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.