Short Line Locos Near Victorville & Progress with Control Panels, Trackwork, and the Lime Rock Plant

We've run out of Santa Fe and Union Pacific locos to cover here, so this time we'll look at the short line locos that were running in or near Victorville.  We'll also take a look at some layout progress with control panel designs, trackwork in the F yard, and the modeling of the Lime Rock Plant.

There were two short lines running out of Victorville, the first being the Mojave Northern Railroad operated by the Southwestern Portland Cement Plant.  They had three 0-6-0T steam locos operating in the postwar years, numbers 1, 2, and 3.  They were still in use in 1958 or a bit later.  

Their job was the push a string of empty rock cars from the cement plant up to the limestone quarries in the hills, then bring them back down loaded and push them up onto the unloading trestle behind the plant.

Here we see MN #3 with some loaded rock cars in action in Dec. 1958, during a railfan event:

Here are MN #1, #2, and #3 at the engine house in the cement plant in Aug. 1957:

Here we see MN #1 with some rock cars up on the unloading trestle in Dec. 1958:

Despite seeing the old rock cars used in the 1958 railfan visits, the locos normally pulled regular hoppers in the later 1950s, and they were unloaded at ground level behind the trestle.  Here we see MN #1 again, but with some hoppers, in Dec. 1958:

Starting in about 1947, the three steam locos were supplemented with a pair of GE 70-ton diesels, #5 and #6, as seen here in this Richard Steinheimer photo

Here's a Dec.1948 photo of #5, also named "Leonardt," with #6 "Merrill" behind it:

Here are MN #5 and #6 in the later green paint scheme, as seen in the previous Steinheirmer photo:

Now let's turn to the other short line in the Victorville area, the George Air Force Base branch line (the Santa Fe's Adelanto Spur) that left the Santa Fe mainline in the Lower Narrows and climbed up to the air base on a plateau.

Photos of the diesel locos assigned to the air base are hard to find, but they came into Victorville once in a while to turn on the wye, as all the curves in the base were in the same direction, and they needed to even out the wear on the flanges.

For example, here's a shot of US Army GE 45-ton diesel #8566 at the Victorville depot in 1947 (before the US Air Force was formed):

Here we see USAF GE 80-ton diesel #1689, possibly at George AFB in 1953:

Here's the same USAF loco, being transported on a flatcar years later:

 

As for HO models of these short line locos, there are no ready-made models of the Mojave Northern 0-6-0Ts, but I was lucky to buy one kit-bashed by a modeler, Tom Coletti, as seen here in my staging yard:

For the GE 70-Ton diesels on the Mojave Northern, I will get two Hallmark brass locos painted in the earlier MN scheme.  Here's a Hallmark model:

Or, I could use two of the undecorated Bachmann Spectrum 70-Tonners:

For the US Army 45-Ton switcher, I plan to use this similar Bachmann Spectrum 44-ton model:

Bachmann Spectrum also made a 45-tonner, but it has side rods, unlike the one seen in Victorville:

I haven't yet found a model to use for the USAF 80-Ton diesel.

Now let's turn to my layout progress for the last two weeks.

Craig Wisch in Victorville made some progress on his model of the main building of the Lime Rock plant.  Here's a recent view of the track side of the model:

 And here's his photo of the street side of the model:

As you can see, he's a wizard with cardstock modeling, and I'm so thankful for his help!

We've been discussing how to model the various vents and ducts on the rooftop, and Craig has now volunteered to build the two storage tanks that were on the east side of the building.

Here's a helpful early photo that shows the east side of the plant, as sent to us by Wayne Lawson.  We refer to this often as we discuss the roof details and the two storage tanks:

Craig is also getting more and more interested in the history of Victorville, and he's been visiting the various libraries and historical museums there.  I recently copied for him sections of the 1943 Sanborn Maps of downtown Victorville, and he appreciated seeing those.

Meanwhile, I had some discussions with Tim Fisher and Don Borden about cleaning up our tower panel drawings by removing the unneeded words "Block" and "Track" that were beside each block and track label.  

We also began discussing the need to label each turnout on the panel, and we considered various ideas, such as odd turnout numbers on Track L1, even numbers on Track L2, and letters for turnouts that are not on the mainlines.  These short turnout labels would be made unique across the layout by adding a one-letter prefix from the first letter of the panel name (for C Tower, the turnouts would be C1, C2, CA, CB, etc.). 

