UP's 4-8-2 Locos in Victorville, and Preparing for Track and Wiring

This time we'll look at Union Pacific's 4-8-2 steam locos in passenger and helper service in Victorville, and then we'll look at initial steps in preparing to lay roadbed and track on my layout and in planning to wire the layout for DC cab control.

In 1922 through 1924 the UP bought sixty 4-8-2 Mountain-type steam locos to speed up their passenger service.  They were numbered 7000-7039 for the UP and 7850-7869 for their Los Angeles & Salt Lake route through Cajon Pass.  The LA&SL locos were oil burners, and some of the 7000-class locos were later converted to burn oil too.

By the time of the postwar years that I model, they had been demoted to pulling secondary passenger trains and to helper service on Cajon Pass. Here's a beautiful Chard Walker photo showing #7019 as a helper in Victorville during UP's 1950-1951 return to using steam on Cajon Pass:

Note the two-tone gray paint with the silver stripes, which was used starting in mid-1949.  Also note the white Texas Quarries granite mill roof and the cliffs of the Upper Narrows in the background.

These locos were active on Cajon Pass (and in Victorville) until sometime in 1948, when they were replaced by diesels, but they returned during June, 1950 until Oct. 1951.  They were not seen there again after that.

UP #7019 was one of the two UP 4-8-2s that returned to Cajon Pass during 1950-1951. The other one was #7859, as seen here in Victorville in a June, 1951 photo by Stan Kistler:

 

Here is #7852 about to pull a secondary passenger train east from San Bernardino in Dec. 1948, as shot by John Lawson (this loco was also in two-tone gray, but it probably had yellow stripes, which was the style from 1947 until mid-1949):

Here we see #7852 again, this time double-heading with 4-8-4 #803 on the westbound Utahn just west of Summit in July of 1948, as shot by Chard Walker:

Jack Whitmeyer shot this color photo of #7019 after it had helped a train to Summit in June of 1950, at the start of the UP's return to steam:

Finally, here's a dramatic shot by Donald Duke, showing #7019 helping an Alco PA unit and the eastbound Los Angeles Limited around Sullivan's Curve in the heart of Cajon Pass in June of 1950:

 

There have been quite a few HO models of these locos over the years.  For example, here's a Westside brass model painted with silver stripes:

And here's an Overland brass model, factory painted with silver stripes:

Broadway Limited, Inc. produced several factory-painted versions of these locos in styrene.  Here is one in UP's pre-1947 black paint scheme (also used in 1952 and later):

Here is a BLI model with the 1947-1949 yellow stripes:

 

And here is a BLI model with the mid-1949 into 1952 silver stripes (they were painted black again starting in 1952, after they had left Cajon):

 

Seeing these models has inspired me to check on which ones I have and to get at least one of them renumbered to #7019 or #7859 for use during 1950-1951.

Now let's turn to the fairly slow progress on my layout.  I found a carpet store that sells sheet cork 3/16" thick in 2' x 3' sections, so I bought 20 sheets to cover my staging yards.  

I also got outdoors for a day to cut some plywood pieces to fill the four holes where legs used to be (they were in the way of some staging tracks) and a triangular shape so the tracks can cut the corner by the post, as seen here after I built a frame for it and installed it (the paper rectangles were the patterns for the leg holes):

 

I got a lot of advice from Tim Fisher (again) on how to wire my layout and my control panels for DC cab control, after briefly reconsidering DCC (but I have way too many DC locos to convert, and I've always wanted to use DC cab control).  I sent him this photo of some of my wiring supplies (except for soldering tools) -- I've been using #22 feeder wires and #14 bus wires so far:

 

There will be one dispatcher panel for each level, for the mainline blocks and turnouts, and several local panels for operating local blocks and turnouts.  We agreed that there should be four cabs, with one of them only for the upper level local switcher.  Here is my drawing showing in red where the dispatcher panels could be located, just inside the doorway to the helix room:

One day I took a break and met my friend Bill Messecar for lunch, and he gave me back his model of the Victorville depot after a minor fix, and the first of three models of the Victorville pump houses he's building for me, as seen here:

Part of this week was devoted to getting advice from another Tim, this one being Tim Repp, an old friend from the Boeing Employees Model Railroad Club.  He has been building a layout that uses DC cab control and that also uses magnetic uncoupling rather than picks, so I wanted to see how he does it.  

He's over an hour away in Gig Harbor, and here he is, standing inside his layout near his main control panel:

He showed me how he does his uncoupling and how he built his control panels.  I took a lot of notes and shot some photos, including this one showing his lower deck staging panel (he uses radio buttons instead of rotaries, as there are only two cabs per panel):

 

Many thanks to Tim Repp for sharing his methods, and for discussing them later with Tim Fisher and myself via emails.  Tim Fisher then sent me a handy shopping list for all the switches, buttons, rotaries, terminal blocks, etc. that I should start acquiring for my control panels.  I also need to get busy and work out the block boundaries for the lower deck and the layout of the control panels.

I did order and receive a lot of Atlas switch machines, both manual and powered, for the many turnouts on the lower deck.   Here's a photo I shot of some of the track and roadbed supplies I've acquired so far:

 

So, I'll keep on pressing forward, hoping to begin laying some roadbed and track before long, and hoping to figure out the wiring and control panel designs.