Old box cars live on

When visiting the caboose motel that was featured a couple of posts ago, I noticed a pair of box cars that were sitting off to the side of the cluster of cabooses and other restored cars.  The first one was this Cotton Belt plug door type box car with road number SSW 23811.

The second car was this Golden West Services plug door box car.  

A zoom in of the above image shows this car had a road number of SSW 23587.  This had been a patch over the original Golden West Services road number.  By playing around with this image further in Photoshop I was able to determine the original road number was GSVR 768X22 with the X being either a 3 or a 9. 

In the weeds near the two box cars were 4 railcar trucks.  It can be assumed that these came from these two box cars.

On the Cotton Belt car I was able to find and photograph the placard indicating that the vintage of this car was 1974 making it 51 years old.

After returning home I got to wondering about the history of these particular box cars and did some researching on the internet.  I did find a few photos of the Golden West car on rrpicturearchives.net.  Those placed this car in Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah between 2009 and 2015.  They didn't have any photos of the Cotton Belt car on that site but I found photos of both on Flicker.  Both photographed on the same day in 2018 and at the same location which was described as the Ironton scrap line which is in Provo, Utah.

So it appears that both of these box cars reached the end of their active railroad life in Provo, Utah and were purchased by someone and brought by truck to the site they are at now.  Glad they escaped the scrapper and hopefully they will restored and converted to a new use.

A morning in Carlin, Nevada in 1992

We are spending a morning in the spring of 1992 at the Southern Pacific Yard in Carlin, Nevada watching the action.  The first train in is a westbound Ogden to San Jose coal loads being pulled by an SD40 and a C44-9W, both painted in the speed lettering scheme.

Carlin is a crew change point for the Southern Pacific with east bound trains also taking on fuel here.  Turnouts have been aligned to give this train the path shown with a red line in the photo below.

No fuel is needed for this westbound going downgrade.   The new head end crew is walking out to their train as it reaches the west end of the yard.  On this layout we still have full crews and the new rear end crew has been taken down to the other end of the yard by one of the yard's motor vehicles.  This crew is based in Sparks and had brought an eastbound train here late yesterday and spent the night here at the railroad rooming house.  The crew getting off is based in Ogden and will spend the night here and take another train back to Ogden tomorrow.

About 20 minutes after the coal train left, another westbound freight entered the yard.  This one was an Ogden to Roseville manifest that will exchange a few cars here.  The power on this train is a GP35 in Kodachrome paint and a B23-7.  The yard's MP-15 switch engine has gotten into position to do the switching work.

The yard switcher is pulling the caboose and the last two covered hoppers from the rear of the train.  The SP covered hopper is an empty bound for the EP Minerals plant in Lovelock and the leased unit is a load of plastic pellets bound for the Diamond Plastics plant in Battle Mountain.

After setting the two covered hoppers out on the siding, the switcher picks up two empty tank cars from the storage track.  These two empty tank cars are bound for the Chevron refinery in Richmond, California.

The two empty tank cars and the caboose are then coupled to the rear of the train.

After the manifest train departs, the switcher grabs the empty D&RGW covered hopper that had been on the storage track with the tank cars and with it moves the two covered hoppers from the siding to the storage track.  The D&RGW car is a load from the Halliburton facility in Battle Mountain that will be picked on on the next West Colton bound train and placing it at the east end of the storage track will make that transfer easier.  The other two cars will go out on the next Lovelock local.

With it's work done for now, the yard crew parks the switcher on the siding and heads out for lunch.

On the road again - Marysvale, UT

While visiting Utah recently, we noticed a group of cabooses and freight cars alongside US Highway 89 north of Marysvale so we pulled in to take a closer look.

Turns out that what we spotted was a caboose motel called Caboose Village.  This is the LINK to their website. There is detailed information on each of the cabooses and that is where I got the information presented here.

There were at least 8 cabooses of the bay window or wide vision type.  Most are former Southern Pacific or Denver and Rio Grande equipment that have been painted to represent various railroads and set on short sections of track.

There was also a passenger coach that originally came from the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad before eventually finding it's way to being a motel accommodation.  There are also a pair of grade crossing signals in the collection.

And there were also several box cars on the site with at least one of those converted into accommodations.   The other side of this box car has windows and entry door. 

