Santa Fe's PA Diesels in Victorville, and Laying Some Mainline Staging Tracks

Our Victorville locomotives this time are the Alco PA-1/PB-1 passenger diesels in Warbonnet paint (some say they were the most beautiful diesels ever).  Then my layout progress report will cover the laying of the first mainline tracks in staging.

Santa Fe received their 51-class PAs and PBs between Oct. 1946 and Dec. 1948.  They were numbered 51LAB-62LAB (A-B-A sets) and 70LA-73LA (A-B sets).  In May of 1949 the trailing cab units were renumbered: 51B-57B became 63L-69L and 58B-62B became 74L-78L,

Let's look at a Chard Walker photo of a set of eastbound PAs (#54) on the curve at Pine Lodge, heading toward Summit and then Victorville:

 

Here is PA set #52 at the Victorville depot with the eastbound Grand Canyon Limited in May of 1947:

 

Jack Whitmeyer shot westbound PA set #52 at the San Bernardino depot with the Fast Mail:

 

Here is PA set #71 with the eastbound Grand Canyon Limited on Sullivan's Curve, thanks to Thomas Hotchkiss:

Here's a nice publicity photo of PA set #51 when new, climbing eastbound in Cajon Pass:

Finally, here we see a PA set with the westbound Fast Mail climbing from Victorville toward Hesperia in March of 1954, as shot by Thomas Hotchkiss:

Note that except for when they were new, the PAs were normally assigned to the Santa Fe's secondary trains, as the EMD F-units were better at staying on schedule (fewer mechanical problems).

Most of my HO models of Santa Fe PAs and PBs are from the old Proto 2000 run, as seen here:

 

These had silver-painted sides instead of plated sides, but I do have a newer Walthers Mainline A-B-A set with the plated sides, which look much better:

There have been many other models of these locos, such as the Broadway Limited set:

 

MTH also made a set.  Athearn made a very early model, but it had the wrong Warbonnet shape on the roof.  There were brass models by Key and by Westside and maybe others.  Rapido is bringing out a PA model that should be excellent.

Turning now to my layout progress, I finally got started on laying flextracks along my double-track mainline roadbed, avoiding the turnout locations for now.  I began at the crossover turnouts in Section 2 and worked my way along the very long block that runs along the edges of Sections 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

Here's a view looking from Section 2 through Section 3, a straightaway:

Here's the next view, looking back from Section 4 around the curve coming from Section 3, which is as far as I got during the first week:

 

I used DAP Alex Plus clear caulk to glue the flextracks down, and I used a 48" steel ruler to check that the straightaways were straight.  I used pushpins to hold the track in place while the caulk dried, and I placed cans of food on the tracks to weigh them down.  I used the two small tools you see on the tracks to check that their centers were always 2.25" apart.

Much of the effort was in cutting off one or two ties at each end of a flextrack and filing them smooth so they would fit back under the rail joiners.  I tried soldering the rail joints before I made the curves, but I wasn't good at it, so I skipped that step until later, when I'll also be soldering the feeder wires to the rails.

I made more progress during the second week.  Here's a view from Section 4, looking along the bends into Section 5:

And here's a view from the curve into Section 5, looking down the straightaway toward Section 6:

Partway around this curve in Section 5 is where the halfway point in the very long blocks occurs, so I cut the tracks at that point and added insulated rail joiners on the outside rails to split the blocks in half.  The inside rails use common rail wiring and so are not insulated there.

Next week I'll continue laying track through Sections 6 and 6A, and then I'll have to deal with the mainline turnouts.

Part of my time has been spent corresponding with Jim Coady about the sizes and locations of the various doors and windows in the Victorville boiler house, which he has been drawing in his CAD system.  We've even been counting the boards in the walls to figure out the heights of the windows and doors.  Here's one of the most helpful photos I found for modeling the mainline side of the building:

We're getting close to the final drawings, so stay tuned.

Jim Coady is also famous this month for having his 8-page article on building the Mojave Northern rock cars published in the June 2022 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman (pages 68-75).  Here's part of the title page:

And here's part of a page where my photo appears, showing Tom Coletti's Mojave Northern 0-6-0T with the 14 rock cars built by Jim Coady, Bill Messecar, and Don Hubbard:

 

That's all for now.  I'll be back again in two weeks.

