Victorville's Lime Rock Plant and Starting the Benchwork

This time we'll continue our Victorville tour with a visit to the Victorville Lime Rock plant, and then we'll cover some recent progress on buying and cutting plywood and designing the benchwork for the staging room.

You may recall that last time we visited the Upper Narrows and its Rainbow Bridge, and adjacent to that area was the large Victorville Lime Rock plant (later Pfizer), which was the biggest industry in town other than the cement plant.  

Here's a 1953 view by Don Sims, shot from the Rainbow Bridge, as a UP passenger train passes the Lime Rock plant westbound:

The building closest to us wasn't completed until 1953.  Here's a street-side view of the 1953 plant from a geology journal:

 

The main building is the tower in the center, and there are two round-roof buildings to the left of it.  There are some silos and a substation to the right, and the 1953 addition is on the far right.  The road slopes up here to cross over the Rainbow bridge, which is off to the right.

Here's an end view of the plant as built in 1947, before the 1953 extension was added:

Note the substation and silos in the foreground and one of the round-roof buildings down the hill on the left.

A fellow Victorville modeler, Wayne Lawson, has made scale drawings of the 1953 plant, as seen in street-side and plan views here:

Trucks brought the limestone to the plant from nearby quarries. The railroad spotted empty covered hoppers, empty boxcars, and boxcars of empty bags. The traffic out was ground-up limestone and clay and talc, and it went out in bulk in covered hoppers and also in bags in boxcars.  They loaded 3 to 6 cars per day. The local switcher would pull out the loads and then push in the empties.

The plant kept growing over the years (and it's still there).  Here's a circa 1960 aerial view, showing the Rainbow Bridge in the background:

Here is the part of my track plan where the Lime Rock plant will go:

I have the 24" of length needed for the 1947 version of the plant, but not the 30" needed for the 1953 plant, so I plan to model the 1947 version.  The 10" of depth just barely fits into my space.  I haven't yet decided on possible stand-ins for these buildings, if there are any.

Note in the drawing that there is a rarely-used stock pen for the local ranchers, and two old carbodies for the depot workers to live in.  Across the tracks we see part of the Texas Quarries granite mill, so we will visit that spot next time.

Now let's look at some initial progress on the layout.  On Aug. 12 I met my friend Ted Argo at a Lowe's store, and we loaded six sheets of 1/2" plywood onto his Jeep to bring to my house.  Here we are, carrying the plywood into the basement:

The next day I drew the cut lines for staging room sections onto the back sides of the plywood sheets (drawing mirror images of the top views):

On Aug. 14 Ted met me at Lowe's again, and we picked out fourteen 2x4s and ten 1x4s to bring home for the staging room open grid benchwork.  Then we set up two sawhorses on the back patio, connected them with 2x4s, and began cutting out Sections 9, 11, 12, 13, and 14 from four of the plywood sheets.  Here is Ted, hard at work with my circular saw and its new blade:

He's able to follow the pencil lines with no straight-edge guide, but I had trouble doing that.

Aug. 17 was a milestone day, as our handyman, Patrick from Ireland, finally removed all of his tools and supplies from the basement, clearing the way for building the benchwork!  But I still want to get the carpet cleaned and a new carpet section installed in the alcove (where the wall was removed) before we build the benchwork.

I began a series of drawings for how the girders and joists and legs would be located in the staging room, which is where we want to build some benchwork first.  Ted and others gave me some good feedback for improvements, and here are the current Version 4 drawings that I made yesterday, using red pencil to show the boards and legs for the staging room sections.

This is the part with the 8-track staging yard (Sections 12, 13, and 14, from left to right):

And this is the other part, with the big loop in the staging room (Section 9 at the bottom, then clockwise to Sections 10 and 11):

 

We expect these plans to keep on changing as construction begins, maybe later this week.

