Santa Fe's Passenger Diesels in Victorville & Wiring Some Tracks & Revising Some Control Panels

I will continue creating links into past blog entries about the locomotives seen in Victorville during the postwar decade.  This time the locos will be Santa Fe's passenger diesels, such as this one:

Here's a Chard Walker photo of a set of eastbound PAs (#54) on the curve at Pine Lodge, heading toward Summit and then Victorville:

 

After we review the Santa Fe passenger diesels, I'll cover a little more progress on the layout, involving wiring some tracks and revising some control panels.

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

SF E-Units, DL-109 – Jun-5-2023

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2023/06/santa-fes-e-units-and-dl-109-in.html

SF Passenger FTs – Jan-9-2022

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2022/01/santa-fes-passenger-ft-diesels-in.html

SF PA-1s – May-29-2022

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2022/05/santa-fes-pa-diesels-in-victorville-and.html

SF Passenger F3s – Sep-11-2022

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2022/09/santa-fes-passenger-f3s-in-victorville.html

SF Erie-Builts – Sep-6-2021

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2021/09/santa-fes-fm-erie-built-locos-in.html

SF Passenger F7s – Mar-12-2023

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2023/03/santa-fes-passenger-f7-diesels-in.html

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

SF E-Units, DL-109 – Jun-5-2023 

Some Victorville E-units were the E6s (#12-15, some with B units), which pulled passenger trains through Victorville into 1946, as seen here in Victorville with #13 pulling the eastbound El Capitan in Jan. 1946, thanks to Fletcher Swan:

 

In April of 1952 R.P. Middlebrook photographed Alco DL-109 #50 at the San Bernardino depot:

SF Passenger FTs – Jan-9-2022

Here is FT set #159 rounding the curve at Cajon with the eastbound Grand Canyon Limited, as shot by Chard Walker in Sep. 1948:

SF PA-1s – May-29-2022

Jack Whitmeyer shot westbound PA set #52 at the San Bernardino depot with the Fast Mail:

SF Passenger F3s – Sep-11-2022

Here we see F3 set #26 with the eastbound Grand Canyon at Sullivan's Curve in July, 1950, thanks to Jack Whitmeyer:

SF Erie-Builts – Sep-6-2021

The only photo I've seen of Erie-Built set #90 at Victorville is this one by Chard Walker in the late 1940s, as the 3-unit loco comes eastbound toward the Upper Narrows and into Victorville with a passenger train:

SF Passenger F7s – Mar-12-2023

Chard Walker shot F7 ABB set #301 with the eastbound Grand Canyon approaching Summit:

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

Before the arrival of Bill Messecar on Thursday, March 14, I got busy marking with masking tape where the loco parking spot boundaries will be (usually 30" apart) in the tracks of the E Yard and in the right half of the C Yard. 

I also drilled holes for where the new feeder wires will go, both for the new tracks in the C Yard and for the loco parking spots.  Then I cut and stripped and inserted the new feeder wires, as seen here by the right half of the C Yard:

When Bill arrived on that Thursday morning, he got to work soldering the new feeder wires to the rails, as seen here by the E Yard:

Note the portable tray table of soldering supplies that we move from place to place around the layout.  Later I took him out to lunch, and we discussed what will become of his large Santa Fe layout and his trains when he and his wife move into a condo about a year from now (sad!).

Meanwhile, Don Borden made the first CAD drawings of two new panels, based on the pencil drawings I posted here last time.  Here is his first drawing of the tracks in the right half of the A Yard:

And here is his first drawing of the tracks in the B Yard (which is a stub-ended yard):

Both of these panels are likely to see a few minor changes, as we study them.

Don also did a revision of A-B Tower, but I'll omit that version, because the panels are still under review.  Tim Fisher wrote and pointed out a number of inconsistencies between the adjacent panels, so I went back to the drawing board and proposed some fairly major changes to the main panels, including merging the C Yard - Right panel into the main C Tower panel.

