Revisiting Victorville's Depot Area, and Finishing the Cork Roadbed

This time we'll take a second look at the depot area and the two adjacent businesses, which were a lumber yard and a feed store.  Then we'll look at progress on the cork roadbed and on the Mojave Northern rock cars.

Let's begin with a Chard Walker action photo of the local Santa Fe 2-8-2 switcher helping a westbound passenger train past the depot in the late 1940s:

 Here's a close-up of the depot, also from a Chard Walker photo:

 Here's the full depot as shot by Nick Muff in 1960:

You've previously seen Bill Messecar's HO scratch-built model of this depot (compressed at the freight end) for my layout, so let's look now at Wayne Lawson's N-scale scratch-built model of the depot (not compressed):

 

Here's the street side of Wayne's depot model, with the 6th Street grade crossing in the lower left:

 

Here's a wider view of the depot area as modeled by Wayne Lawson, including the park in front of the depot (Forrest Park) and the adjacent Hayward Lumber Company and Peterson Feed Store:

 

In Forrest Park (named after a Mr. Forrest) there was a stone monument, and also a small tombstone for "Brownie, A Railroad Dog," as displayed by the Route 66 Museum in Victorville:

 

Here's a street-side view of the adjacent Hayward Lumber building, which was served in back by a short spur ending in a ramp:

 And to the right of Hayward Lumber on D Street was the Peterson Feed Store:

 

We can see the depot, the park, and the two stores from the air in this circa-1945 view:

The peaked building at the left edge is Peterson Feed (from the rear), and to the right of it is the larger Hayward Lumber building.  The long depot building is near the lower right center of the photo, with Forrest Park behind it.  At the left edge of the park, the white rectangle was a tennis court.

Here is the track plan for this area on my layout:

As for progress on my layout, I completed laying the cork roadbed on Section 11, including cutting all the wedges needed at the many turnouts:

 

I also added a pair of AHM B&O E8s to pull my growing set of just-for-fun B&O passenger cars, as seen here (with Bill Messecar's depot model on display):

 

The next week was spent painting all this cork, which took some time.  I decided to buy some lighter gray paint to use on the double-track mainlines, so that they will stand out among the sea of darker gray staging tracks.  Here is the result:

Over at the right rear of this photo, the inside and outside curves still fall off the edges of the benchwork, so I made a pattern for the plywood needed to fill those areas and cut out the plywood sections with my circular saw.  Next week I'll cut and attach some 1x4s to support these plywood extensions, so I can then complete the cork roadbed curves there.

Meanwhile , Jim Coady got back a trial 3D print of a Mojave Northern rock car bin (or "skip"), and it looks great:

 Here's a front view:

 And a bottom and rear view:

 

So, we will proceed to buy lots of these for a fleet of 14 rock cars (three bins per car), plus the car that Jim is building himself.  And Bill Messecar is continuing to scratch-build more rock car bodies to go over the old MDC 30' flat car frames.  I'm so thankful to have these expert helpers!