Victorville's Upper Narrows and Planning Benchwork

I'd like to take you on a tour of the areas I plan to model in and around Victorville, starting this time with the signature scene of the Upper Narrows.  Then I'll do another progress report on my plans for the layout sections and the benchwork.

Probably the most recognizable scene in all of Victorville is the Upper Narrows of the Mojave River, with its landmark Rainbow Bridge.  This is at the compass east (railroad west) end of town, where the double-track mainline leaves town and begins climbing up Cajon Pass toward Summit.  Here's a beautiful view that Chard Walker shot in the late 1940s:

 

Here we see a Union Pacific passenger train coming RR east from Cajon Pass and entering Victorville though the spectacular granite cliffs of the Upper Narrows.  On the left is the Rainbow Bridge, which carried a local highway over the Mojave River and out to Apple Valley.  A deck girder bridge carried the highway over the railroad tracks.

Here's another view by Chard Walker, looking in the opposite direction, as a Santa Fe freight train leaves Victorville and comes westbound through the Upper Narrows, beside the Mojave River:

Behind the bridge you can see the smokestacks of the Southwestern Portland Cement Plant (which we will visit later), and above the last diesel unit you can see a white tower of the nearby Victorville Lime Rock plant (which we will visit next time).

Here's one more spectacular shot by Chard Walker, as a Santa Fe 4-8-4 pulls the westbound Fast Mail upgrade after passing through the cliffs of the Upper Narrows:

 

Here now is the part of my HO scale track plan showing how I hope to model the Upper Narrows and the Rainbow Bridge:

 

From the upper right, the double-track mainline enters the scene from the staging room, curves around between the cliffs of the Upper Narrows, and passes under the girder bridge that leads to the Rainbow Bridge.  The Mojave River runs alongside the tracks and passes under the bridge.  A backdrop at the top separates this scene from the Lower Narrows scene on the other side.  Ignore the straight lines at the upper left, where the track plan was folded to copy it.

The aisle is very narrow here, just 22" wide at the hips and shoulders, but I checked it out with my test module, and I was able to walk through it okay if I turned a little bit sideways.  I might want to round off that sharp benchwork corner a bit, but I want all the space I can get for those tall cliffs.

I have scale drawings of the Rainbow Bridge, which I enlarged to HO scale, and it's 31" long in HO.  I found that the discontinued Atlas Curved Chord Bridge is the right size and shape, but all of its diagonal braces have to be removed, and I plan to use a 2nd kit to extend the rainbow girders down to the riverbank and to widen it to two lanes and to add extra walkways and railings at each end.

Now let's do another progress report.  I completed the full-scale drawings for the final two layout sections and did some mock-ups again.  Here is Section 6, which has the tracks that enter the cement plant:

 

In the upper right we see the cement plant again (which was Section 5), and in the foreground are all the curves leading into all the spur tracks of the plant.  The three red cans represent the cement plant's oil tanks, with the oil spur just to the right of them.  The small orange box off to the right is the scale house.  As I laid out all these tracks, I found that I needed to slide the turnouts a bit to the left (into Section 7) to get more space for the curves to go where they should.  The double-track mainline is in the foreground.

Here is Section 7, which is the throat into the cement plant:

 

In the foreground there is a mainline crossover leading to the spur to George AFB, which curves around behind the Victorville Switching Station (where the Atlas substation kit is sitting, but which will be two of the Walthers substations combined).   On the far right, coming from the Mojave Northern side of the cement plant, is a siding for storing M.N. rock cars between runs to the quarry (which is in staging).  I had to extend this siding around the curve, as it was too short on my smaller drawing.

In the distance the mainline curves to the left and enters a pair of through girder bridges in the Lower Narrows (which we've seen in a previous blog entry).  The backdrop here separates this scene from the Upper Narrows and Victorville on the other side.

Once all the full-size track drawings were done, I turned my attention to making drawings for how I will cut the sections from 4x8 sheets of plywood.  I needed 13 sheets of plywood to cover the 14 sections of the layout, with quite a bit of wasted plywood on some sheets.

