Santa Fe's Passenger Steam Locos in Victorville & New Control Panels and Yard Tracks

Since I've already covered all the types of locomotives that ran into Victorville during the postwar decade, I've decided to start creating links back into the blog entries for each of the types, as a sort of index and review.  I'll start with Santa Fe's passenger steam locos this time, such as this one:

Chard Walker shot #2911 with an eastbound passenger train climbing toward Sullivan's Curve:

Then I'll cover the layout progress for the last two weeks, which includes new control panel designs and new yard tracks.

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

SF 4-6-2s – Oct-22-2023

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2023/10/santa-fes-4-6-2s-in-victorville-steam.html

SF 4-6-4s – Feb-6-2022

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2022/02/santa-fes-4-6-4-locos-in-victorville.html

SF 4-8-2s – Aug-14-2022

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2022/08/santa-fes-4-8-2-locos-in-victorville.html

SF 3751 4-8-4s – Oct-9-2022

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2022/10/santa-fes-3751-class-4-8-4s-in.html

SF 3765 4-8-4s – Mar-26-2023

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2023/03/santa-fes-3765-class-4-8-4s-in.html

SF 3776 4-8-4s – May-1-2022

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2022/05/santa-fes-3776-class-4-8-4s-in.html

SF 2900 4-8-4s – Aug-6-2023

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2023/08/santa-fes-2900-class-4-8-4s-in.html 

Let's look at a sample of each of these blog entries now.

SF 4-6-2s – Oct-22-2023

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

SF 4-6-4s – Feb-6-2022

Here is a Jim Ady photo of #3450 helping 4-8-4 #2905 with a Shriner special climbing from Victorville to Summit in June of 1950:

SF 4-8-2s – Aug-14-2022

Here's a rare color view of #3749 with a secondary passenger train by the Victorville depot in the postwar years, as shot by Chard Walker:

SF 3751 4-8-4s – Oct-9-2022

Chard Walker shot #3759 with a westbound passenger train in Victorville (note the covered hoppers from the local cement plant):

SF 3765 4-8-4s – Mar-26-2023

Donald Duke photographed #3772 with the westbound Grand Canyon coming through Victorville in the late 1940s:

SF 3776 4-8-4s – May-1-2022

Here is Chard Walker's photo of #3785 coming westbound through the Upper Narrows with the Fast Mail:

SF 2900 4-8-4s – Aug-6-2023

Chard Walker photographed #2928 leading an eastbound diesel-powered passenger train in Victorville in the postwar years:

This completes our summary of past blog posts about Santa Fe's passenger steam locos.

Next comes my usual report on my layout progress for the last two weeks.   

 I cut and fit and glued down the final track in the F Yard, which we call Track FL (meaning F yard Left lead).  This is the critical track that creates the reverse loop on the staging deck, connecting the inner mainline back to itself after it rounds the big curve at this end of the layout.

Here's a photo showing the new Track FL, which cuts across from the upper left to the lower right, just to the right of the wire stripping tool with the yellow handles:

After the glue (caulk) had dried, I drilled two pairs of holes and inserted feeder wires to power it.

During that week I made my first pencil drawings to show how the local panels for the E Yard and the F Yard controls might be laid out.  Don Borden took these and began drawing these two panels in his CAD system.  Tim Fisher and I reviewed these and sent him some improvements, and then Don came back with several revisions.

Here is what we think is the final drawing for the E Yard, which has three stub tracks (E1-E3) for storing diesel loco sets in the lower part, and one long stub track (E4) at the left and upper edges, for loading and unloading cars and locos from the layout at the cassette loading spot in the lower left:

Tracks E1 and E2 are each divided into three 30" loco storage spots with on-off buttons, and Track E3 has room for three more 30" spots plus one 20" spot on the right.  The turnouts into E1 and E2 will be manual, as they are not on the mainlines and are close to the aisle.

Track E4 is for loading and storing one 18' long train or two 9' long trains.  The powered turnout into E4 will be controlled from the C Tower, where trains enter and leave this track, so its control buttons are not shown here.  I had good discussions with Tim Fisher about how to operate this track and from which panels, and I ended up with this simple design.

Here is Don Borden's version of my drawing for the F Yard, which is quite complex, as it tries to show how the tracks are actually laid out, as seen from the control panel area:

Almost everything in the drawing is in red ink, which is our symbol for a reversing section.  There are five parallel tracks, F1 through F5, that loop around, and a backwards stub track F6 in the lower right.  Tracks F4 and F5 are also stub tracks, but they loop all the way around with F1-F3.

Each track has just one on-off button, as F1-F5 are for storing full-length trains.  Track L2D is a mainline track, so it is not for storing trains, but it is part of the return loop.

The actual controls for the return loop are on the adjacent Reversing Tower panel, which Don Borden updated this week:

 

In the lower left quadrant you can find arrows pointing to where the E Yard and F Yard panels interface with this main Tower panel.  Note the red ink for the tracks that are in the reversing block, called "L2D & F Yard."  And note the important track FL, which forms the reverse loop, which is the one I installed earlier in the week.