I sent out a new pencil drawing of C Tower and red-ink markups of the related panels, thinking I had solved the problems, but Tim Fisher came back again to point out some new problems that I still needed to solve.  So the saga of the panel revisions will continue into the coming weeks!

This was my first pencil drawing of my proposed revision to the C Tower panel:

Back in Victorville, my friend and cardstock wizard, Craig Wisch, has completed an S-scale model of the famous Barrel House Liquor Store that still stands at the corner of 5th and D Streets, across D Street from the BNSF mainline.  Here's one of the views that he sent me, showing his completed model:

Congratulations to Craig as he continues to model various Victorville buildings for his own pleasure.

This week I was occupied by three short model railroad car trips, so my only layout progress was to keep on revising my control panels, trying to get them right.

My first trip was on Monday, when my wife and I drove north to Mukilteo to visit my brass loco painter, Gary Jordan.  He posed for me beside part of his On3 model railroad:

I left him with four more Santa Fe brass steam locos to paint and/or letter, and I picked up my Westside Fleetwood set of "Santa Fe's Big Three," which he had painted and tested for me during the winter months. 

I had him paint the 3460-class 4-6-4 as #3464 (the loco that came west over Cajon Pass), and the 5001-class 2-10-4 as #5005 (a loco that records show went west one day, maybe as far as Barstow or beyond), and the 2900-class 4-8-4 as #2929, which was Chard Walker's favorite loco, seen frequently on Cajon Pass.  Here's the painted model of #2929:

My wife and I love our trips to Mukilteo, where we stop to have fish & chips and walk along the beach.

On Wednesday I drove to the Boeing Employees Model Railroad Club in Burien to meet Tim Repp and to work together on the club library again.  We got though about four more shelves of books this time, as Tim read each title and organized it on the shelf, while I wrote down each title and author.  My job at home will be to type all these books into the club library spreadsheet.

During the week I was in constant email contact with Don Borden and Tim Fisher, as we made more revisions to several control panels, critiqued them for improvements, and then submitted the changes to Don, who seems to have infinite patience with the process.

Here is one of the pencil diagrams I drew to help us understand the complex tangle of trackwork at the entrances to the A Yard, B Yard, and C Yard:

These proposed blocks and gaps are still being revised.  Tim Fisher has a great eye for how to improve the flow of locos and trains through all of these tracks.

Recently I cut and taped a panel revision together, to show where I thought the tracks and labels should go on the revised A-B Tower, because my markups with red ink were getting too messy.  Here's my first attempt to use the cut-and-tape method to revise a panel:

Bill Messecar has completed his model of the passenger carbody that stood in Victorville, just across 6th Street from the depot.  We have heard that this was a resting place for Santa Fe brakemen.  Bill was able to modify the La Belle wood combine kit to get the windows and doors to match the photos you have seen here previously.

Here is the south side of the building model, which will face the aisle:

And here is the north side, facing away from the aisle:

I am totally thrilled with the wonderful work that Bill has done on this model.  I plan to visit him and pick it up tomorrow.

Today my third car trip was back to the Boeing Club to help us host a session of Sound Rails, which is an annual event, when model railroaders come from all around to operate trains on various layouts.  I got a photo of club president Byron Osborn (pointing) as he was showing some the operators around the towns on our large club layout:

I was happy to see that the large roundhouse built by our late, great Warren Castelluccio has now been installed by the turntable, as seen here:

 

Sadly, I still made no progress on the bus wires nor the upgrades to the Lime Rock Plant, so those are still on my to-do list.  But I have been busy starting to create a clinic presentation for the local NW Santa Fe Mini-Meet on April 13, featuring Santa Fe's Postwar Chicago-LA passenger trains.

John

Union Pacfic's Freight and Helper Diesels in Victorville & More Control Panels and C Yard Tracks

Last time I began creating links into past blog entries about the locomotives seen in Victorville during the postwar decade, so I will continue with that now.  This time the locos will be Union Pacific's freight diesels and helper diesels, such as this one:

Here we see a GP9 ABBA set, led by #147, as it descends with a freight through Keenbrook in May of 1956, thanks to John Shaw:

After the UP diesels, I'll cover some recent layout progress involving more control panel designs and more tracks being laid down in the C Yard.