Here are two example pages of plywood-cutting diagrams.  In this first one, we see Sections 3, 3A, 4, and 4A on two sheets of plywood (Section 3 has the wye, and 3A is the fold-down tail of the wye):

And here are three cutting diagrams for Sections 11, 12, 13, 13A, and 14 on three sheets of plywood:

 

I'm hoping that next week a friend and I can start buying some plywood, transporting it to my house, and cutting some of these shapes on the back patio, using a circular saw, if the weather cooperates.  I'd like to get all the plywood sections cut before the Seattle rainy season arrives in the fall.  Actually, the job is twice as big as it looks, because I need two copies of each section, one for the lower deck and one for the upper deck.

Another task I've begun is to revisit each full-size section track plan to draw the girder and joist and leg locations in dashed lines, so that I'll have all the cutting dimensions for those listed.  Those boards can be cut to size more easily indoors later.

Last time I said that our handyman would have all his tools and things removed from our basement by now, but alas, he needed them for some last-minute jobs, so we haven't been able to work on cleaning the basement carpet yet.  Stay tuned.

Victorville Operations and More Track Plan Sections

This time I'd like to give you an overview of the typical postwar operations in Victorville that I hope to be replicating during each operating session, and then I'll show a little more progress on drawing the full-size track plan sections.

Let's get started with the operations:

Through trains, both passenger and freight, would come through town eastbound or westbound from staging.  Those with steam locos would stop for water, and a few freights would take the eastward or westward siding to let a following passenger train go by.  Only low-class passenger trains might stop at the depot. 

Westbound freights and heavy passenger trains would stop to add a helper for the 1.6% grade up Cajon Pass.  But if a freight had diesel road engines (the usual case in these years), the train didn’t need to stop for water and could proceed through town, with the helper following it to West Victorville (in staging) and coupling to the rear there, where the visibility between the front and the rear was better for the crew.  (This would negate the need to couple the helper to the train in most cases on the visible part of the layout.)

One local freight from the Santa Fe (the Oro Grande Turn, or before 1951, the First District Local) and one from the UP (the Leon Turn) would each come east from San Bernardino six days a week to serve the two cement plants, one in Victorville and one in the next town east, Oro Grande (in staging).  Both trains served both cement plants, regardless of the train names. 

They would bring mostly empties and return west with mostly loads of cement.  Some blocks of cars could be dropped and picked up in Victorville or at its cement plant (at Leon), and the rest at the Riverside Cement plant in Oro Grande (which would be in staging).  But they did not actually switch these industries, which was the job of the Victorville local switcher. 

Steam locos on these local freights would take water in Victorville and turn on the wye there for the return trip.  They would often add a helper to take the heavy cement loads west up the Cajon Pass grade.

The local switcher stationed in Victorville would spend each day taking blocks of cars left by the local freights and setting them out at individual spurs in Victorville and at the two cement plants.  It would also pick up other cars from the spurs and position them on storage tracks at Victorville, Leon, and Oro Grande, where the local trains could pick them up as they passed through town. 

At the end of the day, the switcher would return to its engine track by the boiler house inside the wye and be serviced there.  In steam years (1951 and before), the Santa Fe and UP took turns each month providing the local steam switcher (normally a light 2-8-2).  After that, the Santa Fe used its own H16-44 or GP7.  During busy cement times (like the building of the LA freeways), there could be two local switchers, one to serve Leon and the other to serve Oro Grande.

Helpers that went RR west from Victorville with a train would cut off in staging (as if at Summit), wait on a return loop track there (as if wyeing at Summit), and later run light back east into Victorville.  If the helper was a steam loco, it would take water and turn on the wye in Victorville.  In either case, it would park on one of the helper waiting tracks beside the wye for its next assignment (one track for Santa Fe helpers and the other for UP helpers).