 

UP's First Gas Turbines in Victorville, and Planning the Boiler House and Mainline Blocks

This time our featured locomotives are the first Gas Turbines tested by the Union Pacific through Victorville.  I don't have any actual layout progress to report, just a lot of design work for the Victorville boiler house drawings and the mainline track blocks.

During the last months of 1949 and the first months of 1950, the UP tested a unique Alco-GE double-ended gas turbine, #50, on freight trains through Victorville.  It was a demonstrator in UP colors but was never owned by the UP.

Chard Walker shot #50 and its test crew caboose near the wye in Victorville, with the propane dealer and a barrio church visible in the background:

 Here is #50 when it first arrived in Los Angeles in the summer of 1949:

Here's another Chard Walker photo of #50 and its caboose in Victorville:

Here we see #50 with a test crew caboose leading a westbound freight at Devore in Cajon Pass in March of 1950, thanks to Thomas Hotchkiss:

Finally, here is #50 in the B Yard at San Bernardino, as shot by Jack Whitmeyer:

The other early gas turbine that ran through Victorville during my 1946-1956 time period was UP #57, which was being tested with a propane tank car tender during roughly the second half of 1953.

Here is #57 with its propane tender and a test crew caboose coming west through Summit in 1953, as shot by Robert Heuerman:
 

Here's a great color photo by Chard Walker, showing #57 on Sullivan's Curve:

 

Here we see #57 at Colton Tower in June of 1953:

Here is #57 pulling a freight west from Victorville up through Hesperia in Dec. of 1953, as shot by James Ady:

I have a Soho HO brass model of #50, which is about to be painted like this one:

Overland Models also made a brass model of #50, as seen here:

And Overland Models made a model of #57 with its propane tender:

Athearn made a model of #57, but with the normal tender it got later:

There was an article in the UP "Streamliner" magazine long ago about how to use a tank car and various details to model #57 with the propane tender, which I hope to do someday.

In 1954 UP got their first "veranda" gas turbines with open walkways, #61-75.  These didn't run through Victorville during my time, but I have an Athearn model of #65 to run just for fun anyway:

As for my layout progress, it was slow during the last two weeks.  I spent a lot of time collecting photos that show parts of the boiler house that was inside the wye in Victorville and sending them to my architect friend, Jim Coady.  

In some of the photos, I scaled off some of the dimensions, such as in this distant end view by Fletcher Swan:

Here's a very distant aerial view that we used for the wye side of the building: 

 

We have only partial views of the other walls, so we are making educated guesses about what should be on those walls.  We've gone through several revisions, comparing each one against the photos we have.  Jim's current version looks like this, and it is getting very close to being final:

 

I also spent a lot of time corresponding with my advisor Tim Fisher on where the mainline block boundaries and reversing section boundaries should be, as seen in this final schematic with red ink marking the block boundaries:

Each mainline will have five blocks, but the very long block in the middle of each one will be split into two sub-blocks with on-off switches for possibly parking two trains on each mainline there if wanted.  There are four reversing sections, seen near the left end of the diagram: one on the L2 mainline and three more on tracks F1-F2-F3.

I dug out all my tools and supplies for laying and wiring my mainline tracks, and I watched many online videos and read some book chapters to relearn how to do everything.  I hope to get started laying some tracks next week.  

I don't yet have the various switches and rotaries I'll need for the local control panels, but I'll work on selecting and buying those.

My only other news is that I won a rare brass Santa Fe 2-8-2 #1798 on eBay, and it must be a kitbash, as no such model was made by any importer:

I'll be back in two weeks with more news.

Santa Fe's 3776-Class 4-8-4s in Victorville, and Painting the Mainline Roadbed in Staging

Our Victorville locomotives this time are the Santa Fe's big 3776-class 4-8-4s, and my layout progress involves painting all of the mainline roadbed in staging.

The Santa Fe had four classes of 4-8-4 steam locos, and the 3776 class was the third class received, consisting of 10 locos, #3776-3785, delivered by Baldwin in 1941.  They had longer oil tenders (24.5K gallons of water) than the previous 3765 class, and they were almost identical to the following 2900 class, but not as heavy.

