Models and Kitbashes by NightOwlModeler: November 2020

Friday, November 20, 2020

SP Jawbone Branch (Part 4) - Freight Car Roster

In the last blog post (SP Jawbone Branch Part 3) I covered some photo analysis to sort out which kinds of freight cars I'll need for the basic operations of the Jawbone Branch.

SP Mk-4 leads the Owenyo Local, probably near Cantil or Owens Lake - RW Please collection

Note in the photo above the load of white ore/minerals in the first All-Steel SP GS-Gondola, possibly from one of the small ore dumps along the line. The other cars are probably also loaded from the SPNG trestle at Owenyo.
Let's quickly review this list as follows for a 'Typical' Owenyo Local consist of 10-16 cars:

4-5 SP Steel GS Gondolas (Red Caboose)
1 Black (lease or SP) tank car, probably with fuel oil - Possibly leasers such as SHPX, UTLX, UOCX, GATX, etc.
4-8 XM boxcars - generally a mix of mostly all-steel types after 1952, both SP and foreign car mix.
1+ SPMW water tank cars

Of course a major difference between modeling a train and modeling an operational layout is the fact that the operational layout will require more cars to cycle and make a 'normal' consist to appear on the layout each session. I'm figuring that at least two times the 'basic train' will be needed as the loaded cars and empty cars need to be swapped each trip which takes two days (3-trips per week) on the Jawbone. Figuring in cars being held for loading for multiple trips, I can see each Owenyo Local trip consisting of about 40% of the cars on the layout.
Also not all of the prototypical 13-16 car trains would be worked in the few towns I will be able to model, namely Owenyo. Lone Pine was also a fairly large town and traffic source/receiver for Standard Gauge cars. This may result in my 'typical' train being only 8-12 cars or something in that range, to have suitable work at Linnie, Bartlett, and Owenyo.
Upon closer inspection of several photos, I have been able to recognize several foreign boxcars of interest that I could model. Some rather interesting cars show up to which I wouldn't have expected. I wonder how many of these cars were sent to the Owenyo Branch from LA as empties vs caught by Bakersfield or Mojave on the way back home or if the cars were sent loaded to the Jawbone and were simply being grabbed again for a new load out of Owenyo.

SP GS-Steel Gondolas

Red Caboose SP 151454 in service at Caliente, LMRC.

The majority of the GS gondolas being used on the Owenyo Branch by 1952-55 it seems were the standard SP G-50-18/22 class cars. I have found one photo of the odd composite GS gondola (G-50-20/23 class) but generally composite cars were reserved for softer loads such as sugar beets and wood chips. The all-steel cars were used for ore and mineral service.

UP GS-Steel Gondolas

Interestingly one photo of SPNG 18 at Owenyo on an F-70-3 flatcar shows a UP 65k-series gondola in Owenyo.

Red Caboose UP 65003 G-50-13 kit for standard UP car

I'm not sure why there would be UP gonds in Owenyo. Possibilities that come to mind are Lumber, coal, coke, loading of materials (ore/minerals) off the SPNG to be sent off of the Jawbone back to UP territory? Sometimes photos raise more questions than answers! For now, I'm making the notes about what cars were there, not worrying so much about why they were there at the moment.

SP All-Steel Boxcars

The following five classes (B-50-18/19/20/21/23) totaled nearly 8000 cars with 10ft Interior Height (IH) placed in service between 1936 and 1942 and were a major expansion of the SP fleet. The B-50-12A class of rebuilt USRA cars only amounted to 350 cars, but is an interesting side note.
I plan to have several All-Steel SP boxcars on the Jawbone Branch, as they do show up as the dominate car type in the 1952-53+ era photos. That said, I do plan to have some earlier classes of SP boxcar as well filling out the roster with composite cars including B-50-8/10/11, B-50-12 (gone in 1949), B-50-13/14, and the signature B-50-15/16.
I'll be covering the specifics of modeling these classes in a future post at some point. For now, let's look at the pre-war All-Steel cars, as they were the type photographed on the Jawbone Branch.

B-50-18 - 1750 cars

Red Caboose RTR model of SP 32891, a B-50-18 class car

This class was built in 1936 to the 10ft IH standard which the SP preferred.

SP 32770-33269 500 cars
SP 33270-33519 250 cars

SP 33520-34019 500 cars

SP 34020-34519 500 cars, Totaling 1750 cars

I have a couple of these Red Caboose models to use as examples of this class. Wood lined with sharp 4/5 Dreadnaught Ends, Youngstown doors, and wood running boards. - Description excerpt from Anthony Thompson's Southern Pacific Freight Cars Vol.4 Boxcars.

B-50-19 - 1000 cars

In-process SP 38542, renumbered and reclassed as B-50-19 from B-50-18 RC/IMRC RTR model.

Essentially repeats of the B-50-18 class ordered only one month later.

SP 37840-38089 250 cars

SP 38090-38339 250 cars

SP 38340-38589 250 cars

SP 38590-38839 250 cars Totaling 1000 cars

Wood lined with sharp 4/5 Dreadnaught Ends, Youngstown doors, and wood running boards. - Description excerpt from Anthony Thompson's Southern Pacific Freight Cars Vol.4 Boxcars.

I will probably change the number of one of my B-50-18s, as it is only one number off from the 32891 shown above.

B-50-20 -1500 cars

Red Caboose SP 84268, B-50-20 with black patch to the left of the door with "return when empty" data.

