The Hole In The Wall

Not long ago I posted this photo with the suggestion to stay tuned:

I mentioned that I've been working on an extension through Germany on the layout that threads through some benchwork and onto a new shelf in an adjoining storage room. The switch had been installed during construction 20 years ago with the aim of eventually doing this. The hole in the wall, the subroadbed extension to incorporate this, and the shelf are now finished, and track has been extended onto the new shelf in the storage room. Here are photos of the power test:

The shelf is 85 inches by 12 inches, Celotex laminated onto 3/4 inch plywood, mounted on shelf brackets. I will be using Kato HO Unitrack for the whole project. This has several advantages. As I get older, my hands shake more, and laying flex track is getting harder. In addition, the curves will be Unitrack 14-9/16 inch radius, their minimum. Unitrack is so solid and stable that this will minimize operational problems with curves this sharp. I wouldn't trust my ability to bend flex track smoothly to this radius, and given expansion and contraction, shrinkage of roadbed due to humidity and so forth, the results would be unpredictable anyhow.

Also, the Unitrack switch machines are incorporated into the roadbed, so they're invisible, but there's no need to fiddle with installing and wiring Tortoises under the baseboard. Again, as I get older, I'm less and less inclined to want to work under baseboards or shelves. Over the years, I've found that 15-inch radius (or in the case of Unitrack, 14-9/16) will work at low speeds with GP and RS locos and 40- and 50-foot cars with no trouble. This is a branch line!

Here's the tentative plan for what will be on the shelf:

My NCE radio cab works in the storage room.

M. Neal Milk Company

I've begun the process of naming industries on my layout for fellow blogger-modelers, and the first is M. Neal Milk. As I will with everyone I think about doing this with, I ran the idea past Neal M., who didn't want his surname used on social media -- an entirely prudent and reasonable preference. As a result, M. Neal Milk is the new name for a previously unnamed JL Innovative Designs milk platform.

Along with the lettering, which came from a spare alphabet decal set, I added some additional milk cans and cases from the new Walthers 949-4136 set. I also need to find a delivery truck, which I'll add to the scene when I find one.

The Central Vermont milk car is actually a tank car, with internal tanks inside the wood sheathed body. The photos I've seen suggest that these were unloaded near major cities directly into tank trucks, which carried the milk to the distributors. If anyone ever brings out a milk tank truck, I'll also get one of those.

Milk traffic survived on some lines into the 1960s. A DVD I have of late Erie and early EL shows Erie milk cars on the head end of diesel passenger trains. A Lackawanna milk train ran from Sussex, NJ through Chatham very early in the morning up to the early 1960s when I was growing up in Chatham -- but this is the sort of thing nobody heard about at the time.

Recently I found a Binkley-Laconia Rutland milk car for a reasonable price on eBay. This was assembled, though the description made it clear that one of the couplers had gone south, and one of the trucks disintegrated in shipment. No problem, I just replaced both. The couplers were the original Kadee non-magnetic style from the 1950s with the straight actuating pins, which probably dates the whole car.

All the Rutland cars were can cars, not tank cars, so the cans on the milk platform would come from cars like these.

The West Isle Line -- An Undiscovered Gem

I've been railfanning California for almost 50 years, but I recently found out about a short line-industrial operation that's had very little attention, the West Isle Line. According to the Wikipedia link,

The West Isle Line (reporting mark WFS) is a private railroad and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Crop Production Services (formerly Western Farm Service). The line is operated by a contractor and the line does not have any employees. The line began service on January 7, 1998 after being acquired from the Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway. The line runs for 5.25 miles from Alpaugh, California to a connection with the BNSF Railway at Stoil (milepost 936 on BNSF's Bakersfield Subdivision). Western Farm Service is the only customer on the line.

Western Farm Service bought the line from the BNSF in order to avoid having the BNSF's "Alpaugh Branch" abandoned. The line was formerly part of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and was constructed by the ATSF in 1914.

Here is a YouTube video of typical operation:

For reasons I haven't been able to discover, the gondola always stays with the loco and has been called its "pet gondola" in railfan discussions. The GP9, its only loco, is ex SP 3399; exx SP 3472; nee SP 5639. The train seems to operate once a week, hauling interchange from BNSF at Stoll to a transload in Alpaugh. The traffic seems to be fertilizer in covered hoppers and tank cars.

Here's the layout at Alpaugh, the western end of the line, from Google satellite:

In the lower right, you can see the GP9 and gon parked. Here's an enlargement:

About a mile east of the terminal in Alpaugh is a runaround:

And here is the interchnge with BNSF at Stoil:

There's a lot of similarity with other short line operations not too far away, especially the Buttonwillow line of the San Joaquin Valley Railroad. A model shelf layout with features of similar California short lines, including the Ventura County Railway and the Santa Maria Valley, would be an interesting project.

I'm planning to stop by the West Isle Line for a look on my next trip north.

Pulpwood Spur

The next industry over from the Jaques grain elevator is the pulpwood spur. This is actually reached from Bay City over the interchange with the German main line. Theoretically, it could serve both German and US equipment, but so far, I don't have any European-prototype pulpwood cars. This industry ships pulpwood to paper mills.

A rearrangement of the separate industry shelf in the storage room adjoining the layout will probably allow a direct connection between the paper mill on that shelf and the main layout once the tunnel through the wall is complete.

Pulpwood has been a common commodity in places like Maine, upstate New York, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and southeastern and south-central US.

The spur is long enough to handle all model pulpwood equipment, at least, what I'm aware of. Here's an Atlas car in my collection:

A vintage Tyco pulpwood car, repainted and lettered with decals from Great Decals:

A Walthers SIECO car:

A Walthers Canadian-style car. These are some of the most common still in contemporary use.

An Ambroid 1 of 5000 MEC-BAR pulpwood car. I mass produced three of these from partial kits I found at a swap meet, but it took several years of on and off effort. This one hasn't yet been lettered.

If anyone wants to set up a virtual pulpwood interchange in the virtual ops program, I'll be happy to exchange info.

Progress Shots And Virtual Industry Info

I was trading info with fellow blogger and modeler Neal M, when he suggested that a list of industries by themselves made it hard to visualize what kind of equipment might actually be routed to them. I sent him some photos, but then I began to realize that I hadn't updated my industry photos in a long time, and in other cases hadn't documented things very well at all. So this post will start a series of layout progress photos, with an emphasis on industries.

One of my biggest inspirations is George Sellios's Franklin & South Manchester. Over the years, many thousands of photos of this layout have been posted on the web. However, more recently, a few guys on a forum have come up with the idea of using cell phones, sometimes on selfie sticks, to get different camera angles. Check out this thread for some of the results. I've begun to experiment with cell phone shots as a result.

Meanwhile, here is the first set of progress shots. This covers the grain elevator in Jaques and the surrounding area. The elevator was a Timberline kit that I assembled nearly 50 years ago and upgraded with new paint and improved roofing about 15 years ago when I installed it on the layout.

Scenery is in progress in the background. I built the section sheds from SP drawings using heavy cardboard and Paper Creek building papers, now no longer made.

The German main line runs behind and below Jaques.

A cell phone shot from the other side of the peninsula. When the new scenery goes in, it may not be possible to get this one.

If you look closely, you can see that the spur for the grain elevator and the line running past it is dual gauge. The third rail for standard gauge ends just at the bottom of the photo.

The grain elevator hasn't yet been named. As an industry for virtual ops, it ships grain in clean 36- and 40-foot boxcars.