Locos of the Mojave Northern would push empty rock cars from the cement plant at Leon up to a quarry in staging and bring back loaded limestone rock cars to be pushed up the cement plant’s trestle to be unloaded. 

An Air Force switcher would come down from the base to pick up loads left by the Victorville switcher and haul them up to the base (in staging).  Later it would bring the empties down from the base and leave them for the local switcher to take into Victorville.  Dangerous loads like airplane fuel and bombs were taken to the base by the Victorville local switcher itself (the military wanted a “real railroad” to do that job).

I think that up to four operators could be kept busy with these operations: one for through trains and their helpers, one for local freights, one for the local switcher, and one for the two branch lines (the Mojave Northern and the Air Force).

Now let's look at some recent progress in drawing more layout sections full size.

Here's a view of the wye area, with some props added, as usual:

In this view we are looking from the 6th Street grade crossing (in the foreground) toward the wye at the upper left.  Along the right side of the tracks are some props representing the section houses, water tanks, bunkhouse, and propane dealer.  To the right of them, on pop-up hatches, are a few of the buildings of the barrio.  Route 66 is the steel ruler crossing the wye.  Inside the wye are the boiler house, elevated fuel tank, and sand house.  The tracks begin turning to the right as we leave this scene.

In this next scene we are looking back toward the wye from the curves leaving town:

The wye is in the right distance.  The steel ruler crossing the wye is again Route 66 (called D Street in town), and on this side of it is the Union Oil dealer with its tanks.  To the left of the wye are eight tracks, all curving toward us.  From right to left, they are: the Santa Fe helper waiting track, the UP helper waiting track, the westward passing siding, the westward mainline, the eastward mainline, the eastward passing siding, the east storage track, and the outfit spur (where the local work train would be parked).

Here is our final scene this time, the large Southwestern Portland Cement Plant:

In the foreground are the same curves leaving Victorville (two mainlines and two sidings). The white bowls are the slurry mixing tanks.  The two tracks to the left of there are the hopper unloading track and the elevated trestle for unloading side-dump limestone cars.  The blue bin is the storage building for limestone, the white tower is the rock crusher, and the shops and engine house are behind those.  To the left of there are several rows of many different cement plant buildings, including some from the Walthers "Valley Cement" kit.

There are only two more sections left to complete the full-size drawings of the layout, and I'm working on them now.  Next week the basement will finally be cleared of all of the handyman's tools and be ready for a new carpet section, carpet cleaning, and then benchwork!

Victorville Maps and Full-Size Track Plan Sections

This time I'm going to start by presenting some maps of Victorville, to show you the area I'm trying to recreate in HO scale (compressed, of course).  Then I'll illustrate the full-size sectional track plans I'm creating, before the benchwork can begin.

Victorville is a small town in Southern California, halfway between San Bernardino to the south (railroad west) and Barstow to the north (railroad east).  The Santa Fe mainline from San Bernardino to Barstow was known as the First District of the Los Angeles Division. 

The part from San Bernardino to Victorville has a steep 2.2% grade up to Summit, then an easier 1.6% grade down to Victorville.  This section is known as Cajon Pass (Cajon is pronounced ka-HONE).  Then it's relatively flat from Victorville to Barstow on the Mojave Desert.  Here's a Santa Fe map of the stations along the way:

Now let's zoom into Victorville itself and look at its 1956 USGS map:

In the lower right of the map, the Santa Fe double-track mainline from Cajon Pass enters the town by following the Mojave River between the steep, rocky cliffs of the Upper Narrows.  Then they run straight through town, from southeast to northwest, but in railroad directions the tracks are going east (opposite of compass directions here).

There are some side tracks and industry spurs as the tracks run though town.  Toward the upper left (before the curve) you may spot the wye where the steam locos were turned before helping another westbound train up to Summit.  The bright red roadway in downtown is Route 66, which made a 90 degree turn near the depot.  The Mojave River is across the tracks from the downtown area.

