Santa Fe's Steam Freight Locos in Victorville & More Layout Progress at C Tower

This time we will provide links to past blog entries about Santa Fe's steam freight locos, and then we will cover recent layout progress in completing the tangle of turnouts at the C Tower area.

Here's one sample of the Santa Fe steam freight locos we have covered in our past blog entries:

This is a nice shot by Chard Walker, showing #3911 with an eastbound train of reefers, coming into Victorville after descending Cajon Pass:

Here's a list of links that should take you to any of the past blog entries for Santa Fe's steam freight locos:

SF 1900 & 1950 2-8-0s – Sep-24-2023

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2023/09/santa-fes-heavy-2-8-0s-in-victorville.html

SF 3100 & 3129 2-8-2s – Oct-3-2021

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2021/10/santa-fes-light-2-8-2-locos-in.html

SF 3160 2-8-2s – Jun-25-2023

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2023/06/santa-fes-3160-class-2-8-2-locos-in.html

SF 4000 2-8-2s – Dec-12-2021

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2021/12/santa-fes-4000-class-2-8-2s-in.html

SF 900 & 1600 2-10-2s – Dec-11-2022

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2022/12/santa-fes-early-2-10-2s-in-victorville.html

SF 3800 2-10-2s – Jan-29-2023

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2023/01/santa-fes-heavy-2-10-2s-in-victorville.html

Here's a sample photo from each of these previous blog entries:

SF 1900 & 1950 2-8-0s – Sep-24-2023

Here's a great photo by Chard Walker, showing #1991 near the depot in Victorville, either working as the local switcher or between jobs as a helper engine:

SF 3100 & 3129 2-8-2s – Oct-3-2021

Here's one of the 3100-class locos, #3119, switching a string of freight cars in Victorville in 1949, as shot by Chard Walker:

SF 3160 2-8-2s – Jun-25-2023

Here we see #3243 with a westbound local freight approaching Summit in June, 1952, thanks to Robert Hale:

SF 4000 2-8-2s – Dec-12-2021

Here's another Chard Walker photo, this time showing #4025 working in Victorville, with the stock pen in the background:

SF 900 & 1600 2-10-2s – Dec-11-2022

Here we see #1626 and #979 pushing on the rear of an eastbound freight at Pine Lodge in June, 1949, in a nice shot by Stan Kistler:

SF 3800 2-10-2s – Jan-29-2023

Chard Walker shot #3895 passing the water tanks in Victorville, where the helpers took on water, turned on the wye, and waited for the next westbound freight to help:

Now let's look at some layout progress over the past two weeks.

I was busy during the week of April 22, making small steps of layout progress, such as adding ties under all the rail joiners for the newest tracks.

And my friend Don Hubbard continued working on the Grandt Line kit for the Standard Oil bulk dealer in Victorville.  He added some paint and some windows and doors and a chimney  -- here's a recent side view:

Meanwhile, Bill Messecar repainted the roof of my Victorville concrete bunkhouse model with standard Santa Fe red roof paint, as seen in a color aerial photo.

Don Borden was kind enough to revise his drawing of the B Yard panel again, to conform to our latest plans and conventions:

My electrical and trackage advisor, Tim Fisher, sent me a lot of notes in reply to my recent questions, so I will be studying those.  They included reminders of what my short-term goals had been last fall, compared to my actual slow progress!

I was busy that week corresponding with my two Victorville experts, Wayne Lawson and Robert Rogers, regarding how to make an accurate model of the "warehouse" building that was adjacent to the "bunkhouse" passenger carbody that Bill Messecar recently built for me.  

The 1925 station plat shows its dimensions as 30' long by 16' wide, which we thought could be two old reefer cabodies side-by-side, with the ice bunkers at both ends removed.  But the Santa Fe failed to include it in their Building Records.

As is often the case, the only photos we've found, other than very distant aerial photos, are very partial views, as railfans were shooting the trains, not the buildings in the background.  

Here's one such view from up on a signal in Victorville, with the swing brakemen's bunkhouse (passenger carbody) and the warehouse in the shadows along the right edge:

The other very partial photo we have shows another corner of the warehouse behind the pilot of Santa Fe steam loco #3896:

From this meager information, Wayne and I set out to come up with some best-guess scale drawings of the warehouse this week.

