SP's Locos in Victorville, and Laying Mainline Tracks in the Staging Room

I'm back from a vacation trip and ready for another blog entry now.  This time I'll cover the unusual subject of Southern Pacific locos detouring through Victorville, and then I'll show some mainline track progress in my layout's staging room.

On rare occasions (but worth modeling) the SP had to reroute trains through Victorville and over Cajon Pass, due to washouts at various locations along their routes.  Chard Walker covers some of these events in 1951, 1952, and 1953 in Chapter 13 of his book "Railroading through Cajon Pass."

There was also an occasion in Nov. 1947 when the SP tested their GS-4 4-8-4 #4455 as part of the AAR rail stress tests at the curve at Cajon, as seen here:

This loco would not have come through Victorville to get to Cajon, but in 1952 some GS-4s did pull passenger trains through the town (see below).

On Aug. 29, 1951, SP E8 diesel #6018 led the Golden State westbound through Victorville and Cajon Pass, as  shot at Summit by Chard Walker:

On the same day, SP E7 #6001 led the eastbound Golden State over Cajon Pass, and unknown SP locos pulled the detouring Sunset Limited in both directions.

On Jan. 16, 1952, four more SP passenger trains were detoured over Cajon Pass, including the westbound West Coast, pulled by cab-forward 4-8-8-2 #4268, as shot at Summit by Chard Walker (a masterpiece):

 

On the same day, cab-forward #4229 helped GS-4 #4457 with the westbound Lark, and cab forward #4247 helped GS-4 #4455 with the westbound Starlight.  We have no photos of these pairings, but here's GS-4 #4449 when it ran east up Cajon Pass on May 8, 1989, during its side-by-side run with UP 4-8-4 #8444, as shot by Craig Walker:

One more SP detour on Jan. 16, 1952, was the westbound Owl behind passenger F7 #6239.

There were even more SP detours of both passenger and freight trains over Cajon Pass during Feb. 17-18-19 of 1953, but those were all pulled by SP diesels.  The passenger trains now needed a Santa Fe pilot engine for the Automatic Train Stop system then in effect.

For example, here we see Santa Fe 4-8-4 #3759 as the pilot engine for SP's eastbound Golden State behind E7 #6003 at San Bernardino, as shot by Jack Whitmeyer on Feb. 17, 1953:

I'll just summarize the other 11 trains that ran through Victorville during those three days of detours in 1953.  The SP passenger trains were usually pulled by E7s, plus one E8 and one F7.  The Santa Fe pilot locos were passenger F3s (AB sets) and 3751-class 4-8-4s.  

The SP freight trains were pulled by Black Widow F3s and F7s and didn't need pilot engines, but two of them did need Santa Fe helpers (a GP7 and a freight F7).

As an illustration, here's SP F7 #6157 set in Black Widow paint in Humphreys, CA, which looks a bit like Victorville in this view, as shot by Dick Kuelbs in Jan. 1956:

And here's SP passenger F7 set #6190 in Arizona:
 

So, there are excuses to have some fun by detouring SP trains through Victorville now and then.  Accordingly, I've collected many HO models of SP locos and passenger cars over the years, some of which didn't detour over Cajon Pass, as far as we know, but maybe they could have.

For example, I have a Key brass GS-4 4-8-4, like this one:

And I have an Intermountain AC-12 cab-forward, like this one:

 

And I have Proto 2000 models of SP E7s:

And a full set of Proto 2000 F7s in Black Widow paint:

I even have a Broadway Limited E7 set in the 1947-49 Golden State paint scheme, for unauthorized detours through Victorville:

I won't bother showing any other SP models I have, such as PAs and GP7s, but I do like the SP.

 A couple of weeks ago I made some progress in laying more mainline tracks in the staging room, extending past the tangle of turnouts that had slowed me down the previous week. 

The first nine feet of tracks were mostly on a straightaway, so that was fairly easy to do.  Here we see the mainlines leaving the turnouts and running straight through Section 9 and starting to curve in Section 10:

 

The side tracks on the darker gray roadbed on the left have been there for well over a year.

 

Here's a view of the mainline curves as they enter Section 10, with the three E Yard side tracks ending at the left:

Then I attached the next two flextracks, which continued into the curves in Section 10, and soldered the rail joiners before curving the tracks.  I glued them down around the curves and shot another photo.  The tracks now extend halfway around the big 180 degree curves in Section 10, where they meet the end wall of the staging room:

 

 

The next step is simply to continue laying more flextracks around this curve and then back toward the other end of the staging room.

 

 

 

UP's 4-8-4 Locos in Victorville, and Laying a Tangle of Turnouts in Staging

This time we'll take a look at UP's 4-8-4 steam locos while they were running through Victorville in 1946-1948.  Then we'll look at my slow layout progress as I encountered a whole tangle of mainline turnouts in Section 8 of the staging deck.

The Union Pacific had three classes of 4-8-4 Northern-type steam locos: the FEF-1 class was built in 1937 (#800-819); the FEF-2 class was built in 1939 (#820-834); and the FEF-3 class was built in 1944 (#835-844).  They were all converted to burn oil before they appeared on Cajon Pass and in Victorville starting in March, 1946. 