There are freeway exit ramps at the upper left, as the I-15 freeway was being built toward Barstow at that time.  (I will ignore that as not belonging in my time period.)

The tracks make an easy turn to the right as they head railroad east toward the town's cement plant, the Southwestern Portland Cement plant (SWPC) at the siding formerly called Leon, as seen in this next map:

The cement plant is (and was) very large, with quite a few railroad spurs into it.  The branch line leaving to the upper right was the Mojave Northern railroad, owned and operated by the plant to bring limestone in from quarries in the hills nearby.

The final scene that I want to model is called the Lower Narrows, as seen on this map of the area that's railroad east of the cement plant:

At the bottom you see a large electrical substation (the Victorville Switching Station).  At this point a branch line up to George Air Force Base curves off to the left.  The mainlines cross the Mojave River on a pair of through truss bridges built at different times (the single track here was double-tracked in 1924).  The mainlines follow some impressive, rocky cliffs here on their way to the next station, Oro Grande, where a second large cement plant was located (but that would be in staging on my layout).

Finally, here is a Santa Fe track diagram of Victorville from 1951:

Here railroad west is to the left and east is to the right.  The Upper Narrows area is at the left edge, where we see the Mojave River close to the tracks.  The highway bridge over the river there is the notable Rainbow Bridge, going to Apple Valley.  You can find the depot noted above the tracks, then the wye for turning helpers to the right of that.  There are eastward and westward passing sidings on each side of the two mainlines running toward the right.  The tracks into the cement plant are below the mainlines at the right edge.

So, this was a quick tour of maps of the areas I'm planning to model, from the Upper Narrows at one end of Victorville to the Lower Narrows at the other end.

As for current progress on my layout, I've been gradually drawing my track plan full size on large sheets of paper, cut from a big roll I found stored in my garage.  I divided my track plan into 14 large sections, with each section fitting within a 4x8' sheet of plywood.  Each section will form a template for cutting the plywood and then for marking where each track should go on the tabletops.

I roll out the paper over large sheets of cardboard on my basement floor, draw the boundary lines for the next section in pencil, and then cut it out carefully.  I take scale measurements from my 1/16 scale track plan, then mark the track locations and curve center points on the large sheet of paper (or on the cardboard, if the center is off the paper).. 

I use a homemade trammel with holes in it for various radii to draw all the curves.  Here's a photo of me working on two adjacent sections of the staging yard, using my trammel:

The next photo shows some progress, as I've drawn the tracks for the three sections that form a big loop in staging for the trains to return to Victorville:

Note that I make photocopies of all the turnouts and tape them into the exact locations where they belong.  Behind me I've used some white templates for 36" radius curves to show where the mainlines curve around, and on the left side I've placed two flextracks to show the mainlines there.

When I'm working on the sections that will have scenery (not in staging), I add simple props to the scenes to get a feel for what they might look like someday.  Here's the full-size scene where the double-track mainline leaves Victorville and curves under a girder bridge (some old VHS tapes) and past the Rainbow Bridge (scale plans for it are taped to the white board there) and into the Upper Narrows (the yellow cushions are the cliffs):

In the photo above, the blue towel represents the river, the board standing on the left represents the backdrop, and the boxed kit in the lower right represents the Victorville Lime Rock plant beside a spur track.

Here's one final photo from yesterday, showing a lot of props and temporary flextracks in the heart of Victorville, where most of the industry spurs are:

The yellow cushions near the lower right represent the depot.  The brown board at the bottom represents the 6th Street grade crossing.  The purple foamboards show where the curving backdrop will go.  A number of industries are along the right edge, and the Texas Quarries granite mill is across the tracks from them.

Of the 14 total sections, nine have been drawn now, with five more to go.  I try to finish one section every two days, but the complex ones take more time.  It's exciting to begin to see the full-size layout slowly taking shape on these large sheets of paper!

