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.