Victorville's Water Tanks and Section Houses, and Starting Framework Assembly

In this installment we'll visit the part of Victorville where the water tanks and section houses were located, and then we'll see the first results of assembling some open grid frameworks for some layout sections.

We've previously been visiting the RR west side of the 6th Street grade crossing in Victorville, but now we're crossing the street to see where all of the Santa Fe's section houses and their two tall steel water tanks were located.

Here's a great action view of the area, as shot by Chard Walker:

Just to the right of the Santa Fe 2-10-2 steam loco you can see a pump house with a tall wooden derrick above the roof.  Behind it are two black, steel water tanks (like the Santa Fe used everywhere), and in front of the water tanks is the section foreman's house.  There was another section house (not visible here) right in front of the water tanks.

In front of the section house and water tanks is a tall cantilever signal, and to the right of there is a wig-wag crossing signal for the 6th Street grade crossing.  In the foreground between the tracks are the depot platforms. 

Here's another view of this area, as shot by Jack Whitmeyer:

Here we have a UP 2-8-2 stopping for water at the water plug.  There were three of those pump houses with derricks, all in a row.  Two of them are easy to see to the left of the loco's tender, and the derrick of the nearest one can be seen above the loco's cab roof.  In the left distance is the long concrete bunkhouse for the section gang that was stationed here.

And here is one final view of this area, also shot by Jack Whitmeyer:
 

The loco is a UP FM H20-44, a helper for Cajon Pass.  To the right we can see the water plug, and two of the three pump houses, and both section houses.  The loco is blocking the view of the long bunkhouse, but a tool house is visible in the left distance.

Here is the part of my track plan where this scene is located:

Just below E Street (the main street through the barrio) you will see the pair of water tanks, the two section houses, the three small squares for the pump houses, and the long bunkhouse on the left.  Across the tracks from there, by the caboose track, are two carbodies, which we will visit next.

Here's a beautiful view of the 6th Street grade crossing area, with an eastbound UP passenger train approaching:

In the distance are the cliffs of the Upper Narrows.  To the left of the train, the white building is the open shed of the Texas Quarries granite mill.  To the right of the train is the depot.  On the far right, on this side of the grade crossing, are the two carbodies we came here to see.  The more distant one was an old wooden passenger car, and the nearer one was a wooden boxcar.  They were used by brakemen waiting for the next train to ride over Cajon Pass.

Here's a view of the passenger carbody, as shot by Nick Muff in 1960:

Here's an aerial view of this part of Victorville, cropped from a color postcard, and looking from the river side of town:

The two water tanks are visible on the right, and the red roof to the right of them is the bunkhouse.  The depot is on the far left (with the long red roof), by the grade crossing, and across the tracks from the depot is the old Santa Fe Hotel, which we visited last time.  It's not clear whether the two carbodies were still there by the time of this photo (but something is there).

Finally, here is Wayne Lawson's N-scale model of this scene:

The two yellow carbodies are in the right foreground, and the two water tanks are across the tracks (one of them has not been painted black yet).
 

Now let's look at some progress in building the frameworks for the lower deck in the staging room.  Last time I had cut all the boards for Sections 9, 10A, and 11, so the next thing I did was to cut all the 1x4 boards (using the miter saw) for Section 10, as seen here:

 

Then I started assembling the framework for Section 9.  My friend Ted had already built the main rectangle, using glue and two screws at each joint, but I decided to use no glue and three screws at each joint, after reading lots of online opinions about this.  I found it very useful to be able to take the screws out later whenever I needed to make changes.

The basic process was to clamp two boards together at the proper angle, then drill each hole, countersink it, and drill a screw into each one.  I used three power drills, each with a different bit (drill, countersink, and screwdriver), but I'll try to get a drill bit that has the countersink already built in, to save a step.

Here's a photo showing Section 9 standing on its side after completion:

 

Then I assembled Section 11, becoming more efficient as I went along.  Here is Section 11 when it was almost complete, with some clamps still attached to show how they worked:

Just behind the three drills is a joint using the adjustable angle clamp from Rockler, set at 79 degrees for this joint.  Behind it is a regular 90 degree clamp.  I had to build the square shape at the lower right in order to connect those boards, and I later glued a diagonal edge piece along there, just for looks.

I'll be assembling Sections 10 and 10A next, and then I'll decide how to proceed after that.
 

Victorville's Oldest Area and Cutting Boards for Benchwork

We'll continue our tour of Victorville by crossing the tracks to the oldest part of town, and then I'll report on some progress in cutting boards for the benchwork.

Victorville was originally built on the far side of the tracks, near the Mojave River, and later the town grew and moved across the tracks, leaving the oldest part of town to become the barrio.  The depot and most of the early buildings were across the tracks, and in the 1920s they picked the depot up and moved it straight across to the newer side of the tracks.