Victorville Layout Design Goals and Room Lighting

This time I’m going to list the main design goals for my layout, and after that I’ll show you the progress on installing room lighting before the layout is built.

Defining My Layout Design Goals

Here are the main design goals that I’m trying to meet, with the most important ones first:

1. Represent the trackage and scenery of Victorville and its cement plant (circa 1950) as accurately as possible, from the Lower Narrows at one end of town to the Upper Narrows at the other end.

2. Provide a double-track loop through Victorville for running two trains continuously (one eastbound, one westbound) whenever I feel like it, which may be often.  I love watching two moving trains meet on double track, and I’m much more into the railfan’s view of model railroading than the operator’s view.

3. Provide as much staging as possible, for storing a lifetime's worth of trains and locomotives on the tracks, so they can be sent through the Victorville scene in either direction.  Additional rolling stock could be stored under the layout in boxes or cassettes of various kinds.  Some of my trains are for display running only, such as passenger trains from the SP, WP, MILW, and NYC, and some are special trains, like a circus train, a carnival train, a troop train, a military vehicles train, a hospital train, a convention train, and so forth, but I’d like them sitting out on staging tracks, not hidden away in boxes.

4. Provide for a reverse loop somewhere in staging, so that westbound trains can later become eastbound trains, and vice-versa.  (But my final trackplan can only do this for one direction.)   Also, the reverse loop needs to turn steam helpers around, as if they were being turned at Summit.

5. Provide for walk-around operation by three or four operators.  There could be one running westbound trains, one running eastbound trains (including helpers returning light), one for the local switcher, and one for the branch lines (Mojave Northern and George AFB).  These jobs could be combined when there are only one or two operators.

6. Provide for prototypical operating sessions, with all the operations that occurred in the real Victorville area on a given date: through trains, freights taking sidings, taking water, adding helpers, returning light helpers and turning them, local freights dropping off and picking up cars, and the local switcher working all the industries.

7. If possible, model the two branch line railroads at Victorville -- the Mojave Northern Railroad at the cement plant, and the branch line to George Air Force Base.  Also, provide two staging tracks to represent the nearby Oro Grande cement plant.  If possible, and probably last of all, model the trackage at George AFB, where the cars could be spotted at eight different spurs plus an engine house. 

8. Avoid duckunders and pop-up hatches (I’m only partly meeting this goal), and have all the tracks reachable from the aisles.

9. Use 36” curves and #8 turnouts on the mainlines and passing sidings.  Use #6 turnouts on the spurs.  Use 24” radius or larger curves on the branch lines.  Use 2.25” track spacing on the mainline curves (and so on the straightaways too).  Try to follow Joe Fugate’s standards for trackwork, not the outdated ones from John Armstrong.

10. Provide 30” aisles (and larger where possible), and provide a 36” aisle to the laundry room.  But go down to a couple of 22” aisles for walking partly sideways where needed.

11. Allow for a lower deck for lots of staging, with a large-radius helix (easy grades) to connect it to the upper deck.  Avoid grades on the upper and lower decks.  (I’ve abandoned the helix idea for the time being.  Instead, I’m adding an eight-track staging yard on the upper deck, and I’ll be using the separate lower deck for storing and displaying extra trains.)

12. Allow for a dispatcher who coordinates the actions of all the trains and hands out train orders to the trains that will come through town.

So, those are the goals I’m working toward. 

As for physical progress, the first step was to remodel the basement, especially to take out an unwanted wall and part of a wall of cabinets between the staging area and the main basement area.  We hired our favorite handyman to do that, and it took a long time (with breaks), but the work is almost complete now.

