Santa Fe's FT Diesels (1st Paint Scheme) in Victorville, and Redesigning the Staging Yards

This time we'll take at look at Santa Fe's EMD FT freight diesels in their original paint scheme as they came through Victorville, and then we'll look at progress in redesigning the staging yards on the lower deck.

The Santa Fe bought 80 four-unit FT diesel sets between Dec. 1940 and Aug. 1945 to help with the war effort, numbered 100 to 179.  Here's a famous publicity photo they shot at Sullivan's Curve in Cajon Pass:

 

Until mid-1945 (when WW2 ended), all the units were in blue and yellow with a thin red stripe separating those colors for the full length of the carbodies, as seen here:

 

They later had several other paint schemes, but we will only cover the full red stripe scheme this time.  From mid-1945 until about mid-1948, they gradually repainted all of their freight FTs so that the red stripe was only on the cab.  So, during my time period starting in 1946, there were many of these with full red stripes in 1946, fewer in 1947, and not many left in 1948.

Here's a 1942 photo showing a set of FTs entering Victorville eastbound through the Upper Narrows by the Rainbow Bridge:

 

Here's a beautiful postwar shot by Chard Walker as a set of FTs leaves Victorville westbound through the Upper Narrows, headed for Cajon Pass (these units may have only partial red stripes, it's hard to tell):

During WW2 these FTs were all configured as ABBB sets, to settle a union dispute about having a crew in the trailing cab of an ABBA set.  Here's one of these sets, #129, crossing the desert during the war:

 

But in Sep. 1944 it was agreed that no crews were needed in the trailing cabs, and the Santa Fe began reconfiguring almost all their FTs (except #100-104) into ABBA sets.  This was completed by Sep. 1945, just before my time period begins.

Here's a Jan. 1945 photo of FT set #107 arriving at Summit from Victorville, still in its ABBB configuration, as shot by Fletcher Swan:

A couple of other notes: During the summer of 1946, eleven of the FT sets were converted to passenger service and Warbonnet paint, and we'll cover those another time.  And in the spring of 1947, some of the freight FT sets were broken into smaller sets, such as ABB, ABA, and A, with new numbers of 180-185.

Years ago Stewart made all of the Santa Fe FT paint schemes in HO scale, and I have at least two ABBA sets with the full red stripe for use in 1946-1948, as seen here:

Now let's get back to progress on the layout, which happened on the drawing board again. Taking Tim Fisher's advice to move as many turnouts as possible close to the aisles so they can be thrown manually, I erased all the turnout locations and most of the tracks from the Version 1 track plans you saw last time.  

I redrew the whole thing in pencil again, using #6 turnouts everywhere except on the mainline crossovers, which are still #8.  Here is the new Version 2.1 of the main peninsula staging area:

The double-track mainline still follows the edge of the benchwork around, and inside of that is the 10-track double-ended staging yard.  The rest of the yards here are stub-ended.  Three of the legs will have to be moved a little, and I'll add a small triangle of benchwork beside the post, for the lead into the small yard there.

Here is Version 2 of the turntable area trackage (I moved the turntable a bit to the left, to center it between the joists):

 

Last time I didn't show you the drawing of the tracks in the helix room (staging room), but here it is (the roadbed for all these tracks was laid down many months ago):

A lot of this past week was spent drawing various versions of a straight-line track schematic, so that I can study the flow of trains through staging.  I also gave names to the various yards (A Yard, B Yard, etc.) and numbered the tracks in each yard from the closest to the mainline (track A1) to the farthest away (track A10).

This latest schematic is laid out to scale along the mainlines and looks like this:

Note the A yard with the 10 double-ended tracks for trains, and the adjacent B Yard with about 10 stub-ended tracks for storing trains.  The C Yard has short stub tracks and is probably for loco storage, like the turntable area.  The D and E Yards are in the helix room.  The dashed line for the return loop track looks long in this schematic, but it's actually only a few feet long.

