Santa Fe's 4-6-2s in Victorville & A Steam Train Ride & More Staging Tracks

As I said last time, we're getting down to the locos only rarely seen in Victorville in the postwar decade.  This time we'll cover some of the Santa Fe's 4-6-2 steam locos, which normally ran in the flatlands, not on the mountains passes.

Then we'll look at a bit more progress on my layout (like receiving the Peterson Feed Store model and laying more staging tracks in the F Yard) and a steam train ride I got to take a week ago.

The story of Santa Fe's 4-6-2 locos is long and complex, but I'll just focus on a few main classes that were seen (or could have been seen) on postwar Cajon Pass.

The 41 locos in the 1226 Class (#1226-1266) were built during 1905-1906, and a few of them were seen on Cajon Pass (and therefore in Victorville) during 1946-1949.

Here we see #1226 pulling the eastbound First District Local freight in Cajon Pass (bound for the Victorville area) in June, 1946, thanks to R.H. Kindig:

In this next photo, #1246 is helping a 4-8-4 with an eastbound passenger train approaching Summit in the late 1940s, thanks to the Donald Duke Collection:

The next large 4-6-2 class was the 1337 Class, #1337-1388, and those 52 engines were built during 1912-1913.

Jim Ady shot #1339 helping a 4-8-4 with the eastbound California Limited to Summit in the late 1940s:

 

Here we see #1376 with the San Bernardino Local train from L.A. at the San Bernardino depot in Feb. 1949, thanks to Ken Casford.  This was not a Cajon Pass train, but the loco might be available for helper service on the Pass if needed:

Next we come to the large 3400 class (#3400-3449), whose 50 locos came in several batches during 1919-1924.

I haven't seen any photos of these in helper service on Cajon Pass, but since many were running on the Valley Division, they had to go through Victorville once in a while to get to San Bernardino for their major inspections.

For example, here's a photo from the Charles Givens Collection of #3443 in San Bernardino after being shopped there in the late 1940s:

 

Here's one of the 3400-Class locos, #3444, while on the Valley Division in Fresno with an eastbound freight in Aug. 1948, as shot by W,C. Whittaker:

This concludes our quick survey of some 4-6-2 locos that could have run to or through Victorville in the late 1940s.

Now let's look at a few HO brass models of these.

Key imported a model of the 1226 class (I have one painted as #1226):

PFM-Fujiyama imported a model of the 1337 Class (I have an unpainted one):

 And Balboa-Katsumi (among others) imported a brass 3400 Class model (I have an unpainted one):

 

Now let's move on to a report on my slow layout progress in the past two weeks.

I was pretty worthless week ago, but one day I did get out some acrylic paints and painted some HO hay bales and stacks of hay bales to sit beside the Feed Store model when it arrived.  Craig Wisch was putting on the finishing touches and packing it for mailing from Victorville.

Craig said that some bales should be hay-colored and some should be alfalfa-colored, so I looked at online photos of these to try to match the colors (alfalfa is more greenish than plain hay).  I painted about 60% of the bales with Dark Tan (for hay) and the other 40% with Dark Tan over a coat of Olive Drab (for alfalfa).  Here's a photo of my results (hay is on the left and alfalfa is on the right):

I also got some unexpected help from Don Borden that week, after he saw my crudely-drawn diagram of my staging tracks for use in a wiring diagram.  He offered to redraw the tracks and labels in his CAD program, and after a couple of iterations he presented me with this nice drawing:

I asked him to omit the gap markers between the blocks and the wires to the control panels, so that we can add those as a separate layer next time.  Many thanks to Don Borden for his help with this!

But the highlight of that week was getting to ride a steam train for the first time in several years!  The Mount Rainier Scenic Railway has been silent since COVID began in 2020, but this fall they got their steam loco, Polson Logging 2-8-2 #70, running again.  

 

All the trips were quickly sold out, but then I found one opening for the 3:30 pm trip on Sunday a week ago, so I got tickets for me, my wife, and my son, and we headed down to Elbe, WA (about 90 minutes south of us) that afternoon.

The weather was overcast but not raining during our 75-minute train ride to Mineral and back.  Allow me to share some of the many photos I shot that day.  I posed in front of the loco and 4-car train before they pulled up to the Elbe depot:

 

Here's dark shot of the loco as it chugged across the driveway and up to the depot:

 

 

We boarded the train and decided to ride standing up in the open-window car with no seats, just behind the baggage car (snack car), as seen here:

 

We rode for 30 minutes to Mineral, rocking and rolling as we went, with the glorious steam whistle blowing for grade crossings.  