The next step was to install a row of LED shop lights all around the future edges of the layout, above the aisles.  I planned the exact locations of the 23 shop lights, each 48” long, and climbed up to mark the locations for the 46 hooks in the finished ceiling.  The lights had to be low enough to pass under the beam that supports the house, which is 6'11" from the floor.  I was doing this during May, 2020, as seen here:

Then our handyman, Patrick from Ireland, installed all the shop lights in late May, as seen here:

I’m happy with the final results, which you can see in several views of the basement here.  This first view looks across the future location of the main peninsula, with the two posts that hold up the house in the right distance, and the laundry room doors on the left:

This second view shows the two walls that have bookcases full of railroad books (and a full-size track plan section being laid out on the floor):

This final view is looking into the future staging room, from where a dividing wall used to stand:

Overall Victorville Layout Track Plans

It's time for another blog entry.  I send frequent updates to a small circle of local friends and to a group of other Victorville modelers and fans, but I feel that this blog should be a little more formal than those e-mails. 

Recent progress has been to get all 23 LED shop lights mounted above the future aisles of the layout, and to begin cutting out very large sheets of paper (one for each of the 14 main benchwork sections) for drawing the full-size HO track plans and benchwork girders and joists on them, in preparation for cutting and building the benchwork.

I haven't yet described for you my main layout design goals, nor the signature scenes in postwar Victorville that I plan to model, but this time I want to jump ahead and show you what the final layout is supposed to look like.  I'm going to use five nice drawings that my architect friend in Wisconsin, Jim Coady, has created for me using his SketchUp wizardry.

He took my large 1" = 16" scale drawings that I did in pencil and put them into SketchUp and added some benchwork under the upper deck (ignoring the lower deck for now).  Here is a top view of my basement with all the trackwork added in:

You can't see all the track details at this size, but it will do for giving the general shape of the layout and basement. 

The lower half of the image shows the main, scenicked peninsula, which has the long, straight tracks of Victorville on the right side of the curving backdrops, and the wye for turning steam helpers sticking out at lower right.  On the left side of the backdrops is the large cement plant scene.  On the right and left edges of the cement plant you will see two posts that hold up the house, with the post on the right hidden behind the curving backdrop.  (There is nothing in the black hole between the two backdrops.)

The scenes on the peninsula are quite deep and require pop-up scenery hatches on each side of the backdrops in the center of the peninsula for emergency reaching into the far sides of those scenes.

To the left of the cement plant and across the 36" aisle are the doors to a bathroom and a laundry room.  The aisle below the peninsula is not as wide as it looks, as there are bookcases along that wall, and more bookcases along the wall on the right.  The sliding door to the back yard is near the tail of wye (by the way, the wye can fold down when not being used).  There is also a treadmill along the right wall near the wye, so the space is not quite as open as it looks, but there is still quite a bit of aisle space in front of Victorville.

As we move up to the throat of the peninsula, we squeeze through the space between the built-in wall of cabinets in the center of the room and the wall on the right.  This is where the mainlines from Victorville head west through the rocky Upper Narrows, and the mainlines from the cement plant head east through the rocky Lower Narrows of the Mojave River (with the backdrop separating the two scenes).

Then the tracks enter the "staging room," which is the part of the basement above the center cabinets.  As you can see, the mainlines loop around there to form a double-track oval for running trains continuously when wanted.  But the proper way to operate is for the trains to exit the mainlines there and proceed into the 8-track stub-ended staging yard, which you see along the top walls of the staging room.

One last thing to point out is the stairway going upstairs at the left side of the basement, and the door to the garage at the bottom of the stairs.

On the drawing you see two red arrows marked View 1 and View 2.  Let's look at those two views of the layout as seen from the operator perspective.

In View 1 the operator is looking at the cement plant, with one post in front of the plant and the other hidden behind the curving backdrop:

In View 2 the operator is looking at the Victorville scene, with the wye behind him:

Now here are my favorite views of the layout, in 3D from up above:

This first view (above) shows the basement as seen from above the stairway, with the staging room on the left and the cement plant on the right.

This second view (above) shows the basement as seen from above the treadmill corner, with the long Victorville scene front and center.

That's all for now -- I hope you've enjoyed this first tour of my future layout.