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.