UP's E7 Diesels in Victorville, and Preparing the Benchwork for Laying Track

Our featured Victorville locomotive type this time is Union Pacific's EMD E7 passenger diesel, and my layout progress report is about preparing the benchwork for the laying of track.

In August of 1946 the UP received 13 new EMD E7 diesels from EMD (six A units and seven B units).  One ABB set was lettered for the City of San Francisco (which we won't cover), one ABB set was lettered for the City of Los Angeles (COLA), and the rest were for a general pool for any streamliner trains.

Here's a photo by Jack Whitmeyer taken in late 1946 in Riverside, CA, showing the E7 set 927A (ABB) with its COLA lettering on the red banners on the sides:

 

But the COLA lettering on this set only lasted until the spring of 1947, when the lettering was removed and the red banners were left blank.  Color photos are hard to find, but here are these same units arriving in Chicago with the City of Los Angeles train and with blank red banners in April of 1947:

Two of UP's E7s, A units 930A and 931A, came with blank red banners when new.  Chard Walker shot 931A and a B unit leaving Victorville through the Upper Narrows in 1947:

Here's a shot by Frank Peterson, showing an ABA set of E7s led by 931A at Summit in Dec. 1946, after getting help from a UP 2-8-8-0:

Then in March of 1948, eight of these E7 units (the jointly-owned ones) got renumbered with a J suffix; for example, 927A became 988J.  The other five units also got renumbered, but without the J suffix; for example, 959A became 998. You can find all of these renumberings at Don Strack's excellent Utah Rails website.

Then in December of 1948, the eight units with the J suffix got renumbered again by dropping the J suffix; for example, 989J became 989.  The other five units were not renumbered again.  And three of the units left the UP and joined the SP or C&NW, including the former 927A (988J).  At the same time, the units that had the blank red banners lost them in favor of "Union Pacific" lettering on the sides of the units.  

Some units had already come with the UP lettering, such as 959A, seen here when new:

As for passenger train assignments, at first the 927A ABB set (927A-928B-929B) was assigned to the City of Los Angeles, as it had that lettering on its sides.  But once that lettering was gone, the UP mixed the E7s with their earlier E units (E2s and E6s) and with F3Bs on any of the streamliner trains.  

When the E8s arrived in 1950 and 1953, the E7s were sometimes mixed with them or downgraded to the secondary trains.  When the E9s arrived in 1954, the UP no longer needed the E7s on the Los Angeles trains, and they were sent elsewhere.

Let's look at a few HO models.  Broadway Limited made E7 sets both with and without the red banners, including the blank red banners, as seen here with the banners with COLA lettering:

Before that, Proto 2000 had also made the E7s both with and without the COLA banners, as seen here without the banners:

Oriental Limited also made the E7s in brass:

Turning now to my layout progress, I spent a week getting the sections to match up so there were no little bumps in going from one section to the next.   I crawled underneath, loosened some bolts, raised the lower sections up on temporary short legs, then bolted them back together in better alignment.  I also added shims inside the wider cracks between sections and sealed them with wood filler.

Then I got out my belt sander and posed for a photo before smoothing out all the section joints.  That tool always works great for this job:

 

Then this past week I drew all the pencil lines for the mainline tracks on the plywood.  I drew the nearer straight sections 3.25" in from the edges, to clear the legs that stick up there, and the two mainline tracks are spaced 2.25" apart everywhere.  I used my poster board curved template to draw the 36" radius inside curves and the 38.25" outside curves.

Here's a view showing the curved template in the foreground:

 

And here's a view from the other end, showing the straight template with some roadbed and track to illustrate the clearance from the legs:

Note above that the curve is offset by 1/2" at the tangent point with the straight track.  That allows me to draw in an easement between the curve and the tangent.  Here's a close-up of what the pencil lines look like at the tangent point, with a 12" long easement on each side of that point:

At some points the easements will have to be shorter, if there's a turnout close by.

My next step is to draw in all the crossovers and sidings that are adjacent to the mainlines.  But first I need to decide where the best locations for the crossovers are, and I'm in discussions with my helpful advisor, Tim Fisher, about that.  Here's a photo of Tim beside his HO layout depicting the Santa Fe in Pampa, TX:
 

Meanwhile, another helpful friend, architect Jim Coady, upgraded his CAD drawings of the elevated fuel oil tank that was inside the Victorville wye by adding the ladder, platform, handrails, and oil pipes, as seen in this cover page:

 We'll see what I can get done in the next two weeks.

Santa Fe's 4-6-4 Locos in Victorville, and Designing for DC Cab Control

This time (just for fun) we will cover a locomotive type that was almost never seen in Victorville, namely Santa Fe's 4-6-4 steam locos.  After that, we'll look at some of the design steps I'm taking in order to add DC cab control to the lower staging deck of my layout.

Santa Fe had two classes of 4-6-4s: the ten locos in the 3450 class (built in 1927) and the six larger locos in the 3460 class (built in 1937).  Santa Fe didn't call them Hudsons -- they called them "Heavy Pacifics."  The 3450-class locos were all modernized in 1936-1939, giving them 79" drivers in place of their original 75" drivers, so I'm only covering the modernized versions here. 