Bill Messecar had planned to visit and help me with the layout on that Thursday morning, but once again the traffic was backed up by construction, so he had to turn back.  

But I did some layout work before and after his expected visit.  I drilled some holes and inserted some feeder wires by the new sections of Track AL, and I measured and marked with masking tape where all the gaps for the nine steam loco 18"-long parking spots should go along Track S1.

Later I filed the plastic spikes off lots of loose ties and squeezed them under all the rail joiners along the new tracks and the tracks in the right half of the C Yard.  Here's an April 28 view of the left half of the scene with the newest side tracks that curve around the future turntable area:

And turning to the right from the same spot, this was a view of the right half of the same scene:

At that time I hadn't yet glued down the tangle of turnouts at C Tower, which you can see along the right edge of this photo.  

Last time I said I'd have to move one of those turnouts so its switch machine will clear the adjacent track, but I found that it has to stay where it is to preserve the geometry of the crossover.  Instead, I need to learn how to mount the switch machine in a different location or reverse the throw bar, or both.

I got a few more things done this week, thanks to a Friday visit by Bill Messecar and some remote work by Don Hubbard and by Wayne Lawson.

When Bill arrived on Friday morning, he returned to me a pre-built model of a standard Santa Fe concrete bunkhouse, but with the roof now repainted a red color to match a color postcard view of Victorville.  

I later arranged the model on my lower deck, with various tool houses and Bill's model scene of the section houses and water tanks in the background:

Later I compared this to a rare view by Bill Henry from a diesel cab in 1947, as found on page 153 of Chard Walker's "Cajon - Rail Passage to the Pacific":

The concrete bunkhouse is on the far left in this photo, farther back from the tracks than I had placed it in my model photo.  

On the far right edge of the above photo, we can also see the end of the freight carbody that Wayne Lawson and I have been studying.  Last week I called it the "warehouse," but since then I learned that the 16x30' warehouse shown on the 1925 station plat was no longer there in the postwar years.  

Instead, a 9x34' freight carbody was there, and it was attached to the adjacent passenger carbody with a raised platform.  For now, we're calling the freight carbody the "storehouse."

I talked with Don Sheets again yesterday, but he still doesn't recall this storehouse, which was apparently removed in 1954.  He did mention again the local switcher crew's caboose, which was permanently parked near there, and I think we can see the end of it just to the left of the water column in the above photo.  

Don said the caboose was later moved across the tracks from the depot, and I found that I had shot that caboose (#1544) when I was there in March, 1971:

But going back to Bill Messecar's visit on Friday, I prepared for his visit by drilling holes and inserting a dozen or more feeder wires for the tangle of turnouts at C Tower, which I had glued down in the meantime.  I had also inserted ties under nearby rail joiners in the C yard and into more tracks of the F Yard.  

I posed for a photo while inserting the feeder wires:

After Bill arrived, I shot another action photo of him as he soldered the feeder wires to the rails:

After Bill finished all that soldering, he also glued down the next two sections of flextracks that run left of the turnouts, for Tracks C1 and C2.

My local friend Don Hubbard reports that he is now working on making the sign board that ran along the roof peak of the Standard Oil bulk dealer.  We have plans for that sign, thanks to a modeling article that Wayne Lawson found in a 1996 issue of Railmodel Journal:

I've been corresponding daily with Wayne as he works on scale drawings for the freight carbody (the storehouse) that stood in Victorville adjacent to the passenger carbody (the bunkhouse for swing brakemen).  He hoped to have some detailed drawings ready today, but he just now reported that his computer has lost all the work he has done, so he will have to start all over next week!

In place of that, here is his first rough drawing of the storehouse carbody from earlier this week:

In other news, I need to get busy and learn to attach and wire Touch Toggles to my C Tower panel, as I'm scheduled to give a talk about my layout and my use of Touch Toggles for the East Coast Santa Fe Modelers meeting on June 15.  

I'm now contacting Kevin Hunter, who sells the toggles at Berrett Hill Shops, about buying a few more of them, as the panel grew more complex since last summer when I bought a set of them.

Also, I want to thank Tim Fisher for the lengthy and detailed advice he has been sending me this week about cutting gaps in my curved tracks and about the future wiring of my Walthers 130' turntable.

If you can also help me in any way, either in person or by building a model remotely, please let me know.

