Short Line Locos Near Victorville & Progress with Control Panels, Trackwork, and the Lime Rock Plant

We've run out of Santa Fe and Union Pacific locos to cover here, so this time we'll look at the short line locos that were running in or near Victorville.  We'll also take a look at some layout progress with control panel designs, trackwork in the F yard, and the modeling of the Lime Rock Plant.

There were two short lines running out of Victorville, the first being the Mojave Northern Railroad operated by the Southwestern Portland Cement Plant.  They had three 0-6-0T steam locos operating in the postwar years, numbers 1, 2, and 3.  They were still in use in 1958 or a bit later.  

Their job was the push a string of empty rock cars from the cement plant up to the limestone quarries in the hills, then bring them back down loaded and push them up onto the unloading trestle behind the plant.

Here we see MN #3 with some loaded rock cars in action in Dec. 1958, during a railfan event:

Here are MN #1, #2, and #3 at the engine house in the cement plant in Aug. 1957:

Here we see MN #1 with some rock cars up on the unloading trestle in Dec. 1958:

Despite seeing the old rock cars used in the 1958 railfan visits, the locos normally pulled regular hoppers in the later 1950s, and they were unloaded at ground level behind the trestle.  Here we see MN #1 again, but with some hoppers, in Dec. 1958:

Starting in about 1947, the three steam locos were supplemented with a pair of GE 70-ton diesels, #5 and #6, as seen here in this Richard Steinheimer photo

Here's a Dec.1948 photo of #5, also named "Leonardt," with #6 "Merrill" behind it:

Here are MN #5 and #6 in the later green paint scheme, as seen in the previous Steinheirmer photo:

Now let's turn to the other short line in the Victorville area, the George Air Force Base branch line (the Santa Fe's Adelanto Spur) that left the Santa Fe mainline in the Lower Narrows and climbed up to the air base on a plateau.

Photos of the diesel locos assigned to the air base are hard to find, but they came into Victorville once in a while to turn on the wye, as all the curves in the base were in the same direction, and they needed to even out the wear on the flanges.

For example, here's a shot of US Army GE 45-ton diesel #8566 at the Victorville depot in 1947 (before the US Air Force was formed):

Here we see USAF GE 80-ton diesel #1689, possibly at George AFB in 1953:

Here's the same USAF loco, being transported on a flatcar years later:

 

As for HO models of these short line locos, there are no ready-made models of the Mojave Northern 0-6-0Ts, but I was lucky to buy one kit-bashed by a modeler, Tom Coletti, as seen here in my staging yard:

For the GE 70-Ton diesels on the Mojave Northern, I will get two Hallmark brass locos painted in the earlier MN scheme.  Here's a Hallmark model:

Or, I could use two of the undecorated Bachmann Spectrum 70-Tonners:

For the US Army 45-Ton switcher, I plan to use this similar Bachmann Spectrum 44-ton model:

Bachmann Spectrum also made a 45-tonner, but it has side rods, unlike the one seen in Victorville:

I haven't yet found a model to use for the USAF 80-Ton diesel.

Now let's turn to my layout progress for the last two weeks.

Craig Wisch in Victorville made some progress on his model of the main building of the Lime Rock plant.  Here's a recent view of the track side of the model:

 And here's his photo of the street side of the model:

As you can see, he's a wizard with cardstock modeling, and I'm so thankful for his help!

We've been discussing how to model the various vents and ducts on the rooftop, and Craig has now volunteered to build the two storage tanks that were on the east side of the building.

Here's a helpful early photo that shows the east side of the plant, as sent to us by Wayne Lawson.  We refer to this often as we discuss the roof details and the two storage tanks:

Craig is also getting more and more interested in the history of Victorville, and he's been visiting the various libraries and historical museums there.  I recently copied for him sections of the 1943 Sanborn Maps of downtown Victorville, and he appreciated seeing those.

Meanwhile, I had some discussions with Tim Fisher and Don Borden about cleaning up our tower panel drawings by removing the unneeded words "Block" and "Track" that were beside each block and track label.  

We also began discussing the need to label each turnout on the panel, and we considered various ideas, such as odd turnout numbers on Track L1, even numbers on Track L2, and letters for turnouts that are not on the mainlines.  These short turnout labels would be made unique across the layout by adding a one-letter prefix from the first letter of the panel name (for C Tower, the turnouts would be C1, C2, CA, CB, etc.). 

Here is Don Borden's latest drawing for the C Tower panel, which we are very happy with.  Note the small red rectangles he has added around each pair of turnout buttons, along with the turnout number or letter:

We also have to consider the labels of turnouts within the various Yard panels, so I decided to start drawing the C Yard panel to see what it might look like.  Right away, I realized that I'll need two panels to cover all those tracks and turnouts, as that yard is spread out over a long distance, as shown in the red ink on this part of the staging trackplan:

 

In the past two weeks, I've exchanged drawings with Don Borden and Tim Fisher, and Don has completed what we think is a near-final drawing for the Left C Yard panel. Sets of diesel locos will be stored on Tracks C4 through C9, with on-off buttons for the sub-blocks (up to 36" long) within each track:

Track C4 is long and can hold three diesel sets, and so it has three on-off sections within it.  Tracks C5, C6, and C7 can each store two diesel sets.  Tracks C8 and C9 can store one each.  Track C10 is the yard ladder and has its own on-off button at the bottom.

The panel for the Right C Yard looks quite different:

The lower tracks here are controlled from the main C Tower panel, but tracks C1, C2, and C3 are controlled from this panel.  Tracks C4 and C10 run off to the Left Yard Panel and are controlled from there.  Most of the C Yard is for storing four-unit diesel sets between runs.

Two 32"-long four-unit diesels can be stored on each of C2 and C3, and the on-off buttons for power to each track section are just below the track lines on the drawing.  Track C1 is for locos moving through the area, and so it is always live and has no on-off buttons.

The DC cab assignment for this entire yard is controlled from the C Tower panel, not this local yard panel.  Many thanks to Don Borden for working so patiently on all of these panel drawings!

There are three other main Tower panels to revisit, plus all of their connected yard panels still to be drawn, but the C Tower and its C Yard have been good examples to work on first.

Now let's look at some F Yard construction.  I worked on cutting and fitting some short track pieces to connect the final two turnouts into the F Yard ladder track, and then I shot this photo of the row of turnouts, which are on the left of the yard from this viewpoint:

Then on Thursday morning of this week Bill Messecar arrived to help lay down more flextracks along Tracks F4 and F5, including soldering the rail joiners on the curves.  Here's a photo of Bill in action, laying some caulk down for the next section of Track F5:

 

The F Yard tracks all have radii less than the 36" of the inner mainline, going down to the 27" radius of Track F5, so those tracks may best be used for storing freight trains, with or without locos attached.

Meanwhile, I worked on the other side of the yard, cutting and fitting flextrack sections to meet up with the ladder turnouts for some of the F Yard tracks, as seen here:

Bill also packed up the various buildings he had built for the Victorville section houses scene and took them home, along with the paper map of the area, so that he can begin to place them into a diorama with ground cover, trees, and fences, as shown in the old photos.

Well, we're just a week away from Christmas, and I have a lot to do, so I'll be taking some time off from these reports to just relax until we get into the new year.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all,

John