Santa Fe's 3765-Class 4-8-4s in Victorville & Starting to Paint Cork Sheets

Our Victorville locomotives this time are the Santa Fe's 3765-class 4-8-4s, and our layout topics will be the gluing down of more of the cork sheets for the staging yards and then starting to paint them gray.

After their first group of 4-8-4s (the 3751-class), the Santa Fe bought 11 improved 4-8-4s of the 3765 class (#3765-3775) in 1938.  These came with 20K "square" oil tenders.  During 1950-1952 most of them got new boilers with no external steam dome (all except #3765, 3769, and 3770).

One of them, #3768, was saved and is on display in Wichita, as seen here:

This next shot is from July of 1941 (before my time period), but it shows #3765 leaving Victorville through the Upper Narrows with a westbound heavyweight passenger train.  This loco was intended to be streamlined like 4-6-4 #3460, but it would have been too heavy.

Donald Duke shot #3770 with the eastbound Chief at Pine Lodge in the late 1940s:
 

Here we see #3771 with the 2nd section of the westbound California Limited near Hesperia in Dec. 1946, thanks to A.E. Brown:

Here's another photo of #3771, again near Hesperia after leaving Victorville with the westbound Scout in April, 1946, as shot by William Barham:

Donald Duke photographed #3772 with the westbound Grand Canyon coming through Victorville in the late 1940s:

Here's an often-published Santa Fe photo of #3775 descending the west side of Cajon Pass at the lower end of Cajon siding:

Jack Whitmeyer photographed #3775 with the 2nd section of the eastbound Grand Canyon by the Victorville depot in Sep. 1947:

Then Jack photographed #3775 again as it was leaving town:

It appears that these locos were last seen on Cajon Pass during 1948 and were gone by 1949.  #3775 was the only one seen during 1948, but there were others before then.

As for HO models of these locos, I have one of the Key brass models, which is based on #3768 with the new boiler, as seen here, but mine is painted as #3775:

There were also some Hallmark Super Crown models (super expensive) of various locos in the 3765 class, such as this one seen here:

Now let's look at some progress on the lower staging level of my Victorville layout.

On Monday morning two weeks ago George Chambers returned and glued down some remaining cork sheets for the staging yards.  He also cut and fit some small, odd-shaped filler pieces.  Here he is in the center of the peninsula, spreading some caulk:

 

Meanwhile, I was threading the blue and yellow bus wires through more of the Velcro straps in the helix room.  But some of the straps are coming loose, so I bought a staple gun to attach them more reliably when I find time.

The rest of that week was spent preparing the Powerpoint slides for my Northwest Santa Fe Mini-Meet clinic on Saturday, March 18.  My topic was "Modeling Postwar Victorville."  I ended up making 18 text-only slides, which went into my handout, plus 87 more slides with photos and diagrams in them.

The Mini-Meet on that Saturday went very well.  It was the first one in three years, after being shut down by the pandemic.  Bill Messecar and I passed the torch to Bill James and Colin Kikawa to run the clinic this time.  We had over 20 attendees, and everyone enjoyed the variety of clinics about the Santa Fe.

I was the final speaker of the day, and it took me about 65 minutes to go through all my slides, plus a little time for questions:

This week Don Borden made a small revision to the Reversing Tower panel drawing:

 

Now I need to line up all four mainline panels to see that they are compatible, and I need to buy some Touch Toggles to try out on one sample control panel.

I cleared all the junk off the main peninsula and got out the darker gray paint to use on the cork sheets:

 

Bill Messecar returned on Thursday morning and got to work painting the remaining cork roadbed of some C Yard tracks (as seen at the bottom of the photo above) and then began painting the cork sheets for the A and B Yard areas:

Meanwhile, I was sanding the joints between the cork sheets and cutting and fitting and gluing a few odd shapes of cork to fill in some gaps.

Bill also brought to me his scratch-built model of the elevated fuel oil tank that stood inside the Victorville wye.  He used the excellent drawings that Jim Coady had made for us.  I posed the fuel oil tank model beside some other models that Bill has built -- the Victorville depot, the sheriff's office, and the pumphouses:

 

Layout work will slow down (even more) now as I prepare for some family events next month.

Santa Fe's Passenger F7 Diesels in Victorville & Adding More Cork Sheets for Staging Yards

This time we'll look at Santa Fe's EMD passenger F7 diesels as they operated through Victorville.  Then we'll look at the design for another staging control panel (the Reversing Tower), and we'll see some more progress in laying down cork sheets to support the staging yards.

