This time we will provide links to past blog entries about Union Pacific's passenger diesel locos, and then we will cover recent layout progress in connecting Touch Toggles for the C Tower panel.
Here's one sample of the UP passenger diesel locos we have covered in our past blog entries:
Here is PA-1 #605 with a mixed PA-PB-Erie set being helped eastbound up Cajon Pass by a 4-10-2, as shot by Chard Walker:
Here's a list of links that should take you to any of the past blog entries for UP's passenger diesel locos:
Here's a sample photo from each of these previous blog entries:
UP E2s, E3s, E6s – Nov-19-2023
Here we see E6 #957A leading two more E units through Summit with the westbound LA Limited in 1947, thanks to Malcolm Gaddis:
UP Erie-Builts – Aug-28-2022
Here we see unit 702 with trailing PB and PA units westbound through the Upper Narrows of Victorville, as shot by Fletcher Swan circa 1950:
UP E7s – Feb-20-2022
Two of UP's E7s, A units 930A and 931A, came with blank red banners when new. Chard Walker shot 931A and a B unit leaving Victorville through the Upper Narrows in 1947:
UP PA-1s – Nov-27-2022
The UP mixed their PA and PB units together as needed. Here is a PA-PB-PB set #602 passing the Victorville Lime Rock plant with a westbound passenger train in 1953, as shot by Don Sims from up on the Rainbow Bridge approach:
UP F3, F7s – Aug 20-2023
Here we see passenger F3 set led by #967A with the westbound Pony Express at Mission Tower, LA, in Jan. 1948, thanks to Jack Woods:
UP E8s, E9s – Jan-15-2023
Here's a mid-to-late 1950s UP publicity photo of E9 #949 and trailing units leading the eastbound City of St. Louis around Sullivan's Curve:
UP Aerotrain – Oct-17-2021
Here's the train at Summit after the helper has cut off and backed into the engine track (hidden behind the train):
I have a variety of layout projects to report on again this time.
During the week of May 6, I got all the ties inserted under all the rail joiners of the C Tower tangle of turnouts. When Bill Messecar was here over a week earlier, he had glued down two flextrack sections to the left of the turnouts, for Tracks C1 and C4.
Later I pinned down (but didn't glue) the third flextrack section along Track CR (the right lead track into most of the C Yard) and shot a photo looking from the turnouts toward the three new tracks:
Don Hubbard has been making progress on the Standard Oil bulk dealer building, but he hasn't sent a recent photo.
Craig Wisch in Victorville is now interested in building the Hayward Lumber building that stood between the depot area and the Peterson Feed Store, so that's great news. Wayne Lawson has sent us his scale drawings to use, and here's our best photo of the building (from an old high school yearbook):
As with the Peterson Feed model, we'll have to compress it to make it fit my space.
I corresponded all week with Wayne Lawson as he refined his drawings of the freight carbody (storage building) that was connected by a raised platform to the adjacent passenger carbody (the bunkhouse for swing brakemen). We've decided to go back to calling it the "warehouse." Here are Wayne's final drawings, first showing the side views:
And now the end views:
Wayne added a few vertical boards to each view to indicate the type of siding on the building. Bill Messecar has expressed some interest in building this carbody for me, when he finds some time.
My new activity this week was to try out all the Touch Toggles for the C Tower panel, which I had bought from Kevin Hunter at Berrett Hill Shop almost a year ago. On Friday I had a good phone conversation with Kevin about getting started on using the toggles in a panel, and about several additional parts I will need, as the panel drawing is a little more complex than a year ago.
On Saturday I took the plunge, unpacked all the devices, and began attaching them with double-sided tape to the face of a sheet of paper with the C Tower drawing. In real life, the toggles will be attached to the back side of the drawing, not the front, of course, with the toggle lights shining through the paper.
My first steps were to attach the toggles for the rows of buttons that select among three cabs to be assigned to each DC block. The other end of each toggle wire plugged into a device that does the radio-button logic, and that plugged into a base unit, and the base units all connected together in a row and then to a 12 V power supply, as seen below:
I realized then that I will need some sort of board to hold all the devices you see to the right of the panel. Besides all the wires already there, there will need to wires from three power packs (one for each of the three cabs) and then bus wires running out to each of the four track blocks controlled by this panel.
The second part of my project was to attach all the toggles for controlling all the powered turnouts on the panel. To keep them separated from the cab control wires, I ran these wires to the left of the panel and plugged them into the two bases, which plugged into each other and then to a 24 V power supply, which is in the upper left of this photo:
The one black toggle you see in the center-left of the panel is the "third-light indicator" for the crossover turnouts, which could show (for example) that both through tracks are green and the crossover track is red. There's another crossover in the upper left of the panel that still needs a toggle and an indicator, and there are four loco parking spots in the upper center that need on-off toggles, which I don't have yet.
These base devices on the left of the panel will also need three wires to each powered Atlas turnout controlled from this panel. And they'll need some board of board to hold them all in place.
Tim Fisher and Don Borden have been offering advice on this panel project, which is very helpful to me.
I got just a few things accomplished this week. On Tuesday I phoned Kevin Hunter at Berrett Hill Shop with more questions about Touch Toggles. We put together an order for the new components I will need to complete the C Tower Panel (which Don Borden is updating for me).
He also advised me to buy some E6000 glue for attaching 3D-printed parts (like the short legs under the circuit boards) and some sheets of polyester batting to fill in the back side of each panel, so I found those in local stores.
When the new Touch Toggles arrived in the mail, I set them out (along with the batting and the glue) for a photo beside the panel:
I will open these and figure out how to attach and connect them in the coming days. Also, I will try turning on the toggle lights to see how they show through the panel diagram.
My friend Don Hubbard continues to work on the Grandt Line warehouse model that we are using for Standard Oil. In the meantime, I drew a plan for where various structures will go on the 10" wide by 11" deep lot that we'e allocating for the bulk oil dealer:
I figured out that I can use the pumphouse and the truck loading station from the Walthers Interstate Fuel & Oil kit that I have. If I model the truck garage, it will be on the lot to the right, by the carbody operators' houses that were along the tracks there.
In the real Victorville, Craig Wisch is already making good progress on building the Hayward Lumber building for me, using cardstock. We had to eliminate the wings on the right side and on he rear, but the essential look of that large structure is being preserved. Here's an early photo of Craig's progress:
Back on my layout, I was preparing for a visit by Bill Messecar on Thursday by pinning down some turnouts and flextracks for the left half of the C Yard.
In this part of the layout, there is no more cork roadbed for locating the tracks, as it's just a vast expanse of sheet cork from now on. So I had to measure some x-y coordinates from the nearest edges of the benchwork to locate the turnouts per the track plan.
Here is what that yard (the tracks with all the pins) looked like at that point:
The next step was going to be to trace the edges of the six tracks in pencil before cutting them to length, connecting them, and gluing them down with caulk. But Bill had to cancel due to a long night at a Rolling Stones concert (as an usher, not a rocker).
So we'll continue with the left half of the C Yard another time. This yard will be nothing but 30" parking spaces for sets of diesels.
Today I spent the afternoon at a fun operating session at Bill's layout. I was paired with a new visitor, Joe Schram from Vancouver, WA, who is also a Santa Fe modeler. Together we made lots of switching moves with the Riverside Turn.
Here's a photo of us by Riverside:
Most of next week will be spent with Bill Messecar on a road trip to and from the NMRA Pacific Northwest Region convention in Surrey, BC, Canada. It should be fun.
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