 

Normally we would get out and tour the shops at Mineral, but they are not yet open for tourists, so we stayed onboard while the steam loco uncoupled and backed around the train to the other end for the return trip:

 

Here's a view of some of the railroad cars and locos on display at the Mineral shops, as seen from the train as we left Mineral:
 

There were some views of the loco as we went through some S-curves, as seen here during the return trip:

 

After we arrived back at the Elbe depot, lots of people walked to the front to admire and pose with the steam loco:

 

 

Then early this week the cardstock model of the Victorville feed store arrived from Craig Wisch, and it looks great, just like his previous models (the jail and the electrical switching control house).  I set it on my layout and added some bales of hay near the rear corner, after touching-up my tan paint job.

Here's a view of the front side, sitting beside my growing village of models by friends:
 

 And here's a rear view, with my stacks of hay bales more visible:

 

I decided that I want to add a loading dock in front of the freight door, as an old aerial photo appears to show one there, so Craig pointed me to a free cardstock kit that would work, if I trim it down to make it smaller.  It's free from Team Track Models, so I ordered it online and had the files a few seconds later, to print at home:

https://www.teamtrackmodels.com/product/concrete-loading-dock/

I spent part of this week getting some flextracks ready to be installed in my F Yard for when Bill Messecar visited me on Friday morning.  

 

We had previously laid three parallel tracks along the other side and around the end curves of the F Yard, and this time we resumed that work by adding five more flextrack sections along the three through tracks of the F Yard (which happens to be in a reverse loop).

Here's a photo I shot after Bill had soldered some of the tracks together in the curves:

 

We glued the tracks down with caulk, checked the spacings with the very useful parallel tracks tool, and added push-pins and water bottles while the caulk dried.  The next day I filed down the loose ties and glued them back under the rail joiners to complete the job.  

Here's a photo of the F Yard (on the dark gray cork) as it looks today, with the three new tracks approaching the future turnout locations at this end of the yard:

 

Many thanks to Bill for keeping me moving by laying more yard tracks!

In other news, my local friend George Chambers decided he had to drop out of his proposed project to model the Victorville Lime Rock plant, but Craig Wisch happily jumped right in to take over that project.  Craig prefers to model buildings that are still standing, and that one still is, although it's now located in the middle of a much-enlarged facility under a different name.

Here's an early newspaper photo of the plant after it opened in 1947, which is how I want it to look for my postwar time period (before it began expanding in 1953):

 

Craig decided to start by modeling the large Quonset building you see in the left side of the photo.  Today he sent me a photo of his early mockup of that building:

 

 

It's exciting to see it taking shape already -- thanks, Craig!  

 

As I've said, I enjoy trading lots of emails with Craig almost every day, as we discuss all the details of various models.  We've set aside the idea of a cardstock model of the Rainbow Bridge, in favor of looking at styrene components that might go together to make the bridge, but that's still on the back burner too.

This weekend I've also been corresponding with Don Borden, who will be adding a new layer of details to the mainline staging trackplan and wiring diagram that he began for me a week ago.

If you'd like to help with this large layout, in person or remotely, please let me know.

UP's Unusual Diesel Helpers in Victorville & A Feed Store for the Layout

I'm running out of the locomotives most commonly seen in Victorville in the postwar years, so I'm beginning to cover the ones that only worked there for a short time.  

This time we'll see some rare Union Pacific diesel helpers -- the RSC-2, the H15-44, the H16-44, and the SD7.  Then we'll see a new Victorville building model (the feed store) and some minimal layout wiring progress.

The UP received an Alco RSC-2 road switcher as a demonstrator in UP paint, #1190, in Feb. 1947.  Then they bought ten more, #1180-1189, in March-April of 1948.  Two of them show up as helpers in some photos in 1948-1949.

Jack Whitmeyer photographed #1184 between helper assignments in Victorville in July of 1948:

Stan Kistler found #1185 in San Bernardino in Sep. 1948:

 

Here we see #1185 helping a set of Erie-Builts with the eastbound LA Limited at Pine Lodge in June, 1949, thanks again to Stan Kistler:

But the RSC-2 locos were not satisfactory as helpers on Cajon Pass.  