Santa Fe's Road Switcher Diesels in Victorville & Laying Two More Tracks & Attending a Mini-Meet

This time we will provide links to past blog entries about Santa Fe's road switcher diesels, and then we will cover recent layout progress in laying two more tracks and giving a presentation at a recent Northwest Santa Fe Mini-Meet.

Here's one sample of the road switchers we have covered in our past blog entries:

This is a Chard Walker photo of #3004 as a helper at Summit in 1953:

Here's a list of links that should take you to any of the past blog entries for Santa Fe's road switcher diesels:

SF DT6-6-2000s – Apr-3-2022

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2022/04/santa-fes-dt6-6-2000-diesels-in.html

SF GP7s – Jan-1-2023

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2023/01/santa-fes-gp7-diesels-in-victorville.html

SF H16-44s – Oct-31-2021

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2021/10/santa-fes-h16-44-diesels-in-victorville.html

SF GP9s – Sep-10-2023

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2023/09/santa-fes-gp9-diesels-in-victorville.html

 

Here's a sample photo from each of these previous blog entries:

SF DT6-6-2000s – Apr-3-2022

Here's a color photo by Jack Whitmeyer of #2601 at San Bernardino in Jan. 1953:

SF GP7s – Jan-1-2023

Here is #2685 helping the eastbound Grand Canyon at Pine Lodge in the early 1950s, as shot by Don Richardson:

SF H16-44s – Oct-31-2021

The H16-44 locos were important in Victorville because one of them was often assigned as the local switcher after Santa Fe's steam locos were retired from this job in mid or late1951.  Here's a Stan Kistler photo of #2802 as the local switcher beside the Victorville boiler house on Dec. 23, 1951:

SF GP9s – Sep-10-2023

Here's a great photo by Robert Hale, showing GP9 #701 helping PAs with the eastbound Grand Canyon on Sullivan's curve in 1956:

 

Now let's look at some layout progress over the past two weeks.

 

The week of April 8th was a busy week, with layout help from Bill Messecar and final preparations for my Mini-Meet presentation on Saturday.

When Bill was here on that Monday morning, we worked together on laying four flextrack sections along the new Track S1 (where steam locos will be stored someday) and one more flextrack section along Track AL (the left lead into the A Yard).  Both of these tracks curve around the future turntable area (with one on each side of the double-track mains), so the rail joiners had to be soldered before curving the tracks and gluing them down.

Here's an action photo of Bill holding up one of the S1 track sections while spreading the caulk on the roadbed:

After the caulk had dried and the water bottle weights were removed, I shot this photo of the new tracks from the opposite direction (the push-pins mark which tracks were new):

 

Track S1 is the new one on the inside of the big curve, and Track AL has one new section on the outside of the curve.  But I discovered that one of our rail joiners had come apart during the track-laying, so I planned to pry loose the last section of Track S1 to re-lay it in the next week.

The rest of the week was spent finalizing the 137 slides in my PowerPoint presentation.  I extracted 72 text slides into a separate file, which I sent to the Mini-Meet organizers (Bill James and Colin Kikawa) to format into a 12-page handout (both sides of six sheets of paper).

I arrived early on Saturday at the Northwest Railroad Archives in Burien, which shares a building with the Boeing Employees Model Railroad Club.  We arranged all the tables and chairs for the Northwest Santa Fe Mini-Meet, which opened at 9:00 am and began at 10:00 am.

During introductions after our lunch break, I shot this photo of most of the attendees (about 20 total, I think):

 

During one of the breaks, I visited the two sales tables and was able to buy six small Santa Fe trackside buildings from Norm Bruce for just $5 total.  They will be very useful along the maintenance of way spur on the far side of my Victorville scene.  Later at home, I arranged them for a photo in front of Bill Messecar's recent buildings:

 

My presentation on "Santa Fe's Postwar Chicago-LA Passenger Trains" didn't begin until about 3:00 pm, and I was able to rush through all the slides in about an hour.  But the attendees have my handout to use as a reference for everything I rushed through too quickly.

 

This week I picked up where Bill Messecar and I had left off, laying more sections of the new tracks AL and S1 around the big curve that circles the future turntable area on the staging deck.  