Here is Don Borden's latest drawing for the C Tower panel, which we are very happy with.  Note the small red rectangles he has added around each pair of turnout buttons, along with the turnout number or letter:

We also have to consider the labels of turnouts within the various Yard panels, so I decided to start drawing the C Yard panel to see what it might look like.  Right away, I realized that I'll need two panels to cover all those tracks and turnouts, as that yard is spread out over a long distance, as shown in the red ink on this part of the staging trackplan:

 

In the past two weeks, I've exchanged drawings with Don Borden and Tim Fisher, and Don has completed what we think is a near-final drawing for the Left C Yard panel. Sets of diesel locos will be stored on Tracks C4 through C9, with on-off buttons for the sub-blocks (up to 36" long) within each track:

Track C4 is long and can hold three diesel sets, and so it has three on-off sections within it.  Tracks C5, C6, and C7 can each store two diesel sets.  Tracks C8 and C9 can store one each.  Track C10 is the yard ladder and has its own on-off button at the bottom.

The panel for the Right C Yard looks quite different:

The lower tracks here are controlled from the main C Tower panel, but tracks C1, C2, and C3 are controlled from this panel.  Tracks C4 and C10 run off to the Left Yard Panel and are controlled from there.  Most of the C Yard is for storing four-unit diesel sets between runs.

Two 32"-long four-unit diesels can be stored on each of C2 and C3, and the on-off buttons for power to each track section are just below the track lines on the drawing.  Track C1 is for locos moving through the area, and so it is always live and has no on-off buttons.

The DC cab assignment for this entire yard is controlled from the C Tower panel, not this local yard panel.  Many thanks to Don Borden for working so patiently on all of these panel drawings!

There are three other main Tower panels to revisit, plus all of their connected yard panels still to be drawn, but the C Tower and its C Yard have been good examples to work on first.

Now let's look at some F Yard construction.  I worked on cutting and fitting some short track pieces to connect the final two turnouts into the F Yard ladder track, and then I shot this photo of the row of turnouts, which are on the left of the yard from this viewpoint:

Then on Thursday morning of this week Bill Messecar arrived to help lay down more flextracks along Tracks F4 and F5, including soldering the rail joiners on the curves.  Here's a photo of Bill in action, laying some caulk down for the next section of Track F5:

 

The F Yard tracks all have radii less than the 36" of the inner mainline, going down to the 27" radius of Track F5, so those tracks may best be used for storing freight trains, with or without locos attached.

Meanwhile, I worked on the other side of the yard, cutting and fitting flextrack sections to meet up with the ladder turnouts for some of the F Yard tracks, as seen here:

Bill also packed up the various buildings he had built for the Victorville section houses scene and took them home, along with the paper map of the area, so that he can begin to place them into a diorama with ground cover, trees, and fences, as shown in the old photos.

Well, we're just a week away from Christmas, and I have a lot to do, so I'll be taking some time off from these reports to just relax until we get into the new year.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all,

John

Santa Fe's Rare Steam Locos in Victorville & Lime Rock Progress & Trackwork Helpers

I've been running out of locomotive types to cover here, so this time I'll discuss some Santa Fe steam locos that only made rare appearances in postwar Victorville.  Then we'll look at a little more layout progress during the holiday season.

Let's begin with Santa Fe 4-4-2 #1468, which was seen on the San Bernardino Local as late as 1946, and it also may have helped some passenger trains to Summit and on to Victorville at that time.

Here we see #1468 with the San Bernardino Local after arriving in San Bernardino circa 1946, thanks to Gerald M. Best:

And here we see it helping 4-8-4 #3768 with the eastbound Chief around Sullivan's Curve in an undated photo by Herb Sullivan himself:

Our next rare steam loco is Santa Fe's big 2-10-4 #5025, which came west through Victorville to participate in the AAR rail stress tests at Cajon in Nov. 1947.  Here we see it in action on the curve at Cajon, thanks to a Santa Fe photo:

Here's a rare photo of #5025 at San Bernardino in the same time period:

Another rare Cajon Pass loco was Santa Fe 2-8-2 #1798, which was sometimes seen as a helper.  Chard Walker got a good color shot of it in Victorville in the late 1940s:

In circa 1946 Fletcher Swan photographed it helping a diesel passenger train eastbound at Cajon station:

Jack Whitmeyer got a shot of it in San Bernardino (note the long, low tender):

Later, in July 1949, Gerald M. Best photographed it in Los Angeles:

The 2-6-2 locos were extremely rare in the Cajon Pass area, but #1804 must have come west to San Bernardino at some point, as it was seen in the deadline at San Bernardino in Oct. 1949, thanks to Jack Whitmeyer:

Santa Fe 2-10-2s #3013 and #3014 were sometimes seen in the postwar years.  James Ady got a nice shot of #3013 and 4-8-2 #3723 shoving on the rear of an eastbound freight at Devore in Aug. 1947:

 Tom Baxter photographed #3014 at San Bernardino in Nov. 1948:

Santa Fe's 2-6-2 #1010 came west through Victorville in Dec. 1954 to serve in a recreation of Death Valley Scotty's famous run for a TV special.  The filming took place in Jan. 1955, between San Bernardino and Summit and back.

