Santa Fe's Steam Freight Locos in Victorville & More Layout Progress at C Tower

This time we will provide links to past blog entries about Santa Fe's steam freight locos, and then we will cover recent layout progress in completing the tangle of turnouts at the C Tower area.

Here's one sample of the Santa Fe steam freight locos we have covered in our past blog entries:

This is a nice shot by Chard Walker, showing #3911 with an eastbound train of reefers, coming into Victorville after descending Cajon Pass:

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

SF 1900 & 1950 2-8-0s – Sep-24-2023

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2023/09/santa-fes-heavy-2-8-0s-in-victorville.html

SF 3100 & 3129 2-8-2s – Oct-3-2021

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2021/10/santa-fes-light-2-8-2-locos-in.html

SF 3160 2-8-2s – Jun-25-2023

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2023/06/santa-fes-3160-class-2-8-2-locos-in.html

SF 4000 2-8-2s – Dec-12-2021

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2021/12/santa-fes-4000-class-2-8-2s-in.html

SF 900 & 1600 2-10-2s – Dec-11-2022

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2022/12/santa-fes-early-2-10-2s-in-victorville.html

SF 3800 2-10-2s – Jan-29-2023

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2023/01/santa-fes-heavy-2-10-2s-in-victorville.html

Here's a sample photo from each of these previous blog entries:

SF 1900 & 1950 2-8-0s – Sep-24-2023

Here's a great photo by Chard Walker, showing #1991 near the depot in Victorville, either working as the local switcher or between jobs as a helper engine:

SF 3100 & 3129 2-8-2s – Oct-3-2021

Here's one of the 3100-class locos, #3119, switching a string of freight cars in Victorville in 1949, as shot by Chard Walker:

SF 3160 2-8-2s – Jun-25-2023

Here we see #3243 with a westbound local freight approaching Summit in June, 1952, thanks to Robert Hale:

SF 4000 2-8-2s – Dec-12-2021

Here's another Chard Walker photo, this time showing #4025 working in Victorville, with the stock pen in the background:

SF 900 & 1600 2-10-2s – Dec-11-2022

Here we see #1626 and #979 pushing on the rear of an eastbound freight at Pine Lodge in June, 1949, in a nice shot by Stan Kistler:

SF 3800 2-10-2s – Jan-29-2023

Chard Walker shot #3895 passing the water tanks in Victorville, where the helpers took on water, turned on the wye, and waited for the next westbound freight to help:

Now let's look at some layout progress over the past two weeks.

I was busy during the week of April 22, making small steps of layout progress, such as adding ties under all the rail joiners for the newest tracks.

And my friend Don Hubbard continued working on the Grandt Line kit for the Standard Oil bulk dealer in Victorville.  He added some paint and some windows and doors and a chimney  -- here's a recent side view:

Meanwhile, Bill Messecar repainted the roof of my Victorville concrete bunkhouse model with standard Santa Fe red roof paint, as seen in a color aerial photo.

Don Borden was kind enough to revise his drawing of the B Yard panel again, to conform to our latest plans and conventions:

My electrical and trackage advisor, Tim Fisher, sent me a lot of notes in reply to my recent questions, so I will be studying those.  They included reminders of what my short-term goals had been last fall, compared to my actual slow progress!

I was busy that week corresponding with my two Victorville experts, Wayne Lawson and Robert Rogers, regarding how to make an accurate model of the "warehouse" building that was adjacent to the "bunkhouse" passenger carbody that Bill Messecar recently built for me.  

The 1925 station plat shows its dimensions as 30' long by 16' wide, which we thought could be two old reefer cabodies side-by-side, with the ice bunkers at both ends removed.  But the Santa Fe failed to include it in their Building Records.

As is often the case, the only photos we've found, other than very distant aerial photos, are very partial views, as railfans were shooting the trains, not the buildings in the background.  

Here's one such view from up on a signal in Victorville, with the swing brakemen's bunkhouse (passenger carbody) and the warehouse in the shadows along the right edge:

The other very partial photo we have shows another corner of the warehouse behind the pilot of Santa Fe steam loco #3896:

From this meager information, Wayne and I set out to come up with some best-guess scale drawings of the warehouse this week.