I used a string to measure the length of each staging track, and I converted the lengths to actual feet.  Here's a table of the results:

Today I got lots of suggestions from Tim Fisher on how to further improve the track plan, so I'll be studying and implementing these changes during the next week.

UP's 4-10-2 Locos in Victorville, and Designing the Staging Yards

This time we'll look at the UP's 4-10-2 steam locos that worked in Victorville, and then we'll discuss some progress on designing the staging yards for the lower deck of the layout.

The UP owned 10 steam locos of the 4-10-2 "Overland" type, which were initially three-cylinder locos in the 8800 series (built in 1925-26), but which were all converted to two cylinders in the 5090 series in 1942.  They were all assigned to the Cajon Pass area and were often seen in Victorville as helpers and as road engines on local freights.

Here is #5091 waiting as a helper in Victorville, as photographed by Chard Walker:

And here is #5099 near the Texas Quarries granite mill in Victorville, apparently switching the Leon Turn, which was the UP's local freight from San Bernardino to Victorville and Oro Grande:

Here's a good shot of #5095 pulling the local Leon Turn east toward Summit, as shot by Stan Kistler in 1951:

Chard Walker shot #5090 waiting at Summit for its next helper assignment:

Chard also shot #5091 waiting at Summit while a westbound UP passenger train came through:

 

Here is #5092 helping an eastbound UP passenger train towards Summit in 1951, as seen by James Ady:

Here we see #5090 pushing behind a UP freight from Victorville to Summit in 1950-51, as shot by Robert Hale:

Finally, here is #5092 helping an eastbound UP Passenger train into Summit in late 1950, as seen by Donald Duke:

During my postwar time period, these locos were operating into Victorville until replaced by UP's FM H20-44 diesels in July 1948.  But then six of them returned to Cajon Pass for sixteen more glorious months, from July 1950 into October 1951.

I currently have two HO painted brass models of these locos, #5090 and #5093, as made by Overland Models:

Next time I'll choose some type of Santa Fe loco to study.  I'm enjoying learning more about these locos as I cover each type, one by one.

In my last report, I had completed the benchwork on the new Section 3A, so the next step was to go back to the drawing board to work on detailed drawings for the staging yards on the lower deck.  Last time you saw an initial, small sketch, but then I had to draw it more detail in 1/16 scale.

My process was to kneel on cushions beside the bed and draw all the lines in pencil, with lots of erasing, trying to make the tracks fit:

 

Here is the initial result I arrived at -- first the main peninsula yards:

And to the left of there, the staging turntable and yard throats:

I shared these drawings with some local friends, and someone suggested building a full-size mock-up of a section of upper deck above this lower deck, to see whether I will be able to reach in to pick up a derailed car that's in the middle, 24" from the aisle.  So I did build a mock-up like that and set some parallel flextracks on sheet cork on the lower deck and filled them with cars.  I was able to kneel down and reach in by 24", as seen here:

I also got lots of very helpful advice from Tim Fisher, who has been advising me by emails ever since my layout article appeared in the Layout Design Journal #68 a year ago.  He studied my initial staging track plans and sent me lots of recommendations for improvements.

He even sent me drawings for a better arrangement of the yard ladders, to keep as many turnouts near the aisles as possible, so they won't have to be powered.  Here is his most recent page of drawings:

To interpret this, imagine that the tracks at the right end of the upper drawing curve around the end of the peninsula and connect with the same tracks at the right end of the lower drawing and then head toward the turntable area at the left end.

He also tells me that I can get away with #6 turnouts in the yard ladders, so that will save some space.  I will be working to implement many of his ideas in the coming week by erasing and redrawing many parts of my initial drawing.

I belong to the Boeing Employees Model Railroad Club, and they offered to sell me lots of brand new Atlas code 100 flextracks for my staging tracks, very cheap.  I did some estimates and found that I'll need about 202 flextracks to cover the staging tracks in the main room, so I bought all 175 pieces that they had to sell at their annual swap meet yesterday, Nov.13.

I'll be back two weeks from now with another report.