Meanwhile in Victorville, Craig Wisch packed all the parts of his Lime Rock Plant model into a box and shipped it to me, so I looked forward to receiving it.

I spent part of that week moving more boxes and magazines off the floor under the train tables in my garage, so the floor in there is finally clear.  But now my layout room is even more cluttered with stacks of old magazines, which I need to start recycling, since no one wants them.

On Saturday morning a week ago I met my friend and fellow Boeing Model Railroad Club member, Tim Repp, at the club layout, and we worked for a couple of hours, unloading many boxes of railroad books and putting them onto the eight shelves of the two file cabinets we had moved into a corner of the layout room.  Luckily, all the books just barely fit into the space we had.  We posed for a photo when we had finished:

 

Unfortunately, my work as the club librarian is not done, as I still need to inventory all the books and put them into a spreadsheet.

Tim Fisher sent me some ideas for train storage cabinets that could roll under my layout, so I will check those out.  I also need ideas for how to build one or more cassettes for moving locos and cars on and off the layout at the cassette loading spot in the E yard.

 

This week began with the arrival of a big box from Craig Wisch in Victorville, containing the various parts of the Lime Rock Plant model he had built for me.  I set them up on my lower deck, along with a section of flextrack and a boxcar, and shot a couple of photos.  This is the view from the west end:

 

 

And a view from the east end:

 

I corresponded with Craig about making the Shipping Office wing (on the west end) a lighter shade of gray to more closely match the rest of the plant, and today he sent me the patterns for the roof and walls in a lighter shade, so I will try printing them and pasting them over the existing walls and roof.  

I also got online and ordered a large set of rooftop details for industrial buildings, as I need to add four vents along the top of the Quonset Hut building.  And I sent for the Rix Grain Elevator kit, as I need it for the tower and pipes leading down into the two storage tanks on the east side.

 

On Thursday morning Bill Messecar returned again to help with trackwork and wiring.  He soldered the feeder wires to the new FL Track, and then he prepared and glued ties under the rail joiners in some of the F Yard tracks, as seen here:

 

He said that he plans to build some old La Belle wooden passenger cars for his layout, so I asked him about building a La Belle combine kit that I have for the old passenger carbody that stood just across 6th St. from the depot, and which was a resting place for the swing brakemen, as seen here in a 1960 photo by Nick Muff:

 

Bill said that he'd like to build it for me, as practice before building his own La Belle cars, so he took it home to work on when he finds time.

Today I continued working on cutting and fitting the tracks that lead into the right end of the C Yard, as well as the parallel track AL, which I had worked on while Bill was here.  I got the turnouts all connected into the ladder for the C Yard, as seen here, but the tracks are not yet glued down:

 

I look forward to continuing with the C Yard tracks next week, as well as getting back to the bus wires needed to run the mainlines.

More Diesel Demonstrators for Victorville & Progress on the F Yard, the Reversing Tower, and the Lime Rock Plant

This is the third and final installment covering diesel demonstrators that could have run through Victorville in the postwar decade.  Then we'll look at some layout progress in completing the F Yard, improving the Reversing Tower panel design, and completing the Lime Rock Plant.

One of the diesel demonstrators that could have run through Victorville is EMD E8 #952, which toured the country in late 1949.   Here's a good builder's photo of the unit:

 I have the Proto 2000 HO model of this loco:

 

A couple of Alco RSD-7s, #DL-600 and #DL-601, toured as demonstrators in 1954.  Here is one of them:

 Here's a photo of the other unit:

 Broadway Limited marketed this as a nearly-identical RSD-15, which I have:

In 1951 Fairbanks-Morse demonstrated a passenger C-Liner model CPA-24-5, using a pair of A-units #4801 and #4802.  Here we see them in a color photo:

Here's another photo of the pair:

Division Point made brass models of these, but they were too expensive for me:

EMD demonstrated three SW8 switchers #800, #801, and #105 in late 1950, as seen here:

Here is some artwork depicting #800:

I have the Proto 2000 model of #801:

Here's a demonstrator that (so far) has not been produced as a painted HO model -- the EMD BL2 #499 of 1948:

All I have is an undecorated shell by Proto 2000 and a set of decals.  But there have been two O-scale models, by MTH and by Williams.  Here is the MTH model:

There is one more demonstrator set that I'd like to have someday, which is the first PA-PB pair of units from Alco in 1946.  Here is the only photo I've seen:

The cab was black and the rest was silver or stainless steel.  Here is some color artwork of this first PA-PB pair (#8375 and 8375B), but with a wrong number (#51) in the painting (these did not become the first Santa Fe units):

There has not been any painted HO model of this pair, but I have an undecorated Proto 2000 PA-PB set to paint into this scheme someday.

This concludes my coverage of all of the diesel demonstrators that I hope to run through Victorville someday.  Maybe I've inspired you to include some diesel demonstrators in your roster too.

Now let's turn to whatever layout progress I've accomplished in the last two weeks. 

I failed to accomplish much related to my mainline bus wires (I keep avoiding that job), but I did check off another task for the F Yard, which was to cut and fit and glue down stub-ended Track F6, which completes the F Yard, except for all the wiring.  