Bill Messecar had planned to visit and help me with the layout on that Thursday morning, but once again the traffic was backed up by construction, so he had to turn back.  

But I did some layout work before and after his expected visit.  I drilled some holes and inserted some feeder wires by the new sections of Track AL, and I measured and marked with masking tape where all the gaps for the nine steam loco 18"-long parking spots should go along Track S1.

Later I filed the plastic spikes off lots of loose ties and squeezed them under all the rail joiners along the new tracks and the tracks in the right half of the C Yard.  Here's an April 28 view of the left half of the scene with the newest side tracks that curve around the future turntable area:

And turning to the right from the same spot, this was a view of the right half of the same scene:

At that time I hadn't yet glued down the tangle of turnouts at C Tower, which you can see along the right edge of this photo.  

Last time I said I'd have to move one of those turnouts so its switch machine will clear the adjacent track, but I found that it has to stay where it is to preserve the geometry of the crossover.  Instead, I need to learn how to mount the switch machine in a different location or reverse the throw bar, or both.

I got a few more things done this week, thanks to a Friday visit by Bill Messecar and some remote work by Don Hubbard and by Wayne Lawson.

When Bill arrived on Friday morning, he returned to me a pre-built model of a standard Santa Fe concrete bunkhouse, but with the roof now repainted a red color to match a color postcard view of Victorville.  

I later arranged the model on my lower deck, with various tool houses and Bill's model scene of the section houses and water tanks in the background:

Later I compared this to a rare view by Bill Henry from a diesel cab in 1947, as found on page 153 of Chard Walker's "Cajon - Rail Passage to the Pacific":

The concrete bunkhouse is on the far left in this photo, farther back from the tracks than I had placed it in my model photo.  

On the far right edge of the above photo, we can also see the end of the freight carbody that Wayne Lawson and I have been studying.  Last week I called it the "warehouse," but since then I learned that the 16x30' warehouse shown on the 1925 station plat was no longer there in the postwar years.  

Instead, a 9x34' freight carbody was there, and it was attached to the adjacent passenger carbody with a raised platform.  For now, we're calling the freight carbody the "storehouse."

I talked with Don Sheets again yesterday, but he still doesn't recall this storehouse, which was apparently removed in 1954.  He did mention again the local switcher crew's caboose, which was permanently parked near there, and I think we can see the end of it just to the left of the water column in the above photo.  

Don said the caboose was later moved across the tracks from the depot, and I found that I had shot that caboose (#1544) when I was there in March, 1971:

But going back to Bill Messecar's visit on Friday, I prepared for his visit by drilling holes and inserting a dozen or more feeder wires for the tangle of turnouts at C Tower, which I had glued down in the meantime.  I had also inserted ties under nearby rail joiners in the C yard and into more tracks of the F Yard.  

I posed for a photo while inserting the feeder wires:

After Bill arrived, I shot another action photo of him as he soldered the feeder wires to the rails:

After Bill finished all that soldering, he also glued down the next two sections of flextracks that run left of the turnouts, for Tracks C1 and C2.

My local friend Don Hubbard reports that he is now working on making the sign board that ran along the roof peak of the Standard Oil bulk dealer.  We have plans for that sign, thanks to a modeling article that Wayne Lawson found in a 1996 issue of Railmodel Journal:

I've been corresponding daily with Wayne as he works on scale drawings for the freight carbody (the storehouse) that stood in Victorville adjacent to the passenger carbody (the bunkhouse for swing brakemen).  He hoped to have some detailed drawings ready today, but he just now reported that his computer has lost all the work he has done, so he will have to start all over next week!

In place of that, here is his first rough drawing of the storehouse carbody from earlier this week:

In other news, I need to get busy and learn to attach and wire Touch Toggles to my C Tower panel, as I'm scheduled to give a talk about my layout and my use of Touch Toggles for the East Coast Santa Fe Modelers meeting on June 15.  

I'm now contacting Kevin Hunter, who sells the toggles at Berrett Hill Shops, about buying a few more of them, as the panel grew more complex since last summer when I bought a set of them.

Also, I want to thank Tim Fisher for the lengthy and detailed advice he has been sending me this week about cutting gaps in my curved tracks and about the future wiring of my Walthers 130' turntable.

If you can also help me in any way, either in person or by building a model remotely, please let me know.