UP's Early 4-6-6-4s in Victorville, and Laying a Few More Mainline Track Sections

 It's time to cover some Union Pacific steam locos again, so I've chosen their early "Challenger" type 4-6-6-4s.  My layout progress was slower this time, but I'll show you the new mainline track sections that are in place in staging now.

The  UP got two groups of early Challengers: 15 locos in the CSA-1 class in 1936 (#3900-3914), and 25 more in the CSA-2 class in 1937 (#3915-3939).  All of these were converted to oil and renumbered in the 3800-series by 1944,  before my 1946 time period begins.

I like to start with a color photo, so here is #3823 with a freight somewhere on the UP, sometime after 1944:

Note the headlight centered on the smokebox, which is the easiest way to the tell the early Challengers from the later ones, which had their headlight on the pilot.

These locos were in constant use on Cajon Pass (and therefore in Victorville) until mid-1948, when the UP first dieselized that route.   They were used as road engines on freights, as well as serving as helpers on freight and passenger trains.

Here we see #3817 helping 4-8-4 #839 with the westbound LA Limited leaving Victorville in July, 1947, as shot by Chard Walker:

Here's another great shot, this time by Stan Kistler, showing westbound #3837 on the left, meeting eastbound #3836 with a freight on the right, by the water tanks in Victorville in Nov. 1947:

Here's a nice shot by Jack Whitmeyer, showing #3839 with a westbound freight by the pump houses and water tanks in Victorville:

Here we see #3816 with an eastbound freight at Cajon station in August, 1947, thanks again to Jack Whitmeyer:

 Walt Thrall shot #3827 with an eastbound freight approaching Summit in Feb. 1947, with two steam helpers on the rear:

 

Here is #3823 with an eastbound freight coming through Summit in 1947, as shot by Malcolm Gaddis:

 

This is #3825 rounding Sullivan's Curve with an eastbound freight in March of 1947, thanks again to Malcolm Gaddis.

Here's a color photo of #3800 with a freight, somewhere on the UP:

Finally, here are #3816 and #3817 double-heading with a westbound freight coming into Summit, on their way to be loaned to the SP in June of 1948, as shot by James Ady:

 

As for HO models, I will need a number of these to cover all the UP freights and helper assignments when I'm operating in 1946 through early 1948.

I have two of the Key Imports brass models with oil tenders, painted like this one:

And I have two of the Athearn Genesis models, like this one:

 

But I don't have any of these hybrid ones from Broadway Limited:

Turning now to my slow layout progress over the last two weeks, I continued to glue down (with caulk) a few more sections of flextrack on the mainline curves in Section 6 and then on the straightaways in Section 6A, until I reached the first group of turnouts since I began.

Here's a view of the new track on the curves in Section 6, looking toward Section 6A:

 

And here's a view looking backward to the new tracks on the curve in Section 6, and in the distance, in Section 5:

This week my only addition was cutting and fitting some tracks in Section 6A, up to where the first turnout will be on each main track:

As you can see, I attached Atlas remote switch machines to the mainline turnouts in the distance, but I need to order more of those machines.  I have some Atlas Snap Relays to power the frogs on these #8 turnouts, but I'll need more.

I need to paint the cork roadbed that's off the mainlines a darker gray before I can glue down those turnouts and proceed with more trackage.  There is still a lot of mainline trackage to lay before I complete the loop around the layout, and then comes all the wiring!

Part of each week has been spent corresponding with architect Jim Coady as we try to figure out where all the doors and windows were on the Victorville boiler house, and what their dimensions were.  Here are some recent drawings from Jim, and they are getting very close to being final:

Another large chunk of time each week goes into locating and scanning and labeling and cropping all the prototype photos that I use in each of these blog entries.

That's all for now.