Here is the part of my track plan that models this area:

Near the 6th Street grade crossing is the depot, which was originally located in the empty area across the tracks.  Behind that empty area you will see the Hotel and the Cafe, which were named the Santa Fe Hotel and La Paloma Cafe.  The hotel goes back to pioneer days, but the cafe was a postwar addition to the barrio.

Here's a close-up of the hotel from a 1943 Jack Delano photo of the area:

And here's a blurry photo of La Paloma Cafe, which was just to the right of the hotel:

In the 1971 motorcycle movie "The Hard Ride" there is a scene in front of the hotel and the cafe:

To the left of the Hotel in my track plan, you will see an Office and an Old Jail.  The office is actually the old Sheriff's Office, a historic building which I've relocated from 7th Street to this barrio location, because it goes so well with the Old Jail, and because there is an HO Campbell kit for this building, which my friend Bill Messecar has kindly built for me.  Here's the prototype after it was later placed out in Apple Valley for use as a real estate office:

Behind the Sheriff's Office in my plan is the Old Jail, which is still standing there in its original location:

We will later visit other barrio buildings to the left of this area on my track plan. 

As for progress on my benchwork, it was slow at first after Ted had to stop visiting and helping me.  I watched some videos about operating my compound sliding miter saw, figured out all the controls, and then got to work cutting more girders and joists from 1x4 boards.  Here I am, about to make another miter saw cut through a board:

I've been laying out all the framework boards on top of the plywood and full-size paper plans for Sections 9, 11, and 10A, but I haven't connected them together yet.  Here's a recent view of the boards that have been cut so far, on the floor of the staging room:

On the left is Section 9, which Ted built, but I've added an extra girder on the left to support the overhang there, and I've added some pieces to support the triangular part of 9 in the right foreground.  On the right is Section 11, and behind that is Section 10A.  In the distance is Section 10, whose girders and joists will be cut next.

In the center of this staging loop area is a black V-shaped object, which is a Rockler Adjustable Clamp-It Assembly Square, a tool which just arrived and which will let me clamp together boards that meet at odd angles while I drill and screw them together.

So, when all the boards are cut for these sections, I will start work on assembling them into separate frames to support each section of plywood.  And these are only for the lower deck; someday this process will have to repeated for the upper deck!

Victorville's Depot Area and Losing My Benchwork Helper

We'll continue our tour of Victorville by visiting the depot area, and then I'll report the news that Ted, my close friend and benchwork helper, will be moving out of state soon.

Victorville's depot area included two industries and the depot itself.  From left to right, as seen from Route 66 (D Street), there was the block-long depot with a park in front of it (Forrest Park), then Hayward Lumber (later Gibson Lumber), and then the Peterson Feed Store.

Here's a great action view of the depot area, as shot by Jack Whitmeyer from the 6th Street grade crossing, looking toward the Upper Narrows:

And here's an excellent view of the block-long depot, as seen in 1958 (from the Chard Walker collection):

Note the wig-wag crossing signal at the grade crossing, and the lower roof over the depot's restrooms area, which was added during WW2 and later removed.  The whole depot was shortened at the freight house end during the 1960s.

Like last time, here is part of a circa 1946 aerial photo of the area, shot from the opposite side of the tracks, with Peterson Feed at the left edge, then Hayward Lumber (the larger building), and then the long depot right beside the tracks, with the 6th Street grade crossing to the right of the depot (the only grade crossing in town):

Behind the depot you can see Forrest Park (with a white tennis court on its left edge), and behind there was the main shopping district of downtown Victorville (which I had once hoped to model, but it's now off the front edge of my layout).

Here is a similar view, taken from a 1950s color postcard (the depot had a red roof):

 

My friend and fellow Victorville modeler, Wayne Lawson, is building an excellent N-scale model of the depot area, as seen here:

The depot is on the left, behind the park, and then we see a mock-up of Hayward Lumber (with a prototype photo below it), and then comes the Peterson Feed Store (also with a photo below it).

Here is the part of my track plan that has the depot, the lumber yard, and the feed store (compressed a lot to fit in the space):

Note that there was a very short spur into the lumber yard, with a ramp for end unloading.  I don't think the feed store did business with the railroad.  The track closest to the depot was called the house track, and freight cars were spotted there for unloading into the depot's freight house section (as seen in the 1958 depot photo above).

Now it's time to cover the progress (or lack of it) on my layout.  I got word from my friend and benchwork helper, Ted Argo, that he and his wife were going to move out of state sooner rather than later.  So he will be busy getting his house ready to sell and dismantling his own layout, rather than helping me with mine in the near future.  

I have put out notices asking for new helpers with my benchwork, so we'll see what happens.  In the meantime, I'll see if I can assemble all the framework for Sections 9-10-11 for the staging room loop in the coming week.

