Santa Fe's Freight F9 Diesels in Victorvile, and Drawing More Track Lines on Plywood

Our featured Victorville locomotives this time are Santa Fe's EMD F9 freight diesels, and my layout progress report covers the drawing of all the secondary tracks that run beside the mainlines on the plywood benchwork for the lower deck.

Santa Fe bought nine ABBA sets of freight F9s during June and July of 1956, which was late in EMD's F-unit production.  They were numbered 281LABC through 289LABC, and they were painted in the "cigar band" blue and yellow freight scheme of the time.

Some were at first assigned to mainline freights over Cajon Pass and through Victorville.  Here is F9 set #283, with 283C in the lead, climbing westbound just outside Victorville, passing the West Victorville siding and nearing the Frost Flyover, in April of 1959, as shot by Allan Styffe:

In 1960 all of Santa Fe's cab units got grab irons added above the windshields and down the right side of the nose, and the remaining photos here show those grab irons.  Here's set #287 of F9s rounding the curve at Summit in the early 1960s, as shot by Fred Worsfold:

 

Here's a John McCall photo of F9 #286 at Clovis, NM in the 1960s, mixed with other units including a GP9, showing the extra louver set that the F9 A units had just behind the cab.  They also had extra cooling pipes on the left side of the rooftop:

 Here's a similar view of #286C, as seen by Fred Worsfold in San Diego:

 

Finally, we see another F9 mixed set, led by #289C, on the curve at Summit in Nov. 1963, as shot by Matt Herson:

My modeling time period ends at the end of 1956, so I can only run the F9s in the last six or seven months of 1956, about the same time as the Hi-Level El Capitan passenger train began running.

Stewart made Santa Fe's F9 sets in HO long ago, as seen here:

 

They lacked the cooling pipes on the rooftops, but those could be bought from other diesel detail sources.

Later, Athearn Genesis also made the F9s, but they had the 1960s grab iron details, so I didn't buy those:

 

Now it's time for another layout progress report.  I continued slowly drawing more track centerlines on the plywood for the secondary tracks that were beside the mainlines, and they are almost all completed now.

Here's a view of the tracks and turnouts being laid out near the approach to the turntable, which I represented with a paper circle 18.25" inches in diameter in the center distance: 

 

My frequent advisor, Tim Fisher, pointed out that I had four places where there were reverse curves (which can cause derailments) due to back-to-back crossover turnouts, which I later marked with red ink circles on Version 7 of my staging schematic (and the red arrows show right hand running on the mainlines):

Tim's solution was to use double-slip switches at those locations, but it's hard to find any Walthers Shinohara code 100 double-slips now (#6 or #8).  I did get one #6 from eBay, and Tim sent me another #6 that he no longer needed, so I could use those two to get the trains from the right end of the A yard across the mainlines and into the helix.

I laid out the two double-slips where they would go on the plywood, as seen here:

For the other two problem areas at the left end of the A yard, I moved one crossover and deleted the other and found new ways to route the trains without too much difficulty.  Here's the new Version 8 of the schematic, with double-slips at the right end of the A yard and a revised crossover at the left end:

I'll keep checking this to make sure all the trains and locos can move around the tracks without too much trouble.  Speaking of trouble, when I went to draw track R1 on the plywood, I found that one of the legs sticking through there was in the way, and there's no way to move it now.  But I found that I could reroute track R1 around the outside of the leg, so all is well again.

Here's the current track plan for the complex area near the turntable, with red ink notes showing some of the new features:

 

I should be able to finish all the track lines on the plywood next week.  The yard storage tracks will be on sheet cork and won't need their centerlines drawn until the cork is down.  I've postponed the big decisions about powering the turnout frogs and where the block boundaries should be.

I watched a Larry Puckett video online about the problem with KD magnets causing unwanted uncoupling and how he solves that by using the new Neodymium magnets under the rails, so I sent for 16 of those (four of each shape) but haven't experimented with them yet. 

My architect friend, Jim Coady, jumped into another CAD drawing project for me, this time for Victorville's big Rainbow Bridge.  I sent him the original bridge plans, and he sent me this initial drawing of just the arch:

 

A week later he came back with a 3D model of the main bridge parts, which look like this:

We're trying to decide how to build this model, whether by 3D printing and/or other methods.  Your suggestions are welcome.  I'll be back in two weeks.