Jack Whitmeyer shot the short passenger train as it left San Bernardino:

Here's the official Santa Fe photo as it headed eastbound through Blue Cut:

Jack Whitmeyer then photographed the train as it climbed through a cut above Cajon on the way to Summit:

Later it was seen stored in the area of the San Bernardino roundhouse:

I see that the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento is hoping to restore it now:

https://www.californiarailroad.museum/get-involved/at-sf-1010-restoration

Now we'll sample some HO brass locos of these rare locos.

Here's a Key brass model of #1468 (in the 1452 Class):

 Here's a PFM United brass model of #5026 (in the 5011 Class):

And a Hallmark Super Crown model of #5025:

I don't know of a brass model of #1798, but I got a model from eBay, which I think has a scratch-built tender:

I see that Westside made a brass model of this type of tender:

Balboa made a brass model of the 1800 Class 2-6-2s:

Westside made a brass model of #3013 (of the 3010 Class).  Here's the engine:

And here's the tender:

Finally, Key made a brass model of #1010 (of the 1000 Class):

Now let's look at whatever layout progress I've made in the last two weeks.

With the holiday season here, and all the football games, and no visitors to my layout until Nov. 30, I didn't get much done until recently.

My only work that previous week was some graphic design work -- corresponding with Don Borden and Tim Fisher about how best to represent all the blocks and gaps and panels on our straight-line diagram of the mainlines and the related yards on the staging level.  We are almost done tinkering with this now.

Here is the latest and greatest version of the straight-line diagram by Don Borden yesterday, showing first the left half of the diagram:

Note that we now have vertical dashed lines to show the boundaries between the four mainline control panels.  Here is the right half of the same diagram:

This straight-line diagram will be an excellent reference point for making the final drawings of the four main control panels, which is our next job.

My amazing helper in Victorville, Craig Wisch, has been doing a little more work on his cardstock model of the main building of the Victorville Lime Rock Company plant.  Here's his latest photo of the street side of the building (along with some of his humor):

 

 

And here is our first view of the track side of his model of this main building:

 

You might be interested to hear that there was an ancient HO kit by Tru-Scale that featured a drawing of the Lime Rock plant on the cover, as an example of something you might want to build with the box full of corrugated aluminum sheets.  The Lime Rock plant was in the center of the box cover:

 

It was Chard Walker who told me about this kit years ago.  It comes up on eBay now and then, but it always sells for more than I want to pay.

 

I had two helpers arrive here on Thursday morning of this week -- Bill Messecar and George Chambers.  To prepare for them, I worked the day before on cutting and fitting short track sections between the first four turnouts in the ladder at the right end of the F Yard.  

 

The results look like this, but the tracks are not yet glued down, and the missing ties have not yet been added:

 

I still need to add two more turnouts to the ladder, along with their short connecting tracks, before we can connect the F Yard tracks into this ladder.  So when Bill and George arrived, they worked instead from the other end of the F Yard, where the two stub-ended tracks F4 and F5 could be glued down with caulk.

Here is Bill Messecar, about to glue down the next track section along the curve in Track F4:

Meanwhile, I asked George Chambers to make a dozen or more bus wire labels out of masking tape (which I still need to mark and attach to the bus wires):

 

 Here is Bill again, working on the curve in Track F4:

 

Then George began working beside Bill, laying down part of the parallel Track F5:

 

When Bill had arrived earlier, he had brought along two more completed models he'd built for the Victorville section houses scene -- the 2nd steel water tank (from a kit) and a third pump house, which he scratch-built to match his other two.  We placed them onto the map of the area:

 

 Here's a view of the section houses scene from another angle:

 

On his next visit he will take home the entire scene to create a diorama on a board, with ground scenery and a fence around one of the section houses.  He wants me to get back to working with Jim Coady now to complete the Victorville boiler house drawings, and then to create drawings of the adjacent sand house.

 

I also worked with Don Borden on improving one of the control panels -- the one for C Tower -- but I'll save that for next time.  I expect that my progress will slow down again now, due to holiday activities.