UP's F3 & F7 Diesels in Victorville & More Staging Trackwork in the F Yard

This time our featured locomotives will be the Union Pacific's EMD F3 and F7 diesels.  Then we'll look at some progress on the mainline control panels and the staging tracks in the F Yard.

The story of UP's acquisition of their first F-units (which was relatively late compared to the Santa Fe) is complex, with multiple deliveries of F3s, both passenger and freight, and then freight F7s, and with multiple renumberings and reassignments and rebuildings. 

They began getting freight F3s in the 1400-series in May of 1947, delivered as A-B-B-A sets.  Let's look at some photos of these on Cajon Pass and nearby.

Here's a set of freight F3s, led by #1404, with an eastbound freight at Alray in March of 1948, as shot by Tom Hotchkiss:

Stan Kistler shot a set of F3s, led by #1407A, with a westbound freight at Frost, just after leaving Victorville, in Nov. 1947:

Here we see a westbound freight in Blue Cut, led by #1410, as shot by Don Sims in 1950:

In Jan. 1948 Stan Kistler shot a set of freight F3s led by #1406A in Los Angeles.  It appears to be borrowing the Santa Fe's steam heater car:

The UP's first passenger F3s, numbered (and renumbered) in the 900-series, were delivered in Sep-Oct. 1947, as A-B-B sets, for the UP's secondary passenger trains. 

Here we see passenger F3 set led by #967A with the westbound Pony Express at Mission Tower, LA, in Jan. 1948, thanks to Jack Woods:

Donald Duke got a nice shot of F3 #964A and two B-units with the eastbound Utahn near Alray:

Here's a another beautiful shot by Donald Duke, showing the eastbound LA Limited at Pine Lodge, behind an F3 set led by #964A again:

Here is F3 #964A yet again, with the westbound Utahn at San Bernardino in March of 1948, thanks to Fred Hust:

In March-April of 1948 the passenger F3s, which were initially numbered 964A-968A, were renumbered to 900-904.

Here we see an F3 set just renumbered to #900 (from #964A) at Montebello, CA,with the eastbound Utahn in March, 1948, as shot by Donald Duke:

Don Strack writes that in 1950 the UP reassigned their F3s, both freight and passenger, to the Northwest District, and they were replaced here by Alco FA-FB sets.

In Oct. 1951 to April 1952, the UP acquired their first freight F7 sets, #1464-1480, and later they added #1481-1483.  There is a photo of #1477 near Alray in 1953, but it's too far back in the consist to see well.  Instead, here's a photo of #1481 at an unknown location in Dec. 1953, from the Don Ball collection:

I'm not sure what HO models I have of the UP F3s and F7s, as they are packed away, but here are some I found on the Web.

Stewart made a freight F3 set with no numbers printed on them:

Broadway Limited made a nice freight F3 set:

And so did Athearn Genesis:

And so did MTH:

The only F3 passenger set I could find was from Broadway Limited:

Stewart made a freight F7 set, again with no numbers:

Here is the Walthers Proto F7 set:

And the Broadway Limited F7 set:

 

Now let's turn to whatever progress I made on my layout in the past two weeks.

Most of the previous week was spent studying the four mainline control panel drawings, marking some suggested changes in red ink, and sending the mark-ups and notes to Don Borden for his consideration.  Don often replied with questions of his own, and Tim Fisher also joined into the discussions with many helpful suggestions.

Here's a photo showing my latest red ink mark-ups to the four panels:

During the discussions, I also outlined what I think are the standards that we've been using when laying out the control panels:

1. Track names go above the track lines, and block names go below the lines, and block names are in a larger font than track names.

2. Mainline tracks and their crossovers are drawn thicker than non-mainline tracks.

3. Block gaps in crossovers should be halfway along the crossover line.

4. There are 4 Tower panels (plus the Helix Tower to be drawn later), and the rest will be Yard Panels (which we haven't drawn yet).  Cab controls and turnout controls go on the Tower Panels, but only turnout controls will go on the Yard Panels (for turnouts that are not easy to reach by hand).

5. At the left and right edges of a Tower Panel, there will be arrows to adjacent Tower Panels and sometimes to Yard Panels as needed.

6. The block and track names should match on adjacent Tower Panels.

7. The Tower drawings should show the tracks as accurately as possible, so an operator can easily figure out which tracks on the layout are represented by which lines on the panel drawings.

8. The spacing of block selection buttons and turnout buttons should match the sizes of the relevant Touch Toggle lights.

Besides the email discussions with Don and Tim, I got some follow-up emails from Otto Kroutil after his visit to my layout two weeks ago.  He has some suggestions for my layout, and so far I've agreed to one of them -- that I should only have two mainline tracks in my helix, and I should drop the idea of having an extra two tracks just for storing trains in a four-track helix.

