Victorville's Lower Narrows, and Starting Some Roadbed and Track

This time we'll visit the scenic Lower Narrows outside Victorville, and then I'll report on my progress with laying the first cork roadbed and preparing to lay some tracks.

Last time we completed our visit to the Southwestern Portland Cement plant, so the next area to visit is the scenic Lower Narrows.  At this location the Santa Fe railroad passes over the Mojave River on a pair of through truss bridges built at different times (so one is taller than the other).  

Here's a photo of a fan trip behind a pair of Alco PAs at the bridges:

And here's a side view of the bridges, with rocky scenery all around:

Note the electrical transmission lines coming into the area.  They run to the adjacent Victorville Switching Station, as seen here:

 

This is a large complex of electrical towers, as can be seen near the bottom center of this 1953 aerial photo of the Lower Narrows:

Just above the switching station, the railroad tracks can be seen crossing the Mojave River on the two bridges.  Even closer to the switching station, a branch line departs from the mainlines and winds to the upper left on its way to George Air Force Base.

Here's the 1956 USGS map of this same area: 

 And here's the part of my track plan where I model this area:

The two bridges over the river are in the center of this scene, with the Switching Station just below there on the right (compressed to fit).  Note the branch to George AFB just above the Switching Station.  The Mojave Northern track is hidden behind (or inside) the removable cliffs behind the mainlines as it climbs up to the left to the quarry scene we saw last time.

Note the gas station and cafe in the lower left part of the scene.  These are special to me, as they are where my friend Jack Dykstra as a boy used to visit his aunt and uncle (their last name was Rosso) and watch the trains go by in the Lower Narrows.  Jack sent me this photo of the place for modeling it:
 

The gas pumps were not yet installed when this photo was taken.  Note the electrical towers again.  If you look back at the map and aerial photo, you can find these two buildings in the notch where the winding branch line to the air base crosses Route 66.

Here's a nice view of a Santa Fe passenger train running beside the rocky cliffs of the Lower Narrows in the 1960s:

And here's a modern view of the bridges and the scenery behind them, thanks to Paul W. Brown:

 

This completes our tour of the Lower Narrows, which is the final scene on the main part of the layout.

Meanwhile, I've been making some progress on the layout.  I decided to use the new three-track stub yard in Section 9 as my practice area for laying roadbed and tracks.  With the track centerlines carefully drawn in and the turnout locations marked, I began laying cork roadbed for the three tracks, using DAP Alex Plus caulk as the glue.

First I glued down the cork halves along the far side of each stub track, and then I came back and added cork halves to the near sides.  At the two #6 turnouts, I cut and fitted the cork into the wedge part of each turnout shape, but that was difficult to do well, so I sent for some cork turnout pads from IBL to try next time.

Here's what Section 9 looked like after all the cork for the three-track stub yard had been glued down:

 

My friend Jim Coady advised me to paint the cork a light gray color to give it a ballasted look, since I won't be using actual ballast in staging.  So I bought a can of light gray latex paint and brush-painted all the cork.  To cover up some sloppy areas along the edges, I added a strip of tan paint along the outside edges, as seen here:

 

I decided that each of the three stub tracks should have a rerailer track for adding rolling stock to the layout, so I marked the locations for the three rerailer tracks as well as the two turnouts and pinned them down temporarily.  Then I carefully cut and fit all the Atlas code 100 flextracks needed to make up these three staging tracks.  This was my first time using rail nippers and cutting off the ties at the ends where the rail joiners go, but I gradually learned how to do it.

I temporarily pinned down all the tracks to be sure they all fit together as planned, and I added three insulated rail joiners near the turnouts to create a separate DC block for each track (the other rails will be the common rails).  Here is the current state of the stub yard, with all the pins in place:

Note that there's a rerailer track near the entrance to each of the three tracks.  I filed down some of the removed ties to fit back under the rail joiners, but that was time-consuming, so I may buy a bunch of the smooth ties for future use.