Another loco type they tried was the FM H15-44 switcher.  They acquired five of them, #1325-1329, in April-May of 1948.  Here's a UP photo of #1325 when new:

The only Cajon Pass photo I've found of one of these, #1329, shows it at the UP engine terminal in San Bernardino, hiding behind some steam helpers, in May of 1951, thanks to Steve VanDenburgh:

The UP also tried the FM H16-44 as a helper on Cajon Pass.  They bought three of these, #1340-1342, in Aug. 1950.  Jack Whitmeyer shot #1340 in San Bernardino in Oct. 1952 (helpers were also used to pull the Leon Turn to the cement plants):

The final UP loco type I've found in short-term helper service on Cajon Pass was the EMD SD7 roadswitcher.  The UP acquired ten of these in June, 1953, numbered #775-784.

Here is Jack Whitmeyer's color photo of #783 in San Bernardino in Aug. 1953:

Chard Walker shot the same loco in San Bernardino, maybe on the same day:

As for HO models of these four loco types, I'm not sure what I have stashed away in my garage, but here are some models I've found on the Web.

Proto 1000 made an HO model of an Alco RSC-2 (but with the 1955 renumbering into the 1280 series):

Atlas made an HO model of an FM H15-44:

Walthers also made an H15-44 (this one has no number):

Atlas also made an HO FM H16-44 (this one also has no number):

Proto 2000 made an HO model of an EMD SD7 (this is just the shell):

And later Broadway Limited also made an SD7:

This concludes our coverage of the Cajon Pass diesel helpers that UP tried out but used only briefly.

Now it's time for a layout progress report covering the last two weeks.

I didn't make a lot of progress on the wiring diagram that I set as my first goal, but I did mark in pencil on the large lower-deck trackplan where all the insulated rail joiners are, and then I made a rough ink drawing of the trackplan with all the block boundaries marked.  

Then I finished a 2nd, better ink drawing of the mainlines and block boundaries, including where the four mainline control panels will go, with notes on the colors of the four bus wires for the two mainline tracks:

 

The block names, like L1-A and L1-B are marked beside the tracks.  There are a couple of notes saying "ignore these," referring to insulated rail joiners that are installed but will not be used as block boundaries after all.  Note the mainline reversing block marked as "Rev L2-D" in the upper right.  There was still more to do to document which bus wires will run to which panels.

There was big news last week, as Craig Wisch in Victorville was completing his wonderful cardstock model of the Peterson Feed Store (compressed in length to fit my layout).  Here are some photos he sent me then.  Here is the front and left side:

 

 And here is the front and right side:

 

Note the interesting cupola on the roof peak.  Here is the model's right side and rear:

 

I was so excited to finally see this wonderful model come together!  Many thanks to Craig once again.  He is now advising me to buy some HO hay bales to stack along the right side of the building.

Part of last week (and some previous weeks) was spent slowly moving my hundreds of model trains out of the garage and into the layout room, hoping to make room for our newer automobile to get into one garage stall this winter, for the first time in years.  

 

Some of the boxes contain diesels, which are being logged for the first time as they are newly uncovered. My freight and passenger cars were already logged as they were acquired.

Here's one view of some models still waiting to be moved out of the garage:

 

 

And here's one of the piles of models being created under the layout:
 

I didn't manage to get much done on the layout this past week, as often happens.

I did add some red ink lines to last week's initial mainline wiring diagram, showing which block's bus wires will connect to and be controlled by which mainline panels:

 

 

The interesting part of this is that the long block L1-A will be controlled by Turntable Tower (which a right-hand running train will pass as it enters that block), while the adjacent long block L2-A will be controlled by A-B Tower (which a right-hand running train will pass as it enters that block).

All of the panels will also control various staging yard blocks, which are not yet shown on this diagram, and they will also control the mainline turnouts, as well as the yard turnouts that are not easily reached from the aisles.

As I returned to the basement to begin connecting the feeder wires for the inner mainline to its bus wires, I discovered that I'd forgotten the state of progress since I had worked on that.  It turns out that the feeder wires for both mainlines are already connected to their bus wires in the main layout room, but almost none of the wires in the adjacent staging room have been connected for either mainline.

So I began working in the staging room, having to relearn how to use the suitcase connectors to connect the feeders to the bus wires.  Here's a photo of me working on the suitcase connectors (the small, red objects beside me on the benchwork), but there are many more to do next week:

 

Meanwhile, back in Victorville, my helper Craig Wisch has been putting some final touches on his cardstock model of the Peterson Feed Store before he mails it to me.  Here's a different photo (a rear view) from a week ago, showing how the cupola is propped open to expose an air vent on its side:

 

I enjoy exchanging daily emails with Craig about various models he's considering building.

Bill Messecar reports that he's begun working on the second section house that stood in front of the two water tanks in Victorville.  That's exciting news!

If you can help me by visiting my layout or by building a model remotely, please let me know.