I decided that I should get a dedicated stand for my miter saw, so I shopped around and bought and assembled one from Harbor Freight.  It's a Chicago Electric model, to match the brand of my miter saw.  I moved an old desk out of garage to make room for a work area there, so I can build my benchwork out of the weather.  Here I am with the new stand for the miter saw, in the new garage work area:

 

Planning ahead for when the lower deck is in place, I did some measurements for how much track will be needed for a double-track mainline loop around the lower deck, and I placed some orders during the Labor Day sales for 75 pieces of Atlas flextrack, 75 pieces of Midwest cork roadbed, and ten #8 Atlas turnouts and powered switch machines.  (Atlas code 100 track is good enough for the lower deck.)

More track and turnouts will be needed for the staging yards themselves, but I'll figure that out later, after I make precise drawings of the lower deck staging trackage.  Right now I only have a rough drawing from 2016.  There is so much to do!

More Victorville Industries, the Layout's Helix, and Benchwork Progress

Let's continue our tour of Victorville by visiting the next industries along the tracks, and then we'll discuss the revival of the helix in the layout plan and a little more benchwork progress.

Last time we visited the Victorville Lime Rock plant, and as we now move railroad east from there, we come to two oil dealers, Standard and Shell, and across the tracks from them was the large Texas Quarries granite mill (later Allied Granite).  

Ground-level photos of these industries are rare, so we will mostly visit them via old aerial photos and some scale models.  Here is a small part of a circa-1946 aerial photo of Victorville, showing the two large Texas Quarries buildings on this side of the tracks and the two oil dealers on the far side:

In this photo, you may be able to spot a tall stiff-leg derrick between the two foreground buildings, for loading granite blocks into railcars (a spur comes in from the right and passes through the open building on the right to reach the derrick area).  Across the tracks, Standard Oil is on the left, with its row of horizontal tanks, and Shell Oil is on the right, with a row of vertical tanks (only the first tank is easy to see).  The Mojave River is in the foreground, right beside Texas Quarries.

Here is a similar view from a small section of a grainy color postcard:

 

This area will become more clear when we look at the N-scale models of the oil dealers that fellow Victorville modeler Wayne Lawson has built on his layout (we are now looking from the other side of the tracks):

On the right, with the word "Victorville" on the roof, is the Standard Oil dealer with its row of horizontal tanks, and to the left is the Shell Oil dealer, with its row of vertical tanks.  A single spur served both dealers (but there wasn't really much rail business after WW2).  On the fascia are a couple of rare photos of both oil dealers, and on the right is a view of the two Texas Quarries buildings, with the derrick sticking up between them.

More recently, Wayne has added mock-ups of the Texas Quarries buildings across the tracks, as seen here (with no derrick model between them yet):

Here is the part of my own track plan where these industries will be located:

Now let's discuss my most recent layout progress.  The big event was that I polled my friends on Aug. 24 to see if they thought I should include the helix in the plan after all, instead of having two separate decks with no connection.  All the replies were strongly in favor of restoring the helix to the track plan, so I decided to go ahead and do that.  I went back to look at what the previous track plan looked like, before I removed the helix in favor of an 8-track staging yard:

Note that the helix is a rectangular shape with rounded corners.  It begins at the upper level as one track on the left edge, then splits into two, then three, then four for most of the four turns of the helix, dropping from 48" high at the top down to 32" high at the lower deck, where all the staging yards will be.  When it reaches the bottom, it gradually goes back to being just one track, which has to make a left turn (not shown here) to exit this staging room.

So the big news is that my dream layout plan (with helix) has been saved at the last minute, thanks mainly to advice from my friend and advisor Jim Coady.  My friend Ted Argo and I had already cut some plywood shapes for the 8-track staging yard (Sections 12-13-14), but we'll save that plywood for possible uses elsewhere on the layout.

In other news, I paid a company to clean the old basement carpet on Aug. 25, and on the 27th I placed an order with a carpet company to lay about an 8x10' section of new carpet in the alcove area, where the wall used to be.  They were able to come earlier than planned to install that carpet on Sep. 2.

On Aug. 28 I met Ted Argo at Lowe's again to bring home seven more sheets of plywood to complete the lower deck, plus ten more 1x4s for girders and joists and our first eleven 2x2s for intermediate legs.  We lugged it all into the basement and piled it up, as seen here:

On Sep. 2 Ted returned, and he cut out plywood sections 10 and 10A to complete the staging loop.  We laid out Sections 9-10-10A-11 on the floor of the staging room and trimmed them to fit together.  

Then we began work on the first of the framing, starting with a simple rectangle to support Section 9 someday.  We cut three 20" joists to fit between two 8' long girders and glued and screwed them into place, using two new corner clamps I had bought.  Here is Ted, posing with the result:

The final bit of progress was to estimate the total number of legs needed for the layout (about 84) and to select and order that many adjustable feet to go under the legs.  The feet arrived quickly, and we figure that the legs should be cut about 46.5" long to support the upper deck at 48" high (including 3/4" of foam board on top).

There is a lot more planning I have to do now, such as drawing all the girder and joist locations for the remaining layout sections (1 through 8), and drawing new plans for the lower deck staging tracks, and estimating how much track (Atlas code 100) and how many turnouts will be needed there.  The size of this project is scary!

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.