Rare and Demonstrator Locos in Victorville, & Slow Layout Progress

This time I'll provide links to past blog entries about rare and demonstrator locos, and then I'll cover some slow progress on building my layout.

Here's one sample of the rare locos we have covered in our past blog entries:

A rare Cajon Pass loco was Santa Fe 2-8-2 #1798, which was sometimes seen as a helper.  Chard Walker got a good color shot of it in Victorville in the late 1940s:

Here's a list of links that should take you to any of the past blog entries for rare and demonstrator locos:

Santa Fe’s Rare Steam Locos – Dec-3-2023

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2023/12/santa-fes-rare-steam-locos-in.html

Short Line Locos – Dec-17-2023

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2023/12/short-line-locos-near-victorville.html

Southern Pacific Locos – Jul-31-2022

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2022/07/sps-locos-in-victorville-and-laying.html

Some Diesel Demonstrators – Jan-14-2024

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2024/01/some-demonstrator-diesels-in.html

Possible Diesel Demonstrators – Jan-28-2024

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2024/01/possible-diesel-demonstrators-in.html

More Diesel Demonstrators – Feb-11-2024

https://victorvillelayout.blogspot.com/2024/02/more-diesel-demonstrators-for.html

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

Santa Fe’s Rare Steam Locos – Dec-3-2023

A very rare steam loco is Santa Fe's big 2-10-4 #5025, which came west through Victorville to participate in the AAR rail stress tests at Cajon in Nov. 1947.  Here we see it in action on the curve at Cajon, thanks to a Santa Fe photo:

Short Line Locos – Dec-17-2023

Here we see Mojave Northern #3 with some loaded rock cars in action in Dec. 1958, during a railfan event:

Southern Pacific Locos – Jul-31-2022

On Jan. 16, 1952, four more SP passenger trains were detoured over Cajon Pass, including the westbound West Coast, pulled by cab-forward 4-8-8-2 #4268, as shot at Summit by Chard Walker (a masterpiece):

Some Diesel Demonstrators – Jan-14-2024

We'll focus this time on the diesel demonstrators that we know visited the Victorville and Cajon Pass areas.  Here's a first look at Alco FPA-2 demonstrator ABBA set #1602 on the SP in Soledad Canyon in c.1950:

Possible Diesel Demonstrators – Jan-28-2024

Let's begin with EMD's F7 ABA demonstrator set (#1950) that toured the country in 1950:

More Diesel Demonstrators – Feb-11-2024

In 1951 Fairbanks-Morse demonstrated a passenger C-Liner model CPA-24-5, using a pair of A-units #4801 and #4802.  Here we see them in a color photo:

Next I will cover some slow progress on building my layout.

It's been three weeks since I wrote a blog entry, because I lost a week when some of the keys stopped working on my old laptop, which I had to replace with a modern one, where nothing works the same.  It's so frustrating!  Then I lost a lot of the second week with cable TV problems, with many online chats and two long visits by repair technicians.  Not to mention all the springtime yard work.

But I did have a helpful visit by Bill Messecar on Thursday, June 27, when we worked together on laying down the long stub track named C4, which is for parking multiple diesel sets someday.  Before he arrived, I had traced pencil lines along the outside of the ties on the sheet cork, so that we could accurately place the flextrack sections after spreading caulk between the lines.

Here we see Bill after he had glued down most of track C4 and placed water bottle weights along the track:

I finished the far end of the track by crawling into the center pop-up area of the main peninsula.  On the previous day I had cut an extra piece of sheet cork and painted it gray to fit between the posts at the end of C4, so the track could run a little farther to the edge. I posed with the putty knife after spreading more caulk for the last section of C4:

Later I filled down some loose ties and glued them under the several rail joiners along track C4, which is the long, left track in this photo:

The tracks to the right of C4, with the push-pins (tracks C3 and C2 and others), have not been glued down yet.

Meanwhile, I've been working on a design for mounting the control panels along the edges of the lower deck.  

At each panel location there will be the control panel itself (full of Touch Toggles), hinged at the top to rotate up to near horizontal when in use, and behind that will be a "base board," where all the base units that control the Touch Toggles will be attached.  Here's a photo showing how the base units will be arranged on a 10" x 16" base board, in the lower half of the photo:

The pencil line halfway down is where the 20" x 16" board will be cut in half, and above that line we see a couple of power units that will be mounted on the back side of the base board, to power the rows of base units on the front side.