Recall that the last section of Track S1 had separated from the previous section at a rail joiner, so I loosened that section from its roadbed, re-soldered it, and glued it back down.  Then I cut and fit and soldered and glued down one more section of Track AL and one more section of Track S1, bringing them up to the turnouts at their right ends.

I posed beside the water bottles on the last section of Track S1 while the caulk dried:

 

 

Later I shot both new tracks, AL and S1, from the opposite direction.  Note that each one ends at a turnout (S1 is to the left of the mainlines, and AL is to the right):

 

Track AL will be the switch lead into the left end of the double-ended A Yard, and Track S1 will be a loco storage track for nine steam locos in a row (each with an 18"-long parking space).  I'm currently discussing with Tim Fisher how to wire this track after the gaps are cut, and which rail to cut the gaps into.

Meanwhile, my friend Don Hubbard has starting building the Grandt Line kit for a metal warehouse, which will serve as my model of the Standard Oil bulk dealer in Victorville.  Here's the initial bare-bones structure:

 

We are corresponding with Wayne Lawson about other details that may go into the Standard Oil lot, especially the three horizontal tanks in a row, as seen here on the left in Wayne's N-scale scene:

 

I decided that the lot will be 10" wide and 11" deep in HO, to accommodate slightly compressed models of the tanks.

Back in the real Victorville, my expert in cardstock modeling, Craig Wisch, is now completing his S-scale model of the former Victor Valley News-Herald newspaper office on 6th Street:

 

I'm hoping that he will come back to help me with my HO structures, especially the large Hayward Lumber building that was just to the left of the Peterson Feed building, which he previously built for me.  

 

Wayne Lawson has sent us his scale drawings of the building, which he used to build his own N-scale mock-up of the building, as seen here on his layout:

 

This week I need to go back to the tangle of turnouts in the C Tower area and move one of them to make room for its switch machine to fit in.  Also, I'll continue working with Don Borden on the various control panel drawings.

 

If you can help with any aspect of my layout, please let me know.

UP's Steam Freight Locos in Victorville & Laying Complex Turnouts at C Tower & Preparing a Slide Presentation

I'll continue to create links into past blog entries about various locos seen in Victorville.  The locos this time will be UP's steam freight locos.  Then I'll cover some recent layout progress: fitting complex turnouts in the C Tower area, working on a Mini-Meet slide presentation, and revising two of the control panel drawings.

Here's a sample of one of the photos I will be providing links to:

Frank Peterson shot #5515 helping a freight westbound out of Victorville, past Frost,  in Oct. 1950:

Here's a list of links that should take you to any of the four past blog entries for Union Pacific's steam freight locos:

UP 2-8-2s – Mar-20-2022

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2022/03/ups-2-8-2-locos-in-victorvile-and.html

UP 2-10-2s – Sep-26-2022

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2022/09/ups-2-10-2-locos-in-victorville-and.html

UP 2-8-8-0s – Sep-19-2021

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2021/09/ups-2-8-8-0-locos-in-victorville-and.html

UP 4-10-2s – Nov-14-2021

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2021/11/ups-4-10-2-locos-in-victorville-and.html

UP 4-12-2s – Jul-9-2023

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2023/07/ups-4-12-2-steam-loco-in-victorville.html

 

Here's a sample photo from each of these previous blog entries:

UP 2-8-2s – Mar-20-2022

Here's a great photo of UP #2710 beside the Victorville water tanks in Nov. 1947, as shot by Jack Whitmeyer:

UP 2-10-2s – Sep-26-2022

These locos were normally used as helpers on both freight and passenger trains.  Here is #5006 helping a set of PAs with an eastbound passenger train on Sullivan's Curve, as shot by Richard Steinheimer:

 

 UP 2-8-8-0s – Sep-19-2021

Here we see a great Donald Duke photo of #3559 as it helps a westbound UP passenger train upgrade out of the Upper Narrows of Victorville in 1945:

UP 4-10-2s – Nov-14-2021

Here is #5091 waiting as a helper in Victorville, as photographed by Chard Walker:

 UP 4-12-2s – Jul-9-2023

Here we see #9000 coming through Victorville, with a rare view of an old passenger carbody in the background, where the swing brakemen from freight trains rested:

Turning now to my layout progress during the last two weeks...