The next steps are to glue down the tracks and then add the wiring.

The Cement Plant's Mojave Northern Railroad, and Drawing More Track Lines

This time we'll visit the Mojave Northern Railroad, operated by the Southwestern Portland Cement Plant of Victorville, and then we'll look at some progress and revisions in drawing more track lines on the plywood tabletops.

The far side of the cement plant was where the Mojave Northern Railroad operations were centered.  The job of the railroad was to carry cars loaded with limestone rocks from various quarry locations into the plant, where the rocks were crushed and then used to make cement.  

Here's a great photo from the Orange Empire Railway Museum showing one of the Mojave Northern 0-6-0T steam locos with a string of loaded side-dump rock cars:

Note that each rock car has three bins full of rocks.  Each bin was rotated separately to dump out the rocks.

When the train of rock cars got to the plant, the loco pushed the cars up a wooden trestle to where the rock-dumping tower was located, as seen here:
 

Here's an early view of the end of the trestle, with the rock-dumping tower over the trestle, the rock crusher tower on the left, and the large pile of crushed rocks:

As we saw last time, in later years this open pile was enclosed in a very large building.

Let's go back to the part of the circa 1940 aerial view that shows the trestle and the Mojave Northern shops to the right of it:

We can see a string of loaded rock cars at the far end of the trestle, waiting to enter the rock-dumping tower, and to the right of there is the rock crusher and the open pile of crushed rocks.  At the bottom of the photo is the three-stall engine house, and other shops are behind it.

In 1947 the roster of three 0-6-0T steam locos was joined by two new GE 70-Tonners, numbered 5 and 6.  Here is one of them, numbered 5 and named Leonardt:
 

Here's a later view of both 70-Tonners, as photographed by Richard Steinheimer:

By this time the diesels had been repainted from light gray to dark green.  A bit of the trestle is visible at the far left, the engine house and the distant rock crusher tower are in the center, and the end of rock car number 38 and part of a steam loco are visible in front of the engine house.

Besides the change to diesels for doing most of the work, the cement plant also began using regular hopper cars instead of the old side-dump rock cars.  Here's a photo of a steam loco with a string of hoppers (from the Orange Empire Railway Museum collection):
 

The hoppers were not pushed up the trestle.  Instead, they were spotted at an unloading track built for them beyond the trestle, with a car shaker to help unload the rocks into a underground bin, as seen here:

 Here's the part of my track plan that covers this part of the cement plant:

Near the top, note the ramp to the trestle, and above that is the hopper unloading track.  The two circles at the end of that track are open slurry tanks.  Below them is the rock crusher and the limestone storage building, and to the left are the shops and the engine house (compressed to two stalls). 

The main track of the Mojave Northern leaves the plant at the upper left of this drawing, passes a short siding for storing rock cars, and then crosses a long, low trestle over the Mojave River.  

Beyond there the track is hidden behind a cliff as it sneaks through the Lower Narrows scene to emerge in staging, where it comes to a quarry scene called Dock 5.  In this drawing, the two quarry tracks are in the center, and the curving hidden track is near the right edge.  The track has to climb a grade to get to the quarry, just as the real railroad did:

 

Here's a distant view of a Mojave Northern quarry, with a loco and three rock cars on the left and a large electric shovel on the right:

This concludes our tour of the Mojave Northern Railroad and the cement plant.

In the past two weeks I drew in all the tracks on Section 11, using various poster board templates for curves and angles, as seen here:

I need to widen the benchwork a bit near Section 10A at the bottom of this photo, both for the outside curve and the inside curve.

I laid out all the Atlas turnouts and marked their locations, but some of the throwbars and switch machines interfered with adjacent tracks, so I had to move them a little to resolve the conflicts.