Here's a list of links that should take you to any of the past blog entries for Union Pacific's freight diesels and helper diesels:

UP FA-FBs – Dec-26-2021

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2021/12/ups-alco-fa-fb-diesels-in-victorville.html

UP H20-44s – Apr-17-2022

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2022/04/ups-h20-44-diesels-in-victorville-and.html

UP F3-F7s – Aug 20-2023

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2023/08/ups-f3-f7-diesels-in-victorville-more.html

UP TR5s – Oct-30-2022

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2022/10/ups-tr5-diesels-in-victorville-and.html

UP GP7-GP9s – Apr-9-2023

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2023/04/ups-gp7s-and-gp9s-in-victorville.html

UP Unusual Diesel Helpers – Oct-8-2023

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2023/10/ups-unusual-diesel-helpers-in.html

UP First Gas Turbines – May-15-2022

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2022/05/ups-first-gas-turbines-in-victorville.html

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

UP FA-FBs – Dec-26-2021

Here is UP FA-FB set #1603 climbing the grade westbound at Frost, just after leaving Victorville, as shot by Frank Peterson in Oct. 1950:

UP H20-44s – Apr-17-2022

Here we see #1360 and a partner returning light to San Bernardino (along with some Santa Fe FT helpers) while an eastbound Santa Fe steam loco works upgrade out of town, thanks to Chard Walker:

UP F3-F7s – Aug 20-2023

Here's a set of freight F3s, led by #1404, with an eastbound freight at Alray in March of 1948, as shot by Tom Hotchkiss:

UP TR5s – Oct-30-2022

Here's an early color photo of D.S. 1870 at Summit, as shot by Chard Walker:

UP GP7-GP9s – Apr-9-2023

Here we see GP7s  #119 &114 helping a set of PAs with an eastbound passenger train entering Summit, thanks to John Munson:

UP Unusual Diesel Helpers – Oct-8-2023

A UP loco type that was in short-term helper service on Cajon Pass was the EMD SD7 roadswitcher.  The UP acquired ten of these in June, 1953, numbered #775-784.  Here is Jack Whitmeyer's color photo of #783 in San Bernardino in Aug. 1953:

UP First Gas Turbines – May-15-2022

Here's a Chard Walker photo of double-ended gas turbine #50 and its caboose in Victorville:

This completes our summary of past blog posts about UP's freight diesels and helper diesels.

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

I made a little progress each week on the tracks in the C Yard of the staging deck.  

 

I also spent some time reading and watching videos about how to do cardstock modeling on my own, as Craig Wisch has turned his attention to modeling some Victorville buildings for himself in S scale.  I was hoping to start adding a new paper rooftop and new wall coverings to the Shipping Office wing of his Lime Rock Plant model, but that has not happened yet.  Building the Rix grain elevator kit for the plant has slipped too.

On Saturday a week ago I met Tim Repp at the Boeing club again, and we got to work doing an inventory of all the books the club has.  We found my old spreadsheet of the books the club had years ago, so we'll use that as the starting point.  We got through two shelves of books this time, so we'll have to have many more work sessions to get all the books added in, and I'll have to work on entering them at home too.

Also, I was able to find the March 1966 issue of RMC in the club's library, so I made a copy of a photo of the south side of the old passenger carbody, which Bill Messecar is beginning to build for me from my old La Belle wooden combine kit.  Here is the south side, which is quite different from the north side we saw last time (and note the depot across 6th Street in the distance):

 

While at the club, I also picked up a very large box with a Walthers 130' turntable, which I'm buying used from the club for my staging deck (recall that there will be a Turntable Tower panel near there).