Santa Fe got their first passenger F7s, #37-41 (ABBA sets), in Sep. 1949, in the famous Warbonnet paint scheme.  A month later they got some ABB sets, #300-305.  These all had the "Phase 1 Early" body style.  In May of 1950 they got more ABB sets, #306-312, which were Phase 1 Late.

For the details on all the phases of Santa Fe's F-units, which I helped document many years ago, see Jim Fuhrman's website at: http://trainweb.org/jfuhrtrain/CF7frames/F3Phases/F2F3F5chart.html

In June of 1951 they got ABB sets #313-316 (Phase 1 Late).  Their final ABBA sets, #42-47, arrived in  Oct. 1952.  These and later units were all Phase 2.  In Nov. 1952 they renumbered 306-316 to 325-335.  In April-May of 1953 they got ABB sets 336-340, and in April 1953 they got AB sets 341-344, which were their final passenger F7s.

Here we see new F7 ABBA set #38 at the San Bernardino depot, thanks to Jack Whitmeyer:

Here is F7 ABBA set #40 coming through Summit with the westbound Super Chief (running late), as shot by Robert Hale in 1950:

Here is #40 again, running eastbound through the Lower Narrows of Victorville with the new 1956 Hi-Level El Capitan, in a Santa Fe publicity photo:

In this amazing photo from the Al Chione collection, we see an F7 ABB set trailing a 4-unit F3 set entering Summit with the Grand Canyon in an eastbound power move to Barstow, while a UP freight is heading west in Nov. 1953:

Here we see F7 ABB set #340 in a westbound power move with a freight train at Frost, just after leaving Victorville in July, 1953, as shot by Stan Kistler:

Robert Heuerman shot F7 ABBA set #46 with the eastbound El Capitan in Blue Cut in 1953:

 

Finally, Chard Walker shot F7 ABB set #301 with the eastbound Grand Canyon approaching Summit:

 

There have been lots of HO models of these famous Warbonnet F7s, in various body phases.  For example, here is a Stewart set:

And here is a Walthers Proto 2000 set:

Here is a Broadway Limited set:

And an Athearn Genesis set:

 

And an MTH set:

Now it's time for my bi-weekly layout progress report.

Most of the previous week was spent trading ideas and drawings with Tim Fisher and Don Borden for how the complex Reversing Tower panel should be laid out. 

We finally came around to having a drawing that shows the actual loops that the tracks make as they change direction at this end of the layout (in the helix room).  To fit all of this in, we had to draw the tracks closer together than the 1" spacing we used on the other panels. 

We went through a number of revisions.  At the same time, we decided to move the original locations of the gaps where the trains enter and leave the return loops. 

The reverse loop tracks consist of the inner mainline (block L2D) plus the entire F Yard that curves around inside the mainlines (three through tracks, F1-F3, and two stub tracks, F4-F5).  For the moment, this large reversing block is labeled as RL2DF on the diagram (R means Reversing, L2D is the inner mainline, and F means the F Yard).

Here is the most recent version of the CAD drawing that Don Borden has sent us:

The red/pink tracks are the reversing block.  At the left end of that area are two Reversing touch toggles, to set the loop direction to match the direction the train will take around the loop (clockwise or counter-clockwise).

 

But the crossover from track L1E to L2E needs its upper (3rd) light to move right to make room for the 3/4" square touch toggles underneath, and that means moving all the turnouts left of there farther left, which we will work on. 

Bill Messecar returned to help me with the layout on the first Thursday morning.  He cut and fitted more cork sheets to cover the yard areas, while I continued to glue down the ones he had cut.  This time he shot a photo of me in the middle of gluing a cork square:

 

On that Friday afternoon Ray Rydberg returned to help with the layout.  First we tested another dozen old locos he brought to see which ones would run (some did not).  Then he chose to attach the blue and yellow feeder wires to the bus wires using suitcase connectors. 

At the same time he inserted pushpins into the Velcro squares, as the package sealing tape was not sticking well to the wood framing boards.  He got most of the way around the layout edges, and I shot a photo of him posing beside the layout again:

Meanwhile, I was gluing down some of the larger cork sheets on the main peninsula.

My friend Bill Messecar returned again on the next Thursday morning to help me with the layout.  He cut and fit the final cork sheets for the near end of the large peninsula, and then he proceeded to glue them down with caulk, as seen in this photo:

I worked on stringing the bus wires for the inner mainline in the helix room, and I put a lot of loose passenger cars back into their boxes to get them out of the way.

Now I need to pause my work on the layout (except for when helpers visit me) to prepare a slide presentation for the local Santa Fe Mini-Meet on March 18.  The topic will be the concept and design of my Victorville layout.