the Santa Fe's Victorville switcher would leave a cut of loaded cars at the entrance to the branch line in the Lower Narrows (behind the electrical switching station), and the base switcher would come down the hill and take two cars at a time up to the base and spot them on various spurs there.  If the loads were explosive, the Santa Fe switcher would take the cars up to the base and leave them there to be spotted by the base switcher.

Here's an Air Force map of the railroad part of George AFB:

Not shown here, off to the left, was the bomb spur, with several buildings where bombs were unloaded and stored.  If I live long enough, here is a track plan for how I would model the base on top of the helix, as drawn for my Layout Design Journal article by editor Byron Henderson:

At the top of the drawing and map are the aircraft fuel storage tanks, which we can see in this distant shot from the 1950s:

The rail line to the base washed out in about 1978 and was not rebuilt.  The one-stall engine house was still standing in 2001, when I toured the base with Gary Gray, a former officer there, and here is his photo of it:

Three former railroad-served warehouses were also still there in 2001, as seen here:

We will say farewell to the base with this billboard and actress (Barbara Lang) from the 1950s (I should include this on my layout):

As for layout progress since last time, I hadn't soldered in decades, so I read about it and watched a lot of online videos about how to do it, and then I practiced soldering rail joiners and feeder wires onto a couple of scrap pieces of flex track.  Then I soldered rail joiners between pairs of full-length flex tracks before curving them for the ends of the three-track stub yard on Section 9.

I spread some clear DAP Alex Plus over the cork roadbed and laid down one stub track at a time.  Here's the first track with weights on it while the glue dries:

When all three tracks had been glued down, the scene looked like this:

Note that each track has a re-railer track for loading rolling stock onto the layout.

I marked all the spots with paper scraps where I want to solder more rail joiners and then add feeder wires, and I posed for a shot as I'm about to start soldering a rail joiner:

Note that some Atlas manual switch machines have been attached to the two #6 turnouts, and cork pads have been added under the machines.  Next week I hope to get the soldering done and the feeder wires all attached to bus wires.