Prototype

Last week, my wife and I were able to make a trip up north, which gave me a chance to do some railfanning in one of my favorite areas, the San Joaquin Valley. As I'm working on the new layout extension, I've been inspired by prototypes in the Valley and some other areas of California, and it was good to add some of the prototype to the mix.

I was able to stop by the West Isle Line, though it wasn't on one of its operating days. Here's a shot of the loco and the gon that's always coupled to it, through the fence:

Here's a view of the Crop Production Services facility the West Isle Line serves:

One challenge in modeling the San Joaquin Valley is the size of most rail-served facilities, which you can see here.

I mentioned a cheese factory in my last post as a possible industry to locate on the new shelf. Leprino Foods is the major supplier of frozen pizza cheese in the country, if not the world. It has two plants in Lemoore, CA. Here's a shot of the older one near downtown Lemoore:

This is the smaller and older of the two plants. Leprino is a major shipper on the San Joaquin Valley Railroad, using UP and CREX mechanical reefers. The biggest problem I see with Leprino as a prototype is that its plants date from the 1980s and would be difficult to back-engineer to allow older PFE reefers to serve them. I haven't been able to find much on rail service to older cheese facilities in the San Joaquin Valley. I'd prefer to have an older, more "industrial"-looking prototype on my layout, and I'm still thinking how I'm going to handle this.

Here are two pictures of a facility I found in Kerman, CA next to the northern section of the San Joaquin Valley Railroad. I doubt if it's still served by the railroad, but it probably was at one time:

A more traditional grain elevator in Firebaugh, CA, still served by the SJVR:

Scenery in the San Joaquin Valley:

This is all grist for the mill.