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.