Revisiting More Industries, and Laying More Cork Roadbed

It's now time to revisit the group of industries that were railroad east of the Lime Rock plant in Victorville, namely Texas Quarries and two oil dealers.  Then I'll report on recent layout progress in laying cork roadbed.

Let's begin by zooming in to see the Texas Quarries granite mill in the background of a larger photo of a UP passenger train coming east into town:

The open white shed in the center is the main building of Texas Quarries, where large blocks of granite were milled into building blocks, monuments, and tombstones.  There was an overhead traveling crane inside the building, and it continued outside, supported by the rows of A-shaped white frames visible on each side of the opening.  

A rail spur ran through the building and out the far end, where a stiff-leg derrick was located, as seen in this view from the other end by Chard Walker:

Here is Wayne Lawson's mock-up of the two Texas Quarries buildings on his N-scale layout, with a stand-in crane where the derrick will go:

 Here's a circa-1945 aerial view of this area:

The two buildings of Texas Quarries are to the right of the tracks, with the stiff-leg derrick sticking up between them.  On the left of the tracks are two oil dealers, Standard and Shell, which we will visit next.  Here's my track plan for this area:
 

On the lower left you see the oil spur, with Standard Oil on the right and Shell Oil on the left.  The Texas Quarries buildings are across the tracks, and some old carbodies and a stock pen are between the oil dealers and the Lime Rock plant.

Here's a Chard Walker photo of a Santa Fe steam loco in the area, showing part of an old carbody on the left, and Standard Oil (above the tractor load) and the Shell Oil tanks on the right:

Here's a rare street-side view of Shell Oil:

We can see below how Wayne Lawson has modeled this area in N scale:

Standard Oil is in the center, with the name "Victorville" on the rooftop and with the long row of horizontal tanks, while Shell Oil is at the left edge, with the row of vertical tanks as seen in the previous two photos.  Under the trees are some old carbodies, and the stock pen is to the right of there.

In HO, the Grandt Line corrugated iron warehouse could be used for the Standard Oil building:

This completes our visit to Texas Quarries and the two oil dealers.

There has been progress in the last two weeks on plans for building models for about 15 rock cars for the Mojave Northern Railroad at the cement plant in Victorville.  My friend Jim Coady has been revising his CAD drawings of the rock bins ("skips") that were on the cars (three per car), as seen here:

Jim is about to have Shapeways do a trial 3D-printing of a bin.  

Meanwhile, my local friends Bill Messecar and Don Hubbard are working out a way to mount these bins on 30' flat cars.  Bill decided to scratchbuild accurate flat car models, using just the metal underbodies from the old MDC 30' flat car kits, which I've been collecting recently.  Here are the first two flat cars that Bill has built, as seen posed on his layout:

This has turned into a very interesting project!

I've been gradually gluing down more cork roadbed for the eight tracks that round the corner on Sections 10 and 10A and continue back into Section 11.  Here's a shot showing the big curves on Section 10:
 

The track on the far left is the cassette-loading spur (track B4), which also rounds the corner before it joins into the outer mainline.  From left to right, the tracks are B4, outer main, inner main, A1, A2, A3, A4, and A5.  Note that new stub tracks A4 and A5 need the benchwork to be extended a little to fit them in, and so does B4 on the outside curve.

Here's another progress shot showing the roadbed now coming into Section 11, but not yet reaching the turnout locations, which I'll work on next:

New stub tracks A5 and A4 are ending on the far left here.  I'll also be creating a new stub track B5, which splits off from B4 at the turnout on the far right edge.  The new strategy is to fit in as many storage tracks as I can, even if they are not double-ended.

I was also having some fun by buying a set of eight old AHM passenger cars that were dirt-cheap at the Electric Train Shop in Burien.  They have a very pretty B&O paint scheme (which is not quite accurate) and they are not prototype B&O cars, so this will count as one of my "goofy" trains that I run for fun when no one is looking.  I've been adding a few more cars from eBay, and I'm waiting for a pair of B&O E8s to pull the train someday.  

Here are some of the cars, sitting on stub tracks B2 and B3, with Bill Messecar's model of the Victorville depot posed nearby:

We'll see how far I can get with the roadbed in the next two weeks.