Santa Fe's H16-44 Diesels in Victorville, and Installing Section 3A

This time we'll first take a look at Santa Fe's Fairbanks-Morse H16-44 roadswitchers in Victorville.  Then we'll look at some progress on building my layout, along with a new sketch for planning the staging yards, and some nice drawings by Jim Coady for building the three pump houses in Victorville.

Santa Fe got their first ten FM H16-44s in March-June, 1951, numbered them 2800-2809, and painted them in the "zebra stripe" scheme they used in the 1950s for switchers and roadswitchers.  Here's one of them, #2801, when new in 1951:

These first ten locos had the "Loewy" styling with the rounded cab windows and the rounded trim.  They were renumbered to 3000-3009 in July-August, 1952 (a year later), to make room for more GP7 numbers.

In June-August of 1952 they got ten more H16-44s, numbered 2810-2819, but these were quickly renumbered to 3010-3019 in July-August, 1952.  These last ten locos did not have the Loewy curved styling and were not assigned to California, so I won't be covering them here.

The H16-44 locos were important in Victorville because one of them was often assigned as the local switcher after Santa Fe's steam locos were retired from this job in mid or late1951.  Here's a Stan Kistler photo of #2802 as the local switcher beside the Victorville boiler house on Dec. 23, 1951:

Stan also shot #3000 (formerly #2800) in the same spot on March 7, 1954:

Note that the tall stack from the boiler house was removed by then (there was no more need to heat the fuel oil used by steam locos).

Besides serving as the Victorville switcher, these locos were also used as helpers on Cajon Pass, as seen in this Stan Kistler action photo from June 22, 1952:

Here's a Chard Walker photo of #3004 as a helper at Summit in 1953

Here's one more photo, showing #2804, as shot by Jack Whitmeyer on Oct. 21, 1951, in San Diego (these locos were used as regular roadswitchers too).

 

The first ten H16-44s stayed in California until October, 1956, and some into early 1957, so I can use these when I'm operating in 1951 through 1956.

Atlas made some HO models of these locos in both the Loewy style and the later style with squared cab windows.  Here's their Loewy-styled model:

Most of my diesel models are packed away during layout construction, so I'm not sure how many of these I have and whether I'll need to renumber some into the 3000-series for 1952-1956 operations.

Speaking of layout construction, I worked to complete the new Section 3A that fills the hole that was beside Section 3.  I removed four tall legs from the edge of Section 3 and clamped them onto the frame of Section 3A, after replacing them with the short legs I had built, as seen here:

Then I screwed the tall legs onto the Section 3A frame, drilled and bolted the frame to the adjacent sections, and cut plywood rectangles to fill the holes in Section 3 left behind by the tall legs.  I also cut five leg notches in the edge of Section 3A's plywood top and placed the plywood top onto its frame.

I posed for a photo beside the new Section 3A, as seen here:

After the plywood top on 3A was screwed down, I shot an overview of the entire scene:

Then I began to sketch how the staging yards might fit into this lower deck shape.  It's just a small 1/48 scale drawing, so things won't actually fit as nicely when they are drawn larger and to scale (they never do).  But here's my rough sketch, with the double-track mainline drawn thicker and darker than the rest:

Inside one of the mainline curves is an open space where I can't get many yard tracks to fit, so I got the idea to stick a turntable with whisker tracks into that area, as seen in the sketch.

Note also the two dotted lines -- one is the track leading to the helix to the upper deck, and the other is the critical connection to form a return loop for turning the trains.

The longest staging yard wraps around the big curve at the right end of the drawing.  Inside there is a single-ended yard for storing diesel locos.

I'd like to have #8 turnouts leading into one of the yards, but I may have to settle for #6's, we shall see.

My final piece of news is that my architect friend, Jim Coady, completed a whole set of beautiful CAD drawings for the three pump houses with derricks that stood along the tracks in Victorville, in front of the water tanks for steam locos.  I had sent him all the dimensions and photos that I could round up.  Here is just the cover sheet of his drawings:

And here are two of the better Jack Whitmeyer photo close-ups that he worked from:

The news gets better, as my local friend Bill Messecar has volunteered to scratch-build three of these in HO for my future Victorville scene -- lucky me!

My next jobs are to draw the staging yards accurately in 1/16 scale, and to add more shims between some layout sections and sand the tops smooth where the sections meet.