Revisiting Victorville's Cement Plant, and Drawing More Staging Tracks

It's time to revisit Victorville's Southwestern Portland Cement Plant, and then we'll look at some progress in drawing more staging tracks.

Here's a photo of Santa Fe 4-8-4 #2903 as it brought railfans to tour the cement plant on Jan. 29, 1950:

 Here's the big sign board they saw at the entrance to the plant:

Here's an excellent trackside view of the whole plant before it was expanded in the 1950s (I plan to model it the way it looked in this view):

Here's a great aerial view into the plant, with the mainlines on the right:

Note the row of kilns in the center, and the open clinker pit with a traveling crane just to the right of there.

This is the USGS map of the plant from that time period:

 And here is my track plan for modeling a compressed version of the plant:

This scene is 48" deep, but there are pop-up access hatches on the far side.

Let's return to that Jan. 29, 1950 tour of the plant.  Here's a view of the ends of the older kilns and the one new, larger kiln above them.  Note the Mojave Northern steam loco hiding in the lower left corner too:

Here we're taking a tour of that new, larger kiln:

 

Here's a rare view into the clinker pit with its overhead traveling crane for moving clinkers around.  Clinkers are the small balls of cement that emerge from the kilns, before they are crushed into powder.

Finally, here's a view of the front of the packing house, with the cement storage silos adjacent:

My friend Wayne Lawson has been building a beautiful model of this packing house in N scale, as you can see here:
 

This concludes our tour of the cement plant.  Next time we'll revisit the Mojave Northern railroad that brought limestone into the plant. 

As for layout progress, I had to pause my work on the benchwork until I could get an idea of where the legs could go to support the next sections, so they wouldn't get in the way of the staging tracks.  So, I've been working on drawing 1/16 scale track plans for the staging tracks as they leave the existing Section 9 and curve through the next sections (Sections 8, 7, and 1).

Here I am, kneeling beside my bed while I work on the track plans:

Today I finished drawing enough of this part of staging so I can decide where the legs can go through the middle of the area.  None of the plan worked out the way I had sketched it about five years ago.  Here's the current track plan for this part of staging (almost too light to read, and subject to change):

In the upper right, both double-track mainlines emerge from Section 9, split into several double-ended storage tracks, and curve around through Section 1 at the bottom of the drawing.  A track that begins climbing into the helix leaves the mainline at the bottom of the drawing and curves off into the helix near the upper right.  A long, curving crossover track connects the two mainlines to form a necessary reverse loop near the top of the drawing.

I was left with a lot of unused space inside all the mainline curves in the center, so I added nine stub-ended storage tracks there (in Section 7).  The empty space between these tracks and the mainline curves is where some critical legs can penetrate the scene.

I haven't yet worked out how all these tracks will connect as they go around the rest of the layout, but I'll work on that as I find the time.  I have enough for now to get back to cutting notches in the tabletop sections for the legs to support them.

Meanwhile, I visited Bill Messecar this week, and he gave me ten of the fourteen Mojave Northern rock cars to take home -- seven empties and three with removable rock loads.  I set them up in my small staging yard on Section 9, coupled on an old Bachmann 0-6-0T as a stand-in for a Mojave Northern 0-6-0T, and tested them.  Here's a photo:

That's all for this time.  I hope to proceed with more benchwork next.

 

Revisiting Victorville's Downtown, and Adding Joists to the Frames

Although I don't have the space or time to model the downtown part of Victorville, we'll revisit what the area looked like.  Then we'll take a look at my layout's benchwork section frames after I added more joists to some of them.

Victorville was a major tourist stop along the famous Route 66 highway.  The highway came down from Cajon Pass and into town along 7th Street, then made a left turn onto D Street by the railroad depot and ran eastward out of town to Barstow.  Here's the 1956 USGS map of the town, showing a solid red line for Route 66 and how it turned left when it met the railroad tracks:

In the map, the freeway to Barstow (at the upper left) had not yet completely bypassed the town.

The town provided gas stations, restaurants, and motels for the Route 66 travelers.  Here's an aerial view of the downtown area, as seen from above the river:

In this view, 7th Street comes down from near the upper left, and D Street runs along parallel to the tracks, above the red-roofed depot in the lower center.

Perhaps the most famous place in town was the Green Spot Cafe at the corner of 7th and C Streets:

Here's another view, showing that it was also the Greyhound Bus stop in town:

 

The other side of 7th Street, across from the Green Spot Cafe, looked like this:

The Green Spot Cafe is at the right edge of this photo, and the Santa Fe tracks are straight ahead, where the highway will turn left onto D Street.

Here's a view looking uphill along 7th Street from near the Safeway store you can see in the photo above:

If we go down to 7th and D streets and look back uphill, we will see this view:

Victorville Drugs is on the corner at the left, and the Green Spot Cafe is a block up the hill on the left (look for the Motel sign -- there was a nearby Green Spot Motel too).

If we stand in the same spot at 7th and D and turn to the right to look down D Street, we will see two blocks of hotels and retail businesses:

If we now walk a block along D Street to 6th and D, we will see a block of mostly cafes and bars:

Most of the buildings along D Street are gone now, but the Red Rooster Cafe (in the middle of the block above) is now the California Route 66 Museum:

And at the end of the block, at 5th and D, the Barrel House Liquor Store is also still standing:

As I said, I don't have the space or time to model the downtown part of Victorville, but I enjoy learning all about it anyway.

As for my layout progress, I went back and added one more joist into each of Sections 5 and 6, so there won't be more than 24" between joists, as seen here:

This usually involved unscrewing one of the joists and moving it to over to make room for the 2nd joist.  I also did that for Sections 7 and 8 (Section 8 stayed up on temporary legs during the operation):

I was excited to see all the frames together on the floor, so I shot an overall view:

But I later realized that I'll need to add a triangular Section 4A in the notch at the right, to support the tracks coming around the corner there.  I don't know how I missed seeing that before.

I spent a lot of time taking measurements of the staging room benchwork and the tracks where they leave the staging room, and I began making 1/16 scale drawings of that critical area, but I'm not ready to scan and show any results yet.  It's a difficult area to solve.

Meanwhile, my friends Bill Messecar and Don Hubbard have continued to assemble, paint, and letter the 14 rock cars for my Mojave Northern branch line from the cement plant to the quarry scene.  I think they are almost done now.  

Here is one of the new photos sent to me by Don, showing the beams on the undersides of two of the rock bins ("skips"):

And here are two of the nearly complete rock cars:

I will continue with my drawings of the staging tracks, with the goal of seeing where the legs can safely go through the lower deck, so that I can then add legs to all of the section frames I have.