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.