A bicycle trail had been visible as we drove along and I assumed that there had at one time been a railroad line here.  When we got back to camp, I did a little research and found that the Denver and Rio Grand had a branch line here that was called the Marysvale Branch and was abandoned in the 1980's.  The bicycle trail is built on about 16 miles of the abandoned right of way through the Sevier River Canyon and passes nearby this caboose village.

Even if they are not painted in their authentic original paint schemes, it is great to see this old railroad equipment escape the scrappers. 

Spring 2025 Layout Update

Since returning from Japan in January I have been mostly working on my modules in preparation for the 2025 edition of the Hiller Aviation Museum's Trains and Planes exhibit.  Our part of this went from the 9th to the 13th of April.  We had a real good turnout with the Ntrak club and it was great to visit with all the guys.  And I ran a lot of equipment that I don't run on the home layout.  Here's a shot of our Ntrak layout with the AsiaNrail layout being behind it.

Since last fall I have been trying out Vallejo paints and like them.  They are quite reasonably priced if purchased in sets on Amazon and I also found an ebay seller that sells them individually at a reasonable price.  So in February I bought a rack specially made to hold these paints.

The Vallejo paints don't have the same colors that we are used to with Floquil paints which were more focused on model railroads.  I discovered that Model Railroad Hobbyist which is an on line magazine I follow had color matching charts showing how many parts of each Vallejo paint to use to get a close match to a Floquil color.  So I printed all the pages and have them hanging on the inside of one of the cabinet doors where I keep some of my painting supplies.

In late March my friend Roger visited the layout and we ran a couple of jobs while letting the glue dry on a new Ntrak module he is building.   He is experienced with layout operations and one suggestion he had was more uncoupling picks and holders around the layout so that is something I'll be working on.   

A new locomotive was recently introduced the layout.  This Atlas GP35 was given to me last year and I finally got around to installing a DCC decoder in it.  It was custom painted many years ago by another friend from the Ntrak club who has since passed away.  I could not find any evidence that the prototype number 644 ever made it into UP service but it will on this layout.

Organizing operations

 As I am interested in having a few friends over for operating sessions in the future I thought it would be useful to start simulating some operating sessions to run by myself

I have always read that staging trains for an operating session can be a large chore.  Yes, moving many freight cars around to specific locations to stage everything takes a bit of time but what I was having a hard time figuring out was how to organize the flow of trains.  I have 3 staging yards and the idea is to be able to move trains from an occupied position in one yard to an unoccupied position in another yard.  My first step was to make track diagrams using the same graphics that I used for the staging yard's control panels and assign a number to each track.

Next I made up a magnet board from a piece of sheet metal I had laying around.  This was mounted to the bottom of the DC test setup that I keep on hand to test DC equipment.  Enlarged versions of the track diagrams were pasted to this.

The magnetic "trains" were made from sections of .040 x .125 styrene strip with labels pasted on them and small magnets on the back side.  The train symbol is printed twice, once in each direction so it can be easily read from both orientations. There are two of these for each train, the yellow ones are to trains that have not started their run and the blue ones are for the trains that have completed their run.  In some cases the same train is used once in each direction and when it arrives at the first destination, a yellow one with a different train symbol is placed in the new location.

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By running through the exercise on the magnet board, I was able to put together a job list showing where each train departs and arrives both in theory and actual location number.

From this list I have been running the 17 jobs listed in sequence by myself, fine tuning it as necessary.  Hope to have a few of the guys over sometime this summer to actually run the layout together.

 

Connection to the Modoc line

Last winter while attending the International Railfair in Sacramento I was able to purchase this Western Pacific book that I had been looking to get for awhile.  While looking through the book something caught my attention.  There was a mention in this book that the Southern Pacific had trackage rights on the WP between Weso to Flanigan to make a connection to their Modoc line.  I was surprised that I had not been aware of this before and had to dig deeper.

Looking through some other books and on the internet I found out that this arrangement started in 1962.   Prior to that the SP Modoc line had crossed the WP at Flannigan and made a connection to the SP main line at Fernley.   This is a Google maps satellite view of how Flannigan looks now that I added some labels to.  The scars from the old connection to Fernley are still visible many decades later.

I made up with this simplified drawing showing this arrangement.  The Modoc line itself is also now abandoned and is a rail trail. 