 

Then I began working on adding another flextrack to each of the through F Yard tracks: F1, F2, and F3.  Bill Messecar and I had laid some flextracks up to the far end of the staging room, and I've now added another flextrack to each of these where they curve around the far end of the room.   

I had to crawl into the center pop-up area to work on these tracks.  Here's the result, after the bottles and pushpins had been removed and some loose ties had been filed down and slipped under the soldered rail joiners:

 

 

Meanwhile, back in Victorville, Craig Wisch got interested in modeling the trackside feed store that was partly destroyed by fire back on May 10 (here's a newspaper photo):

Back in my time period, this was the Peterson Feed Store, and it's a building that I plan to have on my layout.  I sent Craig an old high school yearbook photo showing the store in the late 1940s, and he talked to a local old-timer who recalled the store front as always being red, so Craig colorized the old photo to look like this:

 

 

This week I put the control panel drawings on the back burner (Don Borden wants another round of new mark-ups) and spent time getting ready for helpers to arrive on Wednesday and Thursday.

The job I wanted to work on when George Chambers returned on Wednesday morning was to repair all the Velcro straps that wrap around the bus wires along the edges of layout, as they had all gradually come loose from the benchwork and were hanging down, as seen here:

 

The problem was that the package-sealing tape did not stick to the wood for very long, even with push-pins inserted.  When Otto Kroutil was here, he suggested getting much stronger double-sided tape to use instead, so I bought a roll of Double-Sided Gorilla Tape at a local store.

When George Chambers arrived, we got to work trying to apply the Gorilla Tape, as seen here (the tape is the blue roll near the tracks):

 

But we found it too difficult to get the blue covering off the tape.  George then suggested that we use the tape as single-sided instead, and simply tape the top part of each Velcro strap to the inside of the benchwork, and that worked great (if it holds).  

Instead of George on his knees, I was the one who spent the morning on my knees, taping the Velcro straps about 12" apart, while George prepared the next strap and cut the tape to length for me.  We were able to finish 60 of the straps all the way around the main part of the layout, with the staging room straps still to be done.

Here's a shot from under the layout (near the bookcases), showing some of the blue tape sections holding the Velcro straps, which wrap around the bus wires.  Also visible are some feeder wires running to red suitcase connectors on the bus wires:

 

So, that was a very productive morning with George.  Then I had to get ready for Bill Messecar to arrive on Thursday morning, when he would solder feeder wires to the new F1-F2-F3 Tracks in staging.  

Here's a shot of me inside the central pop-up there, cutting and stripping and inserting another feeder wire into the new holes I drilled (one of about 30):

 

When Bill arrived, he got right to work with the soldering iron, attaching the new feeder wires to each section of track, as seen here:

 

 

Bill also brought along a new structure model he had scratch-built for his diorama of the Victorville section house area.  It's the small "Mystery Shed" (probably a tool shed, not listed in the building records but visible in the old photos), which you can see on the right-hand edge of the diorama paper:

 

Then I took Bill to lunch, where we had another interesting and fun conversation.

From then through the weekend, I've been locating and scanning and downloading photos to use in my blog entry tonight.  I think my hobby of writing my blog takes about as much time as working on the layout, but it does keep me motivated to make progress on the layout.

The other day I realized that I should focus more of my efforts on getting the inner mainline wired up and connected to a 2nd power pack, so that I can finally have fun just running two trains in opposite directions around the layout (a main objective of mine).

If you'd like to help with any of this, please let me know.

 

Santa Fe's 2900-Class 4-8-4s in Victorville & Adding Staging Tracks in the F Yard

This time we'll cover some of Santa Fe's finest steam locos, their 2900-class 4-8-4s.  Then we'll look at some layout progress in adding staging tracks to the F Yard.

During 1943-44 the Santa Fe acquired 30 more 4-8-4 steam locos and numbered them 2900-2929.  They were very similar to the previous 3776-class locos, but they were heavier due to the use of wartime steel (so they were the heaviest 4-8-4s ever built).

In the postwar years they normally pulled the extra sections of the secondary passenger trains.  The final appearance of one of them on Cajon Pass was on Aug. 1, 1953. 