Before I could start to lay any cork roadbed, I discovered some serious problems with the design of the yard throat on Section 9, so I went back to the drawing board to make a lot of changes.  I also found that I have room for an extra three-track stub-ended storage yard near the front edge of Section 9.  Here is the revised plan for this area (somewhat hard to read):

Here's a current photo showing all the turnouts laid out in their proposed locations:

At the bottom of the photo I've added some scrap plywood to work out the track locations leading into future Section 8 there.  Section 9 is on the left, where I plan to use ground throws on the turnouts, as they are close to the aisle.  Section 11 is on the right, where the turnouts are shown with table-top switch machines, as this area will be inside the helix someday and not easily reachable.

I'm hoping that I'm finally ready to lay some roadbed and track in the coming weeks!
 

Inside Victorville's Cement Plant, and Preparing for Laying Some Tracks

Last time we saw the front side of Victorville's cement plant, so this time we'll go inside the plant.  Then I'll report on preparations for laying the first staging tracks on my layout.

We saw that the Southwestern Portland Cement Plant near Victorville was already huge by the 1940s, and here's a wonderful aerial view looking into the plant in about 1940:

Near the right edge you can see the Route 66 highway and the mainline tracks of the Santa Fe.  Just to their left is the front row of cement silos and the bagging building.  To the left of that are the original silos and the warehouse.  Then comes the long clinker pit and then five kilns in a row.  Behind the kilns are the mixing building and the office building.  To the left of the kilns are the shops and then the curving ramp up to the rock dumper and crusher.  The open storage pile of limestone rocks is beyond there.

Here's a 1956 USGS map of the plant (the aerial photo above was shot from above the oil tanks shown on this map):

The long building to the left of the words "Cement Plant" is the covered storage for the crushed limestone rocks, which were still out in the open in the old aerial photo.

The sidings here were named Leon by the Santa Fe until 1945, but the railroaders continued to call this location Leon until much later.  The rail lines curving off to the upper right were part of the Mojave Northern Railroad, which was the cement plant's own railroad for bringing limestone from quarries to the plant.  We'll visit that railroad's part of the plant next time.

Here's a smoky aerial view of plant from 1953:

I'll repeat here my track plan for modeling the plant, for comparison:

Here's an inside view of the plant from the back side, circa 1940:

The tall silos in the left rear are the ones we've seen from the highway in previous views.  The shorter silos in front of them are the original ones.  The large building in the foreground holds the offices, and to the left is the electrical substation for the plant.  Beyond the rooftop of the office building we can see the long traveling crane structure over the clinker pit.

Here's a view showing part of the large limestone storage building on the right:
 

And here's one more view, showing the area where the oil storage tanks were located (oil was the fuel that was burned in the kilns at that time):

 

It will be quite a project to model all of this, even with the help of the Walthers cement plant kit.

Turning now to progress on my layout, it's been slow due to all the Christmas preparations and events.  Mostly I've been drawing the staging loop track lines in pencil on the plywood tabletops, in preparation for laying some roadbed and then track. 

I made a large template out of poster board sections for a 36" radius curve that covers more than 180 degrees, and I placed it in the correct location on Section 10 for drawing that curve, as seen here:

 

I'm using shorter poster board templates to draw the curves that fall outside and inside of the 36" radius curve.  I'm using 2.25" as my track spacing on the curves and also on the straightaways.

I drew all the straight track lines on Section 9 and marked the exact locations for each turnout, as seen here (with lots of flextracks added for clarity):

For staging, I'm using Atlas code 100 tracks and turnouts, and I'm using Atlas powered switch machines beside the turnouts (as seen here), because looks are not as important in staging.

I began splitting Midwest cork roadbed sections and laying them along the track centerlines in preparation for gluing them in place next week:

I'll cut the cork to shape under the turnouts, and I'll make cork pads to support the switch machines at track level.

I think everything is about ready for installing roadbed and track next!

Victorville's Cement Plant, and Finishing the Staging Loop Benchwork

We're going to leave downtown Victorville behind now and begin a tour of its nearby cement plant.  We'll also look at the final steps in finishing the benchwork for the lower deck staging loop.

A short distance timetable east of Victorville is its very large cement plant, which was named Southwestern Portland Cement (SWPC) until recent decades.  We're going to look at the front of the plant as seen from the highway this time.