I had never considered any SP traffic coming off the WP line at Weso on the layout and all of the interchange traffic has been from SP manifest trains running east and west between Roseville and Ogden.  Now I can see the possibility of also having trains running between Klamath Falls and Ogden also stopping and exchanging cars.  I have already redone a couple of Freight waybills that reflect this routing.

Here is a Klamath Falls to Ogden manifest coming off the Western Pacific line at Weso and starting on the east bound paired track.   This change will add an extra element of interest to operations on the layout.

Winter 2025 layout update

Not much new to report on the layout.  We were in Japan from the middle of December to the middle of January.  While I was gone I missed one Ntrak layout and another one we were supposed to have in February got canceled.  When I returned home I was happy that I was able to start up the layout and run a train with no problems. 

Been trying out a couple of new to me paint brands.  The only brand of paint my local hobby shop carries now is Tru-Color so I picked up a jar of white last fall to paint the Sinclair gas station.  Did not like this one at all.  Has to be cleaned up with acetone and I did not like working with it.  Then shortly before leaving for Japan, I got a basic set of Vallejo paints on Amazon.  The price is quite good per bottle when buying a set.  I have been using these on several brush projects and one air brush project and I do like working with it.  For use with the air brush it thins with distilled water.  So I will likely be buying some other sets to get some other colors and of course I could also mix the colors to get the one I want.  They also offer an additive for use with an air brush and I plan to try that out.  I also still like using the Mission Models brand of paints.

Expanding the signaling, again.

Over the past few weeks I have been working on the signaling on the layout.  First to correct some problems I've had in one of the signal blocks, and then to expand the signaling to the upper helix. The signaling on this layout is just red / green aspects with the actual signals being something I have scratch built myself.  Below are links to some of the earlier posts I have made on the signaling.

July 2021 - Expanding the signaling

July 2020 - My home made searchlight signals

May 2020 - First working signals on the layout

So the first step was to correct a problem I have been having with sensitivity on the Southern Pacific line in the 3rd signal block which includes the Carlin yard.  The NCE detectors I have been using don't have any sensitivity adjustment so I picked up a circuit from Azatrax that does have a sensitivity adjustment to see if that would make a difference.  After installing it, I was able to adjust it to get the results I wanted.  A nice thing about this Azatrax circuit was that the double pole relays were included on the board so I did not have to make up a relay board like I have been doing for the NCE sensors.

The sensors and relay board that had been removed from the 3rd signal block location was installed to provide detection for the upper helix which has become the 4th signal block.  They works fine there, I think because the track arrangement is simpler.

At the top of the upper helix the occupancy for each track is indicated with bi-color LED's that were added to the upper return loop control panel.

At the bottom of the upper helix near the east end of the Carlin yard, a pair of signals indicate the occupancy within the helix.

At the west end of the Carlin yard where the crossover leads to the WP track, another signal is connected to the WP signal block.  In the future I would like to have the signal only be green if the block is clear and the turnout is aligned for the crossover.

Renting a U-Haul in a small town

U-Haul rental trailers and trucks have been part of the American scene since the mid 20th century and nearly everyone has rented one at some point in their life.

Years ago I was making cast resin N Scale U-Haul trailers.  It all started with me making replicas of our Ntrak club's trailer and giving them to the members after finding out that it was a retired U-Haul.  After that I made several different versions of U-Haul trailers shown in the photo below and and also painted and decaled cast resin trucks and vans from Lineside Models.  I sold many of these on ebay but kept a few for myself.

From left to right: 5x8 in the older paint scheme, our Ntrak club trailer was like this one. 6x12 in the older paint scheme.  6x10 in the super graphics scheme that started in 1988.  And 5x8 in the super graphics scheme.

On a club module I had built a U-Haul rental center using several of these trailers plus some of the Lineside Models cast resin trucks.  Rental centers like this are common and larger cities and towns.

In smaller towns where there might not be enough business to support a rental center, various types of existing businesses are authorized U-Haul dealers.  The most common types of businesses that become U-Haul dealers are gas stations and self storage facilities and tool rental centers.  So, on this layout the Sinclair gas station in Carlin has become a U-Haul dealer.  

As I have both the pre and post 1988 versions, I will use the older models in the two earlier eras of the layout and a mix of those plus the 1988 super graphics versions in the 1988 to 1996 era.