They were normally assigned to pull the secondary, heavyweight passenger trains, and they sometimes needed helpers, usually UP 4-8-2s.

Here we see FEF-1 #813 in Nebraska in March, 1950 (after leaving California), thanks to Jack Pfeiffer:

But the FEF-1 locos were rarely seen on Cajon Pass, judging from the lack of photos.  Here is one AAR photo showing #814 during the rail stress tests at Cajon in Nov. 1947:

Note the two-tone gray paint scheme on the above locos.  But when the UP 4-8-4s first arrived in March of 1946, they were all still black.  Starting in May, a few got two-tone gray with silver stripes and lettering, and starting in December, most or all of them gradually got two-tone gray with yellow stripes and lettering.  

They left Cajon Pass in July of 1948, except for rare appearances in 1949 and maybe 1950, and they did not return during the UP's 1950-1951 one-year return to steam.

Let's look at some FEF-2 photos now.   Here we see #820 with the westbound LA Limited at Cajon station in Sep. 1946, thanks to H.L. Kelso:

 

Here's a nice shot of #821 with Train 43 at the San Bernardino depot in late 1946, as seen by James N. Spencer:

 
Here comes #830 with an eastbound train, climbing toward Sullivan's Curve in Sep. 1947, thanks to Robert F. Collins:

The 4-8-4s were sometimes seen with a helper, usually a 4-8-2.  Here #2711, a 2-8-2 helper from Victorville, has cut off from the front of #831 on the westbound LA Limited at Summit in May, 1947, as seen by Walt Thrall:

 

Turning now to the FEF-3 class, these locos looked different, as they had their "wind wings" (smoke lifters) added in 1946, while the earlier classes didn't get any until 1950.  All the classes got a Mars light by May of 1947.

Here is #836 climbing westbound from Victorville through Frost with the short-lived Transcon in June of 1946:

 

Here is #840 with the westbound Transcon at San Bernardino in the summer of 1946:

 

The westbound Transcon behind #835 was in a deadly wreck in the Lower Narrows of Victorville on Sep. 26, 1946, as seen here:

Here's a beautiful action shot of #843 with the 2nd section of the eastbound Utahn at Pine Lodge in Feb. 1949 (a rare appearance after July, 1948), thanks to James Ady:

 

Here's the final loco in the FEF-3 class, #844, during the rail stress tests at Cajon in Nov. 1947:

Let's look at some of the many HO models of UP 4-8-4s now.  I don't have an FEF-1 (they were rarely seen on Cajon), but PFM made a model:

Overland Models also made an FEF-1:

I do have a Westside brass FEF-2, but it isn't painted yet, and I think it should be painted black, as I don't have a black UP 4-8-4 yet, like this one:

I have an Athearn Genesis FEF-2 in two-tone gray with yellow trim, as seen here:

Westside also made a brass FEF-2:

 Key also made a brass FEF-2:

I have two Athearn Genesis FEF-3 models, both in two-tone gray, one with silver trim and one with yellow trim.  For example, here's one with yellow trim:

Broadway Limited also made the FEF-3 locos, such as this one:

And Rivarossi made an FEF-3 long ago:

I'll skip the many brass FEF-3 models, which I don't have.

My layout progress slowed down a lot when I got to the tangle of turnouts on the mainlines as they approached the end of Section 8 and the start of Section 9 in staging.  First I had to finish painting the edges of the cork roadbed for the sidings, as some of the turnouts sit partly on those areas.

I had to cut and fit some short pieces of track to connect some of the turnouts together.  Here's a "before" view with some of the turnouts in place but not yet connected:

Note the three turnouts at the left end, where two of the Atlas switch machines wanted to occupy the same space, so I've moved the upper one to the other side of its throw-bar, where it will be glued to its roadbed pad there.

After I cut and fit the two one-inch track pieces to fill the gaps seen above, the trackage looked like this, as seen from the other side of the benchwork:

I used a felt-tip pen to mark where each rail should be cut, and I used a push-pin to open each rail joiner a bit and to push the joiner onto the rail, which worked very well.

Then I propped this whole assembly partly into the air and spread some caulk onto the roadbed, except where the moving parts of the turnouts would be.  I laid the tracks down into the caulk, pinned them in place with push-pins, slid loose ties under the rail joiners, and added weights (food cans) until the caulk dried.

Now I had to cut and fit three more pieces of flextrack to close the gaps between these turnouts and the next ones along the mainlines in Section 9.  Then these tracks were laid down into new caulk, the alignments were checked, loose ties were added, and weights were added again until dry.

I also cut and fit and painted some inverted cork roadbed pieces to slide under the switch machines to support them.

Here's the current state of these tracks, looking from Section 8 toward the next section (Section 9) in the staging room:

And here's a view from the opposite direction, looking back towards Section 8:

Now that I'm past that tangle of turnouts, it should be clear sailing around the mainline loops in the staging room.  But it may be three weeks before my next blog entry, due to some vacation time coming up.