I haven't seen any photos of a 3450-class loco in Victorville proper, but here is a Jim Ady photo of #3450 helping 4-8-4 #2905 with a Shriner special climbing from Victorville to Summit in June of 1950:

In the same month, Stan Kistler shot #3459 helping 4-8-4 #2901 with another Shriner special near the Frost Flyover just west of Victorville:

Here is #3453 at rest in Bakersfield, where some of them were normally assigned, in March of 1947, thanks to Frank Peterson:

Here's an HO-scale brass model of these locos in modernized form, as made by Key Models:

Now we'll look at the larger 4-6-4s in the 3460 class (#3460-3465).  These had 84" drivers and were among the most powerful 4-6-4s ever made.  The first of these, #3460, was the only fully-streamlined steam loco that Santa Fe had.

Later articles about #3460 call her the Blue Goose, but during the years of her operation she was known as the Bluebird (she was painted in two shades of blue) or as Mae West.  I'll call her the Bluebird.  She rarely came west, but she did come out to Los Angeles in Feb. of 1938 on a publicity tour, as shot by Allan Youell:

A year later, in early 1939, she lost her lower skirting for maintenance purposes.  Santa Fe fan Tom Campbell recalled seeing her running through La Mirada in Southern California in 1949 or 1950, so she had to come through Victorville then.  Here's a colorized photo of her in action somewhere, showing the lower skirting missing:

Turning now to the rest of the 3460 class, those were also very rarely seen out west.  But Stan Kistler did find #3464 running with passenger F-units on the "Short Way" route in San Bernardino in July of 1950:

Stan also shot #3464 the same day (July 4, 1950) by the San Bernardino sand tower:

Here's a nice roster shot of #3465 in Kansas City (its home territory) in March of 1952, taken by Wes Krambeck:

 

Looking now at some HO brass models, Tenshodo first produced the Bluebird, but it was a little oversize and had a shade of blue on the bottom that was too dark:

Later Hallmark made expensive Super Crown models of the Bluebird, both with and without the lower skirts, and with better shades of blue.  Here's the version without the skirts:
 

Later, Precision Scale Models also made versions with and without skirts.

For the non-streamlined 3460-class locos, Tenshodo made an early brass model that was painted and was a little oversize (like their Bluebird), as seen here:

A better model came as part of the Westside Santa Fe "Big Three" set, as seen in the middle row here:

By the way, the 2900-class 4-8-4 in this brass set was not part of Santa Fe's real "big three," which had a 3765-class loco as the 4-8-4 built at the same time as the 5001-class 2-10-4 and the 3460-class 4-6-4.  But it's still a great set to have.

Later, Glacier Park Models made several versions of the non-streamlined locos, such as this one:

Now it's time to review my design work in preparation for installing DC cab control on my layout.  (I have way too many old locos to convert to DCC, and I've always liked the idea of cab control.)

My first steps were to break the track plan schematic into blocks, where each block could be assigned to one of four cabs (or just three cabs on the lower deck).  I got daily email advice from Tim Fisher, who is an expert at this.  

He first suggested that I should try to rearrange the tracks in the C yard (diesel loco storage yard) so that track C1 would connect directly to the A and B yard throats, and I was able to do that, resulting in this new Version 6 of the schematic:

Then I divided this schematic into three close-ups, where I marked block boundaries and names on each one.  Here is the left end of the A yard (which holds freight trains), with the D yard beside it (more diesel loco storage) and the turntable area for steam locos across the mainlines:

The next schematic with block labels covers the area where the right end of the A yard (freight trains) meets the B yard (passenger trains) and the C yard (diesel locos):

 

The final schematic with block labels covers the return loops and the E yard (more diesels) and the F yard (more freight trains):

Then I turned my attention to figuring out the control panel designs, so I'd know what kinds of devices to buy to control the blocks and tracks and turnouts.  The previous plan was to have a main dispatcher panel in the helix room, where  all the block assignments to cabs would be set, and all the mainline turnouts would be controlled.  Several local panels would only control local tracks and turnouts.

But I decided that I wanted the layout to operate easily with only one or two people present (and rarely three or four or more).  So I gave up the idea of a main control panel in favor of just the local panels, so a walk-around train operator could control everything as he moved around the layout.  This also meant that the mainline turnouts could be thrown by hand instead of being powered, as they are all near the aisles.

There will be three local panel areas, corresponding to the three enlarged schematics above.  I worked on just one of the three areas this week -- the area where the A, B, and C yards all come together. 

I found that this one A-B-C area is too complex for one big panel, so I divided it into four panels that could be attached side by side along the aisle there.  One of the four panels controls the mainline tracks and has nine rotary devices for assigning cabs to blocks, including for the three yards:

Next there's a panel for the tracks at the right ladder of the A yard, including a center-off toggle for each of the 10 tracks to assign it to the left or right ladder, and three powered controls for the turnouts that are more than 15" from the aisle:

Next in line is the panel for the B yard, which has three powered turnouts and two tracks that can be turned off in case of lighted passenger cars:

 

The last in line is the C yard, which is complex and has six powered turnouts and on-off switches for each sub-block where a set of diesels may be stored:

I plan to take a break from control panels next week and prepare the benchwork for laying cork roadbed for the mainlines and the yard areas.  I'll fill and sand the joints between sections and draw all the centerlines for the mainline tracks.

That was the advice I got when Bill Messecar visited me this week.  He also brought me the 2nd of the three pump houses in Victorville, and I lined them up for a photo along with the other models he's built for me (the depot and the train of Mojave Northern rock cars):

In other news, my architect friend, Jim Coady, is now working on drawings of the elevated fuel oil tank that was inside the Victorville wye.  Here is the just the cover page of his plans, before he adds all the piping and railings:

That's plenty for this time.  I'll be back in two weeks.