UP's 1954-1956 City of LA Train in Victorville & Slow Layout Progress

In a previous entry we covered the Union Pacific's 1950-1954 City of Los Angeles train, so this time we'll visit the UP's 1954-1956 version of the train, when it had acquired its dome cars and more E8 diesels  Then we'll cover some slow progress in wiring my layout, and some help with models of Victorville buildings.

First, here's a color photo of UP's E8s with the City of Los Angeles train (see the full caption by Jeff Koeller below the photo):

This slightly down-on view shows No. 103, the westbound City of Los Angeles, running on 3-Track near Harriman, Wyo., on April 10, 1954. This new 42-mile line, opened for traffic on May 5, 1953, reduced the maximum ascending grade to 0.82 percent and allowed passenger trains such as this to surmount Sherman Hill without the use of a helper engine. 

Headed up by a 4,500 horsepower set of E8s, 926 and 926B, this day’s 14-car consist includes a 1953-built AC&F baggage-express car (note the multiple roof vents), a 1949 AC&F baggage-dormitory, two 44-seat Leg Rest coaches (either P-S or AC&F), a 1949 AC&F cafe-lounge, followed by two Coast-To-Coast sleeping cars (a Pennsy 10-6 in tuscan red and a UP Pacific-class 10-6 from the NYC), then a 1949 AC&F diner, a club car (probably LA-701, formerly Little Nugget), along with five trailing cars (four sleepers and an obs-lounge car).  Jack Pfeifer photo.

Here is a very helpful table created by Jeff Koeller, giving the COLA consist as of March,1955, followed by some footnotes:

Here now are more photos of the COLA train, supplied by UP researcher Jeff Koeller, followed by the captions he wrote.

Photographer Pfeifer was on hand the next day, April 11, 1954, to record E8 937 and a 1953-built sister unit (note the Farr-Air grills on both engines) in charge of another westbound COLA No. 103 consist about two miles east of Perkins, Wyo. (Mile Post 549.3). 

The location can be identified by eastward CTC signal No. 5474 at the right. UP signals are numbered within the nearest mile post to the east, making this location just west of M.P. 547. The last digit on the signal number is an “even” number for eastward trains (the westbound train pictured is governed by the signal shown just above the rear of the lead unit). 

The consist includes a 1942 5603-series baggage-express car (note the side sill step “notches” in the 4-inch replacement skirt), a 1949 AC&F baggage-dormitory, a pair of P-S or AC&F Leg Rest coaches, and a 1949 AC&F cafe-lounge ahead of the Coast-To-Coast sleepers (a UP Pacific-class sleeper from the PRR and a New York Central 10-6 in “eastern” Two-Tone gray). Jack Pfeifer photo.

C&NW E7 5017A and a matching E7 mate have No. 104, the City of Los Angeles, rolling eastward on the center track at the restricted speed of 60 MPH as the train negotiates the 4 1/2” super-elevated curve about a half mile west of Glen Ellyn, Illinois, in mid-1955. 

The first car is a 1953 AC&F baggage-express car (note the multiple roof vents), followed by a 1949 AC&F baggage-dorm, then a pair of 44-seat Leg Rest coaches, and a 1949 AC&F cafe-lounge. Tom Desnoyers photo, Krambles-Peterson Archives.

Photographer Desnoyers also captured this nice “going away” view of the 12-car COLA Domeliner on the curve at C&NW Mile Post 23, providing us a good look at the equipment in this typical 1955 consist. 

Bringing up the markers is an AC&F dome-obs-lounge, then two Coast-To-Coast sleepers (a UP Pacific-class car for the NYC and a Pennsy Pullman-Standard Rapids-class car in UP colors), then three Los Angeles to Chicago sleepers (a Pacific-class and two Ocean-class cars), an AC&F dome diner, and the 1949 AC&F cafe-lounge (which can be seen in the “coming” view). 

The AC&F Plan 9016 cars Ocean Sands and Ocean View, delivered in December 1954, were operated interchangeably with the Imperial-class sleepers in the COLA consists. Note that once the dome-obs-lounge cars began running on the COLA, the train no longer carried a club-lounge (these cars were used on the Challenger Domeliner). Tom Desnoyers photo, Krambles-Peterson Archives.

This “going away” photo of train No. 103, the westbound City of Los Angeles Domeliner, is a good example of how the hind end of the COLA consists looked when running west of Omaha. The train is shown just after coming out of Sherman Hill’s Hermosa Tunnel on October 16, 1955. Ahead of the dome-obs-lounge car is the Minneapolis-St. Paul to Los Angeles sleeping car added at Omaha (this is a 1942 American-class sleeper with a 4-inch replacement skirt), then a pair of Pacific-class sleepers running in Coast-To-Coast service.  Robert F. Collins photo.

This picture is included with our study of City of Los Angeles motive power for 1954. It shows one-month-old E9 944 heading up First No. 6, the eastbound Mail & Express leaving Cheyenne, Wyo., for Council Bluffs on 6-15-54 (the green flags indicate a following section). 

Engine 944 and trailing E9 unit 953B represent not only the first E9s delivered to UP, but also the last group of UP passenger diesels to receive Harbor Mist Gray Trucks (E9 943-947, 950B-959B, built in May-June 1954). The E9s operated system-wide and could be found regularly on the COLA. Richard Townley photo.

This builder’s photo of UP E9 949 was taken in May 1955 at McCook, Illinois (the physical location of EMD’s manufacturing facility). At this time, UP elected to apply the 3M Scotchlite striping and lettering to their new diesels at the Omaha Shops, leaving only the paint scheme to the builder. 

This engine is part of the second group of E9s which introduced a new look for UP motive power and passenger equipment — silver painted trucks. E9 cab units 948-956 and booster units 960B-966B were delivered in May-July 1955. EMD photo.

To be continued.

Next we'll cover several weekly progress reports for the weeks sending Nov. 24, Dec. 1, and Dec. 8.

The week ending Nov. 24 was mostly a lost week, as the "bomb cyclone" hit my part of the greater Seattle area and knocked out power for several days or more.  At my home, the power went out on Tuesday afternoon, returned on Thursday evening, then was out again for the first half of Friday.  My wife and I survived by driving to the nearest mall that still had power and eating hot meals in their packed food court.  Luckily, all the food in our garage freezer survived the outage.

Meanwhile, back in Victorville, my friend Craig Wisch talked with a museum researcher who located a 1972 local newspaper article about the congregation that occupied the church in the Barrio from 1947-1968.  The article included the best photo of the building that we have seen:

Craig used the better images of the windows and doors to complete his model, with some artistic license.  He sent me a photo of his nearly completed model:

I was thrilled to see this!  I'm not sure what his next project might be -- stay tuned.

I made no layout progress that week (again), but I had some fun running the two test train around the two mainlines after the power returned to our house.  Here's a going-away shot of the Santa Fe 2-8-2 freight train, posed beside my Seattle Mariners train (I have also have a Seattle Seahawks Super Bowl train -- yes, I collect some goofy trains, not just prototypical trains):

Here's the Santa Fe PAs train of Army hospital cars rounding the curve there, posed beside some of the Victorville buildings that my friends have been building for me:

I hoped to get back on track in the next week, despite the other activities going on.

To be continued with the week ending Dec. 1.