Here's my pencil drawing showing (on the left) a front view of the base board with its base units (similar to the photo above), and showing (on the right) a control panel hanging in front of its base board:

Note that each one hangs from two hinges, but at different levels beneath the plywood layout top.

The side view is quite complex, as both panels have to be able to rotate up to near horizontal when needed, and the control panel also needs to rotate farther up to 180 degrees to access the back of the panel if any Touch Toggles need to be changed.  The bus wires also need space under the layout frame board, and the feeder wires to the tracks need space, and the touch toggle wires from inside the control panel need space to get to the base units, and the wires from the base units to the tracks also need space.  

Here's the side view for my design:

The key to making this work is to add some small hinge boards that space the hinges properly so that the panels can rotate.  The control panel has two hinges, each mounted to a small hinge board, and the base board has its own two hinges, attached to somewhat longer hinge boards, to allow space for the bus wires to run above the hinge points.

I will be testing some "friction hinges" for the control panel, so that it will stay at whatever angle the operator moves it to, just as the lid of a laptop computer stays where you rotate it to.  The base board can probably do without the friction hinges, as it will rarely need to rotate up to horizontal, and a stick of the right height could be used to prop it up when needed.

Craig Wisch in Victorville is completing his beautiful cardstock model of the Hayward Lumber store and will be shipping it to me soon.  We've also been having many email discussions about the possibility of that he might also build a model of the Santa Fe Hotel that was straight across the tracks from the depot.  Here's a close up from a larger shot that Jack Delano made as he rode a train through Victorville in 1943:

I've sent Craig the Sanborn map of the hotel area, along with quite a few aerial photos from different years and angles.

My only real progress on the layout this past week was to mark where Track C4 (a long storage track for parking diesel sets) will be divided into five sub-blocks (four are 30" long and one is 22" long), and then to drill holes for all the feeder wires and to insert the feeders, ready to be soldered to the rails (by Bill Messecar this coming Wednesday).

Some of these feeder locations are 36" to 48" from the nearest layout edge, where they will connect to bus wires, so I hope that will not be a problem for the current through these long 22 ga. feeder wires.

Here's a new photo of Track C4, shot from where the track dead-ends, showing the masking tape markers and stripped feeder wires sticking out all along the length of the track:

When Bill arrives on Wednesday, he plans to bring along our long-time friend Don Hubbard, who has not yet visited the layout during the four years it has been under construction.

Speaking of Don, he has been completing several additional structures for the 11x11" Standard Oil lot.  He made the three horizontal oil tanks from PVC tubes, and he used parts from the Walthers Interstate Fuel & Oil kit for the tank pedestals.  He also built more parts from the kit -- the standpipe (which we will save for the propane dealer instead, as the oil was not unloaded from the tank car domes), and the pump house, and the truck filling station.

Here is Don's recent photo of all of these completed parts (except the standpipe):

I was very excited to see all these parts being completed for the scene.  I also sent for a wood kit so I can later build a narrow (1 1/4" wide) loading dock to attach to the right side of the main warehouse building, so that oil drums can be unloaded there from boxcars.

As for the control panels, I'm still waiting to receive the extra toggle wires and parts from Kevin Hunter.  There was a delay in shipping them.  

Don Borden recommended that I should use one long hinge (called a piano hinge) instead of two hinges for rotating a panel, so I plan to send for samples that are also friction hinges, which should hold the panel at the angle that the operator rotates it up to.

Craig Wisch in Victorville has not yet ventured out to ship the completed Hayward Lumber store to me, due to the extreme heat there.  He is becoming more interested now in building the two-story Santa Fe hotel for me, so that is great news.  Here is part of my layout drawing showing where the hotel will be located, directly across the tracks from the depot:

The hotel dates back to the 1920s and earlier (1904), when it was named the Lark Hotel.  Here's a very early photo of the hotel, when most of the Victorville was still on the river side of the tracks:

The rest of my week was spent trying the clear out all the aisles around the layout and some of the junk on top of the layout, so that I can give Don Hubbard a proper tour when he arrives.