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.