UP's 2-10-2 Locos in Victorville, and Starting to Wire the Outer Mainline in Staging

The selected locomotive type this time is the Union Pacific's 2-10-2s.  After looking at those, we'll look at my slow layout progress as I begin to wire the outer mainline on the staging deck.

To introduce the UP's 2-10-2s, I'll quote from Model Railroader's 2009 review of the BLI HO models: 

"Locomotives with a 2-10-2 wheel arrangement were known as class TTT (Two-Ten-Two) on the Union Pacific RR.  Between 1917 and 1924 the railroad received a total of 144 class TTT locomotives in seven subclasses.  Alco, Baldwin, and Lima built 2-10-2s for the UP.

"There were many variations between the TTT subclasses, including several different feedwater heater types, Walschaerts or Young valve gear, and different tenders.  Some were coal-fired, while others were oil-fired."

Here we see #5515 at San Bernardino in a nice shot by Jack Whitmeyer:

The locos seen running on Cajon Pass during my postwar time period included numbers in the ranges 5004-5024, 5317, and 5500-5528.  

All the UP steam locos left Cajon Pass in mid-1948, but some returned during mid-1950 to late 1951.  The locos that returned were #5004, 5006, 5008, 5014, 5023, 5317, 5515, 5518, and 5522.  All the postwar photos I found are from this 1950-51 return of steam.

Here we see #5004 waiting for helper duty beside the Victorville boiler house in Sep. 1951, thanks to Stan Kistler:

These locos were normally used as helpers on both freight and passenger trains.  Here is #5006 helping a set of PAs with an eastbound passenger train on Sullivan's Curve, as shot by Richard Steinheimer:

Frank Peterson shot #5515 helping a freight westbound out of Victorville, past Frost,  in Oct. 1950:

And here is #5515 pushing behind a westbound freight out of Victorville in Sep. 1951, as shot by Stan Kistler:

Here's a nice shot of #5006 helping E-units with the eastbound City of St. Louis at Alray in Oct. 1951, as shot by Richard Kindig:

Chard Walker shot helpers #5515 and 4-10-2 #5090 waiting at Summit:

James Ady shot #5515 helping PAs with the eastbound Utahn at Cajon in Oct. 1950:

Finally, here we see #5317 helping PAs with an eastbound passenger train at Sullivan's Curve in 1950, thanks to Stan Kistler:

And now for the HO models.  Westside made brass models like this one:

I have three of the Westside models, painted and lettered for #5006, #5023, and #5528.

Key also made a brass model, but I don't have any of these:

More recently, Broadway Limited made a brass hybrid model like this one, but mine is numbered #5509:

My final topic is the slow progress on my layout, due to having to get the house and yard fixed up before two of my sisters come to visit us in late October, and due to the start of football season.

But I did start on the big project of wiring my recently completed mainlines in staging.  I'm starting with just the outer mainline, hoping to get a train running around the complete loop before long.

It's been well over a year since I wired three stub tracks in the E Yard in the staging room, so I reviewed how I did the wiring there.  I shot this photo, showing how I ran the bus wires beside the edge of the layout (easy to reach), with the feeder wires from the rails connected to the bus wires with suitcase connectors:

As you can see, I'll need to go back and bundle and label the wires neatly later.

My goal on the mainlines is to have a pair of feeder wires (22 gauge) attached to each separate section of flextrack, and they in turn will be connected with suitcase connectors to the two bus wires (14 gauge), one for the common rail and one for the blocked rail.

So I located spots all along the outer mainline where the feeders could be attached, usually about every three feet apart, and marked them by placing red suitcase connectors beside the rails, as seen here in Section 5:

It took 84 connectors to go all the way around the outer mainline!  Then I drilled 84 holes beside the rails, leaving the connectors there so I can find the holes later.

I was anxious to see a loco run, so I soldered a pair of feeders to one spot on the outer main, connected them to two bus wires, and connected the bus wires (black and red) to a DC power pack.  I put an old Athearn F7 on the rails and was delighted to see it run back and forth along the full length of that one block in Sections 6 and 5:

In this photo, the two spools of bus wires are in the foreground, the F7 is behind them, the suitcase connectors are just under the edge of the layout beyond the F7, and from there the two bus wires run to the power pack in the distance.

I found that the rail joiners carry the current along the full length of the block without needing feeders every three feet, so I'll come back and add the extra feeders later, after I get the loco to run all the way around the outer mainline.  There are six blocks along that mainline, so I'll add one pair of feeders per block (for now) to quickly complete the powering of the outer mainline.