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.