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.