Chard Walker photographed #2928 leading an eastbound diesel-powered passenger train in Victorville in the postwar years:

Here we see #2915 with the westbound Grand Canyon on the Frost Flyover after leaving Victorville in the early 1950s, thanks to Robert Hale:

Jack Whitmeyer photographed #2929 with an eastbound passenger train at San Bernardino in the postwar years:

Here we see #2903 with the 3rd section of the westbound Grand Canyon climbing through Hesperia in Dec. 1952, thanks to James Ady:

Chard Walker shot #2929 (his favorite loco) with an eastbound passenger train at Summit in the postwar years:
 

Here we see #2929 and #2928 leaving Summit with a westbound passenger train, thanks again to Chard Walker:

Here is #2924 with a westbound passenger train climbing from Lugo to Summit in 1950, as shot by James Ady:

Here we see #2929 about to help an eastbound passenger train out of San Bernardino, thanks to Chard Walker:

Chard Walker also shot #2911 with an eastbound passenger train climbing toward Sullivan's Curve:

James Ady photographed #2907 and #2906 with a westbound Shriner Special descending at Cajon in June, 1950:

Finally, here's a great shot by Chard Walker showing #2921 and #2928 with an eastbound passenger train climbing around Sullivan's Curve in the postwar years:

The only HO models of these locos that I know of are both brass, although we keep hoping for a styrene model (the Bachmann model is a 3776, similar to a 2900).

First there was the Westside "Fleetwood" boxed set of "Santa Fe's Big Three," which included a brass model of a 2900 (it's the bottom loco in this photo):

I have this set, which is currently away getting painted.  Here's an example of a painted Westside 2900:

Later there was a Hallmark Super Crown model of a 2900, which I don't have:

Now it's time for another layout progress report.

Two weeks ago I drilled holes for feeder wires along the new Track E4 (which leads to the cassette loading area) and prepared and inserted the feeders, and when Bill Messecar returned on that Tuesday morning, he soldered all the wires to the rails along Track E4, as seen here:

Meanwhile, I was adding rail joiners to the nearby F Yard turnouts and starting to cut and fit short sections of track to connect them, as seen here:

Later in the week I completed connecting the three turnouts in the F Yard ladder together, as seen here:

Meanwhile, the package of Touch Toggles and related electrical hardware for the C Tower panel arrived from Kevin Hunter at Berrett Hill Shop, and I spread them out on part of the layout to inventory them:

 

Kevin wrote to say that he added a new feature to the yellow on-off cab selector buttons, so that we no longer need a separate button to turn a block off, and we can have just three buttons in a row on the panel instead of four, to select among three cabs.  

 

Don Borden then proceeded to redraw the C Tower panel with rows of just three buttons, which make the panel less crowded, as seen here:

On Saturday a week ago I attended a half-day operating session and lunch at Bill Messecar's Santa Fe layout.  My friend Don Hubbard was there and posed with his completed model of the Texaco service station that was in the Lower Narrows:

 

Here's another photo of Don during the op session, with me and Colin Kikawa in the background:

While I was there, Bill Messecar passed along to me his completed model of the first of the two tall, black steel water tanks that stood in Victorville by the section houses, so I later placed the tank in its location on the diorama map, and I placed the Texaco model from Don Hubbard beside it for a photo:

Meanwhile, I traded more emails with Don Borden as I tried to figure out which printer settings here would make his panel drawings come out to exactly the right size and spacing for the Touch Toggles.  

I think we've got it figured out, but I still need to mark up the latest panel drawings with the final changes to some tracks and labels (Don has been waiting patiently for me to do that).

I asked Don Borden to send along a photo of himself, and this is what he sent me, posing beside a small section of his large HO Cajon Pass layout:

 

Last Monday I used caulk to glue down the ladder tracks that lead into one end of the F Yard.  When Bill Messecar arrived here on Tuesday morning, we got to work laying down seven flextracks to form the first parts of Tracks F1, F2, and F3, up to where they curve around at the end of the room.  

 

Bill did the soldering of the rail joiners between the tracks, before we glued them down and anchored them with pushpins and water bottles.  Here's my photo of Bill after the three new tracks were weighted down:

And here's his photo of me, looking in the opposite direction:

After the weights were removed the next day, I found that we didn't have smooth lines coming out of the turnouts into Tracks F2 and F3, so I loosened parts of those tracks and re-glued them.  Here's the final result for the F Yard so far:

My friend Craig Wisch in Victorville is still working on how to model the poles that stick out near the tops of the walls of the control house at the switching station.  Here's his close up of what the actual poles look like (about 3' long and 1' in diameter):

 

Later in the week I got word from a fellow Cajon Pass modeler, Otto Kroutil from So. Cal., that he was visiting a relative in the area and would be able to visit me for the first time on Sunday afternoon.  So that was a good excuse to clean up some of the layout room and the tracks, so I could run a train partway around for him.

I had a great time talking with Otto today for over two and half hours about my layout and his layout and what we've been working on.  Here's a photo of us together beside my layout:

 

 

Tonight Otto sent me a photo he had shot today, with me posing by my layout and my bookcases of railroad books:

That's all for this time.  Let me know if you can help, either in person or remotely.