Here's an early 1950s view of a westbound Santa Fe freight passing the plant:

Note the sign board on the right, the tall cement storage silos, the bagging building with all the windows, and two lower silos beyond that.

Here's a great view of the entire track side of the plant as it was before expansion in the 1950s:

From right to left, we see the row of large silos with a "headhouse" along the tops of them, then the bagging building, then a lower warehouse partly behind the bagging building (the two lower silos had not been added there yet), and then a long traveling crane structure over the clinker pit.

Clinkers are the marble-size balls that are produced by a cement plant's kilns, and at this plant they were stored outdoors in a very long clinker pit.  

Most clinkers were ground into cement powder to be shipped out in covered hoppers or in cloth bags in boxcars, but some clinkers could be shipped in or out of the plant as is, depending on demand at other cement plants.

There was a spur track over the clinker pit, where open-top cars could be loaded with clinkers, or where they could unload clinkers, using a bucket device on the traveling crane.

Here's a late-1950s view of the plant from the highway (Route 66), when more silos had been added at the far end:

From this view we can also see the original cement silos that were hidden behind the newer silos, and we can see some of the buildings inside the plant. 

Here's one last view of the plant in the late 1950s, looking from the other direction:

The newer silos fill the left half of the photo, with the clinker pit behind them.  The older half of the plant fills the right half of the photo, and that's the part I plan to model.  Note the highway (Route 66) in the foreground and the Santa Fe mainline tracks beside the silos.

Here's the part of my track plan that shows most of the cement plant trackage, which is somewhat compressed from all the tracks that were actually in the plant:

The big four-track curve on the right comes in from the Victorville scene on the other side of the backdrop.  Right beside the mainlines at the bottom of the plan we can see the silos, the packing house, and the two lower silos, and behind that row we can see the original silos, the warehouse, and the clinker pit with its spur track on a ramp.  We'll visit the interior of the plant next time.

Because this scene is so deep, I plan to add a raised platform around the post, so that operators and see and reach into the scene as needed.

Turning now to progress on the layout benchwork, after the notches for the legs had been cut in the plywood tabletops, I removed the plywood to work on the frames one more time.  I bought a belt sander and sanded down any joists that were not perfectly even with the adjacent joists, so the plywood sheets could lie flat on top.  The belt sander worked great, and I posed for this photo:

 

Then I put the tabletops back onto the frames, aligned them as well as I could, clamped them down, and drew pencil lines above the centerlines of all the girders and joists underneath, so I'd know where the screws could go.

I decided to use just screws and no glue to attach the tabletops, and I decided to mark spots for the screws that were about 12" apart (an arbitrary distance, with no guidance found in any books). 

At each screw location I drilled a pilot hole, countersunk it, and drove in a screw to hold the plywood down to the frame.  Section 9 needed 33 screws, Section 11 got 19 screws, Section 10A got 10 screws, and finally (today) Section 10 got 25 screws.  Here's a view of the results, shot from above near Section 11 (look for the screw locations):

So the benchwork for the lower deck staging loop is finally done, and next week I can begin marking the locations for the roadbed and track!

 

Victorville's Downtown, and Adding Tabletops to Staging Loop Sections

This time we'll do a tour of Victorville's downtown area in the Route 66 glory days, and then we'll look at some progress in adding plywood tabletops to the lower deck staging loop sections.

Resuming our tour of the Victorville scenes on my future layout, I want to visit some scenes that don't quite fit into my layout, even though I spent years studying them in great detail.  I'm referring to downtown Victorville in the glory years of Route 66, when all the travelers to and from Cajon Pass stopped in town for food, gas, motels, and sometimes car repairs.

Route 66 descended Cajon Pass eastward and entered town on 7th Street.  But 7th Street ended down at D Street, so Route 66 made a left turn onto D Street and ran eastward toward Barstow and the Mojave Desert.  There was a busy block on 7th from C Street down to D Street, and then two busy blocks along D Street, between 7th and 5th.

