Reviewing My Victorville Layout Track Plans, and Building Layout Section 2

Last time we finished our second visit to the signature scenes in Victorville, so this time I've decided to review what the overall layout track plans look like.  Then we'll look at my progress in putting Section 2 up on legs.  (I was gone for a week, so I only completed one section this time.)

One version of the track plan, which I rejected at the last minute, had just a single level and had an 8-track staging yard along the walls of the staging room (instead of having a helix to a lower deck).  Here's a top view of that plan:

You can see the 8-track staging yard in the staging room at the top of this drawing, where you also see a return loop of several tracks.  Moving to the right out of that room, the double-track mainline curves through the Lower Narrows scene as it follows that inside aisle around a wall of cabinets (the dark gray rectangle).

As the mainline continues to follow that aisle beside the cabinets and toward the red arrow marked as "View 1," some spur tracks branch off into the large cement plant scene there.  At the lower left, the mainline curves around and heads into the Victorville scene near the red arrow marked as "View 2."

Finally, the mainline curves to the left through the Upper Narrows scene near the upper right and heads back to the left, into the big return loop in the staging room.

This layout plan was also put into perspective views by my friend Jim Coady.  The view below shows the cement plant scene as seen from the View 1 arrow, with a curving blue backdrop behind it:
 

 

And here is a view of the Victorville side, looking from the View 2 arrow:

You can see the Victorville wye sticking out behind the man standing there.
 
If we could fly up above the basement at this point, here's what we'd see:

Note the steps down to the daylight basement at the top of this view, and the staging room at the upper right.  Victorville and its wye are right in front of us, with the blue backdrop separating us from the cement plant on the far side.

Here's one more view from up above, this time looking at the cement plant side of the layout:

You can see the staging room with its return loop and its yard at the left, and the stairway to the basement at the lower center.  As you enter the basement, you will first encounter the large cement plant scene.  Note the two posts around the railroad's entrance to the cement plant -- they are holding up the house.

This would have been a good-size layout to build, but I was greedy and wanted even more staging tracks, so I added in a lower deck full of staging yards, and a large helix in the staging room to connect the decks and to include even more staging space. 

This is what the current layout plan looks like (showing only the upper deck tracks and the helix):

 

Everything is the same here, except for the helix (at the top) replacing the 8-track staging yard of the previous plan.  I'm still drawing the details of the lower deck staging yards, so I have no view of that to show you yet.

Now let's look at my progress in putting Section 2 up on legs this past week, after being gone the previous week.  I attached seven legs to the frame, as seen here:

It's not obvious, but two of the 2x2 legs are located in the middle of the section, so that they will be out of the way of the staging yards that have to pass through that area.  Note that Section 3 in the distance does not line up exactly with Section 2, so some of the sections will have to be moved by an inch or so to connect them all together properly.

Here now is Section 2 after its plywood top got five edge notches and two center holes cut into it, so it could be placed over the seven legs, as seen from the middle of the layout:

Note the two legs that come through the middle of the section.  Next week Section 1 will fill that empty space in the distance.

Here's one last view of Section 2, looking in the other direction:

The future Section 1 is on the floor in the foreground.  You can now see the entire loop that the layout makes around the main room in the basement.

During my travels I met with Jim Coady, who showed me the Mojave Northern rock car that he had 3D printed himself, and he gave me this poster he made as a souvenir of our rock car project:

I look forward to completing the lower deck benchwork by next time!

 

Revisiting George AFB, and Building Layout Sections 4 and 3

This time we'll revisit George Air Force Base (near Victorville), and then we'll look at recent progress on benchwork for layout Sections 4 and 3.

George AFB began as the Victorville Army Flying School during WW2:

 

Here are some photos of the flight line and control tower, as seen in a yearbook in 1942:

The air base was served by a Santa Fe branch line (the Adelanto Spur) that left the main line at the Lower Narrows and climbed up to the plateau where the air base was located.

In 1947, when the Air Force was formed from the Army Air Force, Chard Walker shot this photo of the Army 45-ton switcher visiting the Victorville depot, where it periodically turned on the wye to equalize the wear on its flanges (because all the curves on the base went in the same direction):

Here's a later USAF GE 80-tonner that may have worked at George AFB:

 

Here's a 1959 aerial photo of the part of the base where most of the railroad spurs were located:

The rail line enters this photo diagonally from near the lower right corner, then curves north to reach the rows of warehouses you see in the center of the photo.  Just north of the warehouses are the two main hangars along the flight line, where you can see various USAF planes parked.

Here's a more distant view of the south end of the base, just below the previous view, where the oil spur and the bomb spur were located:

The rail line enters this view from the lower right corner, then branches back south to the bomb spur, where the bomb storage buildings can be seen in that same corner of the photo.  Proceeding diagonally to the NW, the rail line passes four jet fuel storage tanks, where there was a spur for unloading tank cars.  At the upper left corner, the line curves north into the warehouse part of the base that we saw in the previous photo.

If I live long enough, I would like to model these parts of George AFB, since I was in the Air Force long ago.  The model would sit on top of the large, rectangular helix that will be located in the layout's staging room, as seen in this drawing by Byron Henderson for my article in Layout Design Journal #68:

The rail line enters the base at the lower left, passes the bomb spur and later the oil spur, and then passes the one-stall engine house and arrives at spurs that serve Base Supply, the rows of warehouses, and the lumber shed and shop.  Note the hangar and control tower beside the runway apron.

Here's a view of some barracks on the base in the 1950s, with two jet fuel tanks in the distance:

 

Here's a later (2001) stitched-together view of the rows of warehouses served by the railroad, thanks to Gary Gray:

 And here's a view of the back side of the engine house, also by Gary Gray:

 Here's a postcard view of activity on the flight line long ago:

 

The last time we visited the base in this blog, some people enjoyed seeing actress Barbara Lang posing by a 1957 billboard for a GAFB air show.  So, here she is again, posing by another sign for GAFB:

She was supposed to star in "Jailhouse Rock" with Elvis Presley, but didn't.

This completes our second tour of various scenes from my future layout.

In the last two weeks I've been able to put Section 4 of my layout up on legs, and then Section 3.

I had to build an extension to Section 4 to support the tracks on the inside of the curve coming around the far end of the layout, which I somehow missed doing earlier.  The new triangular addition is called Section 4A.

Here is the frame for Section 4-4A after it was up on legs, standing in front of the previous Section 5.  The notched plywood tops are leaning against Section 5:
 

Here's a view of Section 4 (on the right) from an opposite angle after the plywood tops were in place:

Then I worked on Section 3.  I decided to add a rectangular outrigger to the frame where I could attach extra legs that could support the point on the upper deck that the fold-down wye tail will be hinged to someday.  Here's the frame for Section 3 after it was up on nine legs:

The new outrigger can be seen in the left distance.  Behind Section 3 is Section 4, and to the right of there is Section 5.

And here is Section 3 from the opposite angle, after the plywood was notched and placed on top:

The extended part of the frame is in the left foreground.  If this were the upper deck, the tail of the Victorville wye would be hinged to this area.

That's all for now.