Here's a view of the new Track F6, which dead-ends in the lower-right corner and still had the push-pins in it:

 

I measured it as 50" long, but I don't have a particular purpose for it yet -- I just didn't want to leave any plywood table-top space unused!

Part of the week was spent corresponding with Don Borden about a new design for the Reversing Tower control panel.  My goal was to make the track diagram look a lot closer to how the tracks are actually arranged there, so that operators can compare the panel to the tracks and (hopefully) figure out what's what.  

Here's my old red-ink diagram of that part of the staging trackplan:

 

I made several revisions to a new pencil drawing for the Reversing Tower panel, and Don Borden sent me this first attempt at a CAD drawing for this panel (which is quite different from our previous design):

 

 

We began discussing some improvements to make to this first drawing, including adding labels to the turnouts, as we did on the C Tower panel.

But a bigger improvement we were considering was to change the spacing between parallel tracks on the diagram from 1" to 3/4", as we've discovered that the Touch Toggles for crossovers were designed to work with 3/4" track spacings. 

Meanwhile, Craig Wisch in Victorville has set aside his goal of modeling the facades of the buildings along D St., as no museum there has room to display a 10' long HO model like that.  So, lucky for me, he turned his attention back to the mostly-finished Lime Rock Plant.

I bought and sent him the Clevermodels kit S17 for a "tin shed," as I showed here last time, which makes a decent stand-in model for the Shipping Office wing of the plant.  I learned that these cardstock models don't actually come with any cardstock -- they are simply a PDF file that you print to get the images of the sides and rooftop of the building.

So Craig printed and assembled the model and placed it beside the other parts of the plant, as seen here (it's front and center in this photo he sent):

 

Note that he moved the larger Quonset Hut away from the main building, so that its freight door will clear the end of the Shipping Office.  He tried extending the Quonset Hut to fill the gap, but he wasn't happy with the results, so we began considering extending the left wing of the main building to fill that gap, just as it fills the gap between the Shipping Office and the main building.

Craig sent another photo from the other side, which shows the two tanks and their foundation that he had been working on:

 

As I've said before, he's a real wizard with these cardstock models!

I spent Saturday afternoon a week ago helping to move the Boeing Model Railroad Club's books and two large bookcases out of the basement of one of our members and into the club's layout room, after many years of storage.  As the club librarian, it's now my job to get the books onto the shelves and inventoried.

I spent part of the next week moving more junk off the tops of the train tables in our garage, and they were finally clear (on top, not yet underneath), as a friend was planning to visit me the next weekend to see if he wants them for his layout room.

 

Before I got back to work on the layout this week, I spent part of a day at an op session at Bill Messecar's HO Santa Fe layout (he models San Bernardino west to Placentia in the early 1950s).  Two of the operators were Don Hubbard and Colin Kikawa, seen left to right here, beside the San Bernardino B Yard:

 

The other two operators were myself and Bill, as seen here left to right in the foreground beside the town of Riverside:

 

We all went to lunch together when the op session was complete.  It was a fun day.

The next morning Bill visited me, and we worked together on the F Yard again.  I had drilled more holes and inserted more feeder wires beside the rails of each flextrack section and turnout, and Bill soldered over a dozen pairs of wires to the rails very efficiently (practice makes perfect).  He posed for a photo again:

 

He completed all the feeders needed in the F Yard.  Meanwhile, I was on my knees on the opposite side of the peninsula, writing and attaching labels to the bus wires there (I'm still using my cheap masking tape method of making the labels):

 

 

During the week I was also exchanging emails and ideas with Don Borden and Tim Fisher regarding improvements to the Reversing Tower panel drawing.  We agreed to change the track spacing on the panel to 3/4" instead of 1", to make it conform to what the Touch Toggles expect at the crossovers.  We then were able to find space to complete the track loop lines at the left end of the panel.

Here is Don Borden's much-improved panel drawing, as of tonight:

 

Many thanks to Don for his infinite patience with all the changes we ask for!

Craig Wisch, the master of cardstock modeling in Victorville, has been putting the finishing touches on his completed Lime Rock Plant.  At first he put his extra Quonset hut section (which we decided to use after all) at the end, as seen in this trackside view:

 

 

Later he moved the extra section beside the main building, as seen here, and he added a touch of his humor on the end (a removable Alfred E. Newman picture):

 

He is now getting ready to ship all the parts to me, to be put back together when they get here.

On Friday I moved lots of trains and magazines and such from under my old train tables in the garage, but now they are temporarily on top of my layout and on the floor around my layout, so I have a big job ahead to store them under the layout.

My friend Jay Biederman from the Boeing club arrived on Saturday morning to see if he might want the four tables for his layout room, and he does want them (they are free), so we are hoping to move them out a couple of weeks from now, after he makes room in his house.  Jay posed for a photo beside the tables:

 

 

I also gave him a tour of my layout, which he liked.  I'll keep plugging away, bit by bit, hoping to get both of the staging mainlines into operation before too long.