On Monday morning two weeks ago I visited Bill Messecar at his home, and we looked at and discussed the various HO locos and passenger and freight cars that I would be interested in buying when he dismantles his beautiful layout about a year from now.  

 

He later typed up lists of the many passenger car kits and resin freight car kits he has built, and he sent the lists to me.  In May I hope to start monthly payments to him for the many cars I'd like to buy later.

I had previously left with him a Grandt Line styrene kit for a "corrugated iron warehouse" to pass along to Don Hubbard, and this week I left a stack of papers relevant to the Standard Oil bulk dealer in Victorville, in hopes that Don might build the kit for me.  Here's the cover photo on the Grandt Line kit:

We have no ground-level photos of the actual building that was beside the tracks in Victorville -- just distant aerial photos and a Sanborn map -- but Wayne Lawson found a similar building somewhere and sent me some photos, such as this one:

Don Hubbard has agreed to go ahead with building the Grandt Line kit as a Standard Oil bulk dealer, so I'm very thankful for his help again.

Most of that week was spent in crunch time, getting a clinic put together for our local Northwest Santa Fe Mini-Meet coming up soon on Saturday, April 13.  My chosen topic this time is an overview of "Santa Fe's Postwar Chicago-LA Passenger Trains."  Here's one of the slides, listing the trains to be covered:

 

I've been able to reuse selected slides from my previous clinics on the Super Chief, Chief, El Capitan, and Scout, plus Bill Messecar's previous clinic on the Grand Canyon trains.  See below for more progress in the following week.

 

My layout progress over a week ago was to cut and fit lots of complex trackage together at the left end of the C Tower area, where there are five turnouts bunched together along tracks C1, C2, and C3.  This was very tedious and frustrating work.  Here's a photo of me at work, nearing the end of the job:

 

Here's a view of the trackage from the other direction, including a map that I needed so I could be sure to put the insulated gaps into the correct locations.

 

Not all of the powered switch machines are attached yet, and some may need modifications to fit.  These new tracks are not yet glued down either. 

 

This week I didn't get anything done on my actual layout, as I had to work on making more PowerPoint slides for my presentation at the April 13 NW Santa Fe Mini-Meet.  I also got back to working with Don Borden on new and improved versions of two control panel drawings.

I prepared for Bill Messecar's visit on Tuesday morning, but he got stuck in a traffic jam on the way here and had to turn back.  But in the meantime I did set up and photograph a scene with many of the buildings that he has built for my Victorville layout, as seen here:

 

In the foreground is his recently-completed passenger carbody, and behind that we see the street side of the Victorville depot, and behind that is the scene he built to include water tanks, section houses, and pump houses.  

By the way, when I phoned Don Sheets this week, he said that he used to sleep in that passenger carbody, which he called "the bunkhouse," between work shifts as a swing brakeman.  There were about eight low-quality beds and a bathroom in there.

Most of the week was spent working aain on my clinic about Santa Fe's postwar Chicago-LA passenger trains.  A very helpful reference is the recent, thick, magnificent book called the "Santa Fe Passenger Train Compendium":

 

For the Fast Mail train slides I needed, Don Borden helped me out by pointing me to a clinic that Andy Sperandeo had presented at the East Coast Santa Fe Modelers Meet in 2007, so I've been selecting some key slides from that clinic.  This was his final slide in that slide set:

 

So the only train left that I had no slides for was the California Limited, and I've been creating slides about the postwar version of that heavyweight train in recent days.  Fred Frailey's classic book on "A Quarter Century of Santa Fe Consists" has been very helpful to me.

Here's a sample photo that I found to use in one of my slides, showing PAs with the westbound California Limited (all heavyweight cars) at Bernalillo, NM, in 1947, thanks to Otto Perry:

 

I've also been corresponding with Don Borden and Tim Fisher in an attempt to remove any flaws in Don's drawings for two of the main control panels: A-B Tower and C Tower.  Here's Don''s most recent version of A-B Tower, which we think is correct now:

 

And here is the latest version of the adjacent mainline panel for C Tower, which we also think is correct:

 

By the way, Don Borden has invited me to do a Zoom clinic about my layout and my Touch-Toggle panels at the next East Coast Santa Fe Modelers Meet on June 15.  So, one of my goals before then will be to try attaching actual Touch Toggles to the back side of a C Tower panel.

 

I hope to report more progress two weeks from now.