Don Borden spent part of that week helping me by upgrading three panels for the C Yard area, using the new track spacing of 3/4" and our new label conventions.  Here is his new panel for the C Tower:

 

There will be two nearby sub-panels for just the yard tracks, which will be mostly broken into parking spaces for diesel sets (except for through Tracks C1 and C10).

Here's the new panel for C Yard - Right:

And here's the adjacent panel for C Yard - Left:

Many thanks to Don Borden for the endless work he puts into these panel upgrades!

A weekend ago I got to work on adding more flextrack sections to Tracks C1, C2, and C3 in the right half of the C yard, as well as the adjacent Track AL, which is unrelated to the C Yard but happens to run alongside it, due to a support post that gets in its way otherwise.  I soldered four new track sections onto the old ones before curving them to follow their roadbeds, as seen here:

Later I glued them down to their roadbeds using caulk and pushpins and water bottle weights, as usual.  Here's a later view from the other direction, looking along the new tracks as they curve around the bend in the C Yard (some of the caulk had not yet dried clear):

From left to right in this photo, we see the double-track mainlines, then Tracks C1, C2, C3, and unrelated Track AL, which curves beside C3 to avoid that support post.

The big event of this past week was an op session at the layout of Steve Shores in Puyallup, WA.  On Wednesday morning I drove south to Bill Messecar's home, and he then drove me and Colin Kikawa to Steve's HO layout, where we met Don Hubbard and a couple of Steve's usual operators.  

The layout fills two basement rooms, is completely scenicked, and runs well.  It represents a freelanced railroad in the Northwest in the 1950s, with GN and NP shared trackage.  Here's one of the photos I shot, showing the engine house and turntable area, with Steve visible in the next aisle over:

 

I bid on an easy job, so I got to assemble a freight in the staging yard (using car cards with waybills) and then run it around the long mainline a couple of times before parking it in the main freight yard.  The power was an NP 2-8-2 with sound.  You can see the train here on Track 3 in staging before it left town: 

My next job was to run a GN passenger train with a 4-6-4 with sound, as seen above on Track 7.  My final job was to run an RDC around a couple of times, stopping at all the stations.  We left Steve's at about 12:15 and headed out to lunch before heading home.  It was a very fun day!

Meanwhile, I corresponded all week with Don Borden and Tim Fisher about the designs for the next control panels.  Here is Don's latest version of A-B Tower, but there are still a few things to fix, such as the label in the upper left that should refer to the A Yard - Right panel:

 

As you can see, this is a very crowded junction, with two double-slip switches in a row to get trains in or out of the A Yard.

I spent some time making a pencil drawing of the related panel for the A Yard - Right panel, which will look roughly like this:

 

This drawing shows an on-off button for each yard track, but then Tim Fisher pointed out that we don't need those, as the locos will be parked elsewhere (such as in the C Yard).

I also made a pencil drawing for the B Yard panel, which will look something like this:

 

Again., the on-off buttons for the yard tracks won't be needed, as the locos will be stored elsewhere.

Don Borden will be working on all three new panels this week, as he finds time.  He is a treasure!

This weekend I got back to work on laying more of the tracks in the C Yard (namely C1, C2, and C3), where they round the curve and run up to a tangle of turnouts.  I soldered a couple more flextracks together before curving them, and then I cut and fit smaller sections to meet up with the turnouts at the left end of each track.  After I spread caulk under them, I used water bottles again to press them down:

 

Later I shot a photo from the other end of that section (the push-pins are still in place), with the temporary turnouts in the foreground:

It's always a struggle to get the tracks cut to just the right length to meet the turnouts!

Meanwhile, Bill Messecar has continued building a very nice model of the old passenger carbody that stood in Victorville for the swing brakemen to rest in, using the La Belle kit I gave him.  He plans to visit me next week, so that will motivate me to get my tracks ready for him.

Sadly, I made no progress on the bus wires nor the upgrades to the Lime Rock Plant, so those are still on my to-do list.  There are never enough hours in the week!

If you can help in any way, in person or by building models remotely, please let me know.