In the postwar years on Cajon Pass, they were normally seen pulling the secondary passenger trains.  Here we see #3784 with a heavyweight train by the 6th Street grade crossing in Victorville, thanks to Chard Walker:

#3784 and 3785 were delivered with the thin roller-bearing rods you see here, and the other eight locos got them in 1946-1948.  

Here is Chard Walker's photo of #3785 coming westbound through the Upper Narrows with the Fast Mail:

 

Here we see a Donald Duke photo of #3777 with the California Limited climbing westbound from the Upper Narrows:

 

Donald Duke also shot #3781 with the Chief as it climbs toward the Frost Flyover outside Victorville:

 

Here we see #3776 waiting at Summit with the Grand Canyon, while its helper, 2-8-2 #3151, cuts off and moves to the engine spur, thanks to Chard Walker:

Here's a Jim Ady photo of #3776 and a later 4-8-4, #2925, pulling a Shriners Special westward from Victorville to Summit in June, 1950:

Here we see #3781 with the westbound Fast Mail approaching Summit, as shot by Bob Hale in the early 1950s:

We'll end with Stan Kistler's great shot of #3785 climbing west from the Upper Narrows with the Fast Mail:

During 1949-1952 six of the locos got new boilers with no external steam dome.  A few of Santa Fe's 4-8-4s lasted on Cajon Pass into 1953, but the last date I can find for a 3776-class loco on Cajon is 1951. 

The earliest HO brass models of these locos were imported by PFM from 1963 to 1982, and I have five of these (they were relatively cheap).  Two of mine have the roller-bearing rods and are painted, but the other three are still waiting and hoping for paint someday.  Here is a painted PFM model with roller-bearing rods

Hallmark made some Super Crown models with various features (too expensive for me).  Here is one with tapered rods:

Finally, Bachmann made a styrene model of the 3776 class locos, as seen here:

Now let's look at my layout progress during the last two weeks.  My friend Tim Fisher advised me to avoid the bump from the 5mm roadbed cork up to the 6mm carpet cork, so I set aside the carpet cork and dropped my plans for cutting out all those triangular cork shapes you saw last time.  Instead, I bought 90 sq. ft. of 5mm sheet cork from a place on the Internet named Cleverbrand and waited for that.

In the meantime, my new task was to paint the double-track mainline roadbed a light gray color, using the same paint I used in the staging room over a year ago.  I began where the mainlines leave the staging room, and I worked my way around the layout from there.

Here's a view looking out from the staging room into Section 8 after the first week (I laid the turnouts in place after the paint was dry):

I used a wider brush on the tops of the roadbed and a narrower one along the beveled edges.  I sanded the tops of the cork and sharpened the edges with a putty knife before painting each section.

Here's the next view looking back as I gradually progressed around the curves in Section 1:

 

The painting continued every day during the second week.  The 30 sheets of 5mm cork arrived early in the week, as seen stacked here near the newly-painted mainlines in Sections 5 and 6:

Also, I got lucky on eBay and won a set of 30 used Atlas code 100 #6 turnouts (15 left and 15 right), all with powered switch machines attached.  They arrived later in the week, and here they are beside the painted roadbed in Sections 3, 4, and 5:

Finally, here's a view of the painted roadbed looking toward Sections 2 and 3 on the left and Sections 7 and 6A on the right:

Another big event a week ago was receiving the beautiful HO model of Mojave Northern 0-6-0T #3 that I bought from Tom Coletti when he decided to change scales.  I posed it by the M.N. rock cars that my friends built for me last year (this photo was taken in my staging room, where only three storage tracks are down):

You can read more about how Tom built this unique model here:

https://www.trainboard.com/highball/index.php?threads/scratch-bash-mojave-northern-railroad-0-6-0t-no-3.82339/

I shot another photo like this for Jim Coady to include in his article about how he 3D-printed the parts for the rock cars, which he has submitted to Railroad Model Craftsman.  I helped him edit the draft of his article.

My final bit of news is that Jim Coady has completed his CAD drawings of the Rainbow Bridge, at least for now.  Here's a sample page showing the amazing details he has included:

I'm now beginning to work with him as he draws plans for the boiler house that was inside the Victorville wye.

Next week I want to start laying and wiring the mainline tracks and building the mainline control panels.