Here's a color postcard view looking down 7th Street in the mid-1950s:

The Santa Fe tracks are straight ahead, with some lumber loads on the lumber spur there, so the highway will turn left when it gets down to D Street.

Here's an earlier view, a little farther down 7th Street, at the C Street corner:
 

Again, the Santa Fe tracks are straight ahead, this time with cement hoppers visible there.  On the right, we can now see the famous Green Spot Cafe at the corner of 7th and C.  This was a favorite stop for locals and tourists alike until it burned down in 1953.

Let's take a closer look at it:

Note the big sign to the related Green Spot Motel, which was a half-block off to the right on C Street.  Here's a photo of the famous old motel (which is still there):

 

Now we'll go another block down to the corner of 7th and D Street, where we can turn left and see the Stewart Hotel and other buildings along D Street (Route 66):

This was the main shopping district in Victorville, with the Stewart Hotel at this end of the block and the Smith Hotel at the far end.  Here's an earlier view of this block:

The Santa Fe depot was across the street, behind the trees along the right edge, which are in Forrest Park.  Sadly, all of the buildings in this block are gone now.

Moving down D Street to the block between 6th and 5th, this was more of a relaxation block, with a movie theater, various cafes including the famous Red Rooster in the middle of the block, and the Barrel House liquor store at the far end (at 5th and D):

The Red Rooster Cafe is the building with the light blue upper story, and that building is now the California Route 66 Museum.  The other buildings are now gone, except for the Barrel House liquor store at the far end of the block.

This concludes our tour of what is now "Old Town" in Victorville.  These blocks would be off the front edge of my layout, but if I were to model them in a 2nd lifetime, they could go on a removable module that would attach to the front of the layout like this:

As for progress on building my layout, I spent parts of the week of Nov. 16 drawing a trackplan for the lower deck staging loop in 1/16 scale, as seen here:

This plan also includes the helix approach track, which comes in from the right edge and curves to the top of the drawing as it begins its climb up the helix.  It begins as a single track, then splits into two at the top, and later splits into three, then four tracks to form a four-track rectangular helix curving above this area.

Another feature of this area is a cassette loading track, for moving trains and locos on and off the layout using a 36"-long cassette, which would dock in the lower left corner of this drawing (at the dotted line), and its track then curves around the outside of the staging loop until it joins the mainline at the straight section.

I also made a scale drawing of the middle layers of the four-track helix:

The two darker tracks are the main tracks (uphill on the outside, for the easiest grade, and downhill next to that).  The two inner tracks could be used to store and stage extra trains, as needed.  The helix climbs 4" on each of its four turns, from 32" at the lower deck to 48" high on the upper deck.

The reason for making these two new drawings was to check whether these tracks might collide with the legs coming up through the lower deck.  I did find a couple of conflicts and have detached the offending legs, which will be moved to new locations later.

Then it was time to mark the leg locations on the plywood tabletops for each section, so that rectangular notches could be cut along the edges to allow the legs to pass through.   I figured out that I could avoid cutting some notches by moving the legs from inside the frame to outside the frame when they are in the pop-up area inside the staging loop, so I did that.

Today the weather here was dry and sunny for a change, so I was able to set up my sawhorses on the back patio, carry each large, heavy plywood section outside, and use my saber saw to cut the leg notches in the plywood (I cut oversize notches to allow for adjustments).  Then I carried them back inside and laid them in place on top of the lower deck frameworks for Sections 9, 10, and 11, as seen here:

In the distance, there is no tabletop on the small Section 10A, as a new piece of plywood needs to be cut to fit in there exactly.  The two 2x4 legs in the foreground are not attached to the frame, as they were in the way of the future tracks and will be moved to the adjacent Section 8 when the time comes.

I'm working towards getting some roadbed and tracks laid and wired on just these few sections, so I can learn how to do that and then run a few locos and cars back and forth on the staging loop tracks.