Summer 2025 Layout update

Here's what I've been up to for the past few months that has not been other posts.  During our road trip in May I re-visited the old Santa Fe depot in Needles, California.  As a kid in the mid 1960's I had ridden both the Super Chief and El Capitan several times between the Needles station and Los Angeles Union Station.  This visit rekindled an interest I have add for some time to acquire a model of one of these trains so when we got home, I bid on a set and won. I already had an ABA set of F7's and am working on getting another B unit.

One of the reasons I decided on the El Capitan because I had always liked this transition car.  I had not realized it before, but the step down in actually in the car behind this one.  The flaring was just to streamline the look.

In June the first signal detection circuit I had installed over 5 years ago stopped working.  Both the SP and WP loops in the lower helix were stuck on red.  The problem turned out to be the pair of NCE detectors I was using.  It seemed odd that both would fail at the same time but they got replaced with a new Azatrax dual detector circuit.  As the current limiting resistors for the signals were part of the relay board that I had made for this circuit, I left that in place having the output relays from the Azatrax unit trigger it.

And away from the layout I spent a Sunday in mid-July at the annual ETE Eurowest meet at the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos, helping a friend operate his Swiss narrow-gauge layout and then packing it up at the end of the event.  This year I ran some different sections of the layout than last year.  This is one of my favorite scenes on this layout. 

Sound comes to Battle Mountain

Following the addition of locomotive sounds for the Carlin yard switcher, I have now added sound for the Lovelock local road switcher in Battle Mountain.

The Halliburton Barite processing building was the perfect place to install one of the 8 ohm, 3 watt speakers that I have been using on the layout.  It is in about the center of the Battle Mountain industrial district.

The decoder used was a Soundtraxx Econami designed for an HO Scale Atlas Diesel.  I glued an empty plastic prescription bottle under the bench work to hold the decoder in place.  The sound quality and volume from this decoder is quite impressive and it has more choices for programming to match the type of locomotive being modeled so I've been fine tuning those settings.

A control panel similar to the one in Carlin was created for this new decoder in Battle Mountain.   An additional decoder has been ordered and that one will be for road switcher sounds in Carlin where the speaker and control panel are already installed.

Turnout to a possible layout expansion

For some time now I have been simulating a couple of industries in the Southern Pacific west staging yard.  This started when I learned of an actual industry called EP Minerals in Lovelock which was the west end terminus of the local that ran out of Carlin.  This was covered in this post from October of 2022.  https://palisadecanyonrr.blogspot.com/2022/10/whats-in-lovelock.html

Then later, I added a made up a grocery distribution warehouse to virtual Lovelock to add some refrigerator cars and more box cars to the interchange traffic.

Recently I realized that it could be possible to use a space under the Weso section for an actual model representation of these industries.  This would be accessed by a turnout at the bottom of the lower helix.  While this would physically a branch line, conceptually it would be a continuation of the Southern Pacific main line to the town of Lovelock, Nevada.  The location of this potential new section is outlined in green in the photo below.

Several things will need to be worked out to make this expansion possible.  Rearranging some of the items that are currently stored in this area, and how to light the new area with only 9 inches of vertical space.  But the first obstacle to overcome was to install a curved turnout at the bottom of the helix in a tight space.   In the photo below the track on the right is what goes to the staging yard and the track on the left will go to the new section.

The next step was to clear the space under the Weso section.  This was done by consolidating things that were stored in those boxes into other locations, to move the pair of Japanese modules to a different part of the room, and to make a rack to hold the legs to the Japanese modules.

As for the lighting, there was enough room within the bench work of the Weso section to fit in several of the A19 LED bulbs that I have been using to light much of the rest of the layout.  So just like that, it's time to get serious about this expansion.

On the road again - Ely, Nevada

In May during an RV trip that included parts of Arizona, Utah, and Nevada I was able to visit a rail museum that I had been wanting to visit for a long time, The Nevada Northern Railway in Ely, Nevada.  Ely is located along US 50 which has been labeled "the loneliest road in America".  We had passed through Ely once about 30 years ago and at that time visited the abandoned Kennecott copper pit which was why this railroad was built back in the early 1900's.

One of the impressive things about this particular museum how much property and buildings it includes.  This was all donated to the museum foundation when Kennecott closed down the copper pit.  It is amazing to me all the facilities that were required to run what is not a very big railroad in the steam era.  This first photo is of the passenger station which included the railroad headquarters on the second floor.  The second floor is maintained just as it was when it last operated.

This is just one of the upstairs rooms in the station building.  With the bay window, this room could have been used as a yard tower. 

Within the really large shop building, they let visitors wander throughout all long as you don't climb onto any of the equipment.  When I was there, repair or restoration work was happening on several pieces of equipment.

The yard area was also quite large with all the facilities a steam railroad would need.  There were also quite a few examples of freight cars parked in the yard.  Mostly box cars, open hoppers, and gondolas, all letters for the Nevada Northern.

While there I went for a train ride up Robinson Canyon to the site of the now closed copper pit that the railroad had served.  The train was pulled by a VO-1000 and had two heavyweight coaches, an open car and a caboose.  The caboose was not accessible to the passengers but we could wander the other three cars.  I spent most of the ride on the open car.

Michael was our conductor for this trip.  He is very knowledgeable about the history of this railroad and is also an Z scale modeler and we had some good conservation about modeling and the prototype.

I did a short YouTube video on my visit, here's the link to it: Visit to the Northern Nevada Railway Museum.  The Nevada Northern Railway is a bit out of the way but definitely worth a visit. They have things going on year round.   Here's a link to their website:  https://nnry.com/

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.