This class can be made with RC's kits. This particular car is from the special run of 300 car kits for La Mesa Club in the 1990s with the special "When Empty Return to Agent Bakersfield, Calif."

SP 83240-83739 500 cars (Creco or Superior Doors)

SP 83740-84239 500 cars

SP 84240-84739 500 cars Totaling 1500 cars

B-50-21 - 2000 cars

BLYM SP 82992, a B-50-21 class boxcar with minor redecalling.

SP 81990-82489 500 cars

SP 82490-82989 500 cars

SP 82990-83239 250 cars Totaling 1250 cars

T&NO 54100-54599 500 cars (Creco or Superior Doors)

T&NO 54600-54849 250 cars Totaling 750 cars (2000 cars both SP & T&NO)

This class of 40ft boxcar can be found from RC or BLYM. The example I have is a BLYM car with Speedwitch SP boxcar decals to replace the reporting initials with the spelled out "SOUTHERN PACIFIC", which is more correct for my modeling era of 1946-1953.

B-50-23 - 1744 cars

Built into 1942 when Pullman exhausted the supply of parts, ending the order at 1744 cars.

SP 95520-95863 344 cars

SP 96220-96919 700 cars (first 600 with Creco doors, rest Youngstown doors)

SP 96920-97619 700 cars Totaling 1744 cars

Post-War Boxcars

The SP ordered several classes of new boxcars after WWII and received new cars all the way into 1953, which is about my cutoff point for era. There is some chance that I should have some of these cars, but I'll cover those another time as I have no models of them at present.

B-50-12A - Rebuilds

The SP also rebuilt 350 B-50-12 cars in 1949 to the current construction standards of the industry, so these could be showing up in the photos on the Jawbone Branch as well. I covered this briefly on my SPMW Supply Train (Part 3) - Boxcars SPMW 2767 B-50-12 article.

Foreign Line Boxcars

NP 15000-17996

IMWX NP 15046 boxcar kit

This series of cars covers about 3000 cars all of almost identical measurements according to the 1950 ORER as 10ft IH all-steel boxcars. I see two easy ways to model the car in this series that was photographed at Owenyo. One is the IMWX HOBNP046 (IMRC) 10ft NP 1937 AAR boxcar. I happen to have NP 15046 as a prepainted model (built 1040). The IMWX kit has the "Main Street of the Northwest" slogan.
Another option to model the NP car is the Branchline Yardmaster series kit 8013 which I bought around 2003-2004 which is NP 17182 which shows a built date of 5-41. The BLYM kit doesn't have the slogan below the herald.
Unfortunately, the photograph quality doesn't allow me to read the car number on the end, it is pretty clearly a 15-16k car number. The photo is about a 7/8 end view, so I can make out that the NP car in question does have the slogan painted on the carside below the herald. While I'm not currently planning to model every exact car that I have a photo of on the branch, I at least take the hint of what cars did show up. Given the IMWX car is closer with the slogan, I'll probably use that car in this case.

OWR&N 188300-189299 (UP subsidiary)

Red Caboose OWR&N 189095 kit, similar to the car photographed at Owenyo in the early 1950s.

This 1000-car group of 1937 AAR boxcars was assigned to the Oregon Washington River & Navigation Co. One of which showed up in a photograph of a bulk vertical conveyor loader at Owenyo. The shot shows a NG boxcar loading minerals into the boxcar, probably something like Perlite or Talc. I'll be using a RC-8040-2b, a 1937 AAR model of OWR&N 189095 will become a typical model to represent the prototype car which I can't read the number on, other than to see it's a 188 or 189k-series car from OWR&N.

PRR All-Steel Boxcar

Branchline Blueprint-series X43B boxcar, built-up kit in service at LMRC in 2011.

In the photos from Tom Dill's San Joaquin Valley book of Lone Pine being switched in January 1953, there is a all-steel boxcar that appears to be a PRR car. All I can make out is lettering consistent with the PRR's normal lettering scheme. Reaching back into my 15-20 year old stash of models, I've pulled out a Branchline Blueprint (BLBP) series kit for an X43B boxcar PRR 600532, built NEW 9-51. This will be a fairly clean model, but I'll probably put some fading on it to represent a car two years old.

PRR Boxcar (Alternate Options)

Given the size of the PRR, I'll probably run two other PRR boxcars if I want to simulate before late 1951.

Atlas X26C USRA rebuild boxcar - not yet weathered.

One is Atlas's X26C, WWI USRA boxcar rebuild PRR 105808, which comes RTR, but I'll be doing some upgrades to the mechanicals and weathering it obviously.

Red Caboose PRR X29 boxcar, a little worse for wear.

This is one of Red Caboose's famous X29 kits. I started buildign this kit many years ago. When I finish it, the Owenyo branch should give it a good home as almost every layout in the USA from the late 1920s to the 1960 timeframe should have an X29 on it. About 2/3s of the X29s were upgraded with new bodies above the floor into X29B, which looked more like AAR boxcars, save the narrower frame sidesills from the original X29. I may end up kitbashing one of these X29Bs at some point. They have also been available in resin.

NYC "Standard" Boxcar / 1923 ARA "Proposed Standard"

BLI's version of NYC's "Standard" boxcar which competed with X29 for the ARA standard in the early1920s.

While I've not found a photo of it, if a PRR boxcar went somewhere on the SP, chances were that an NYC car also went there at some point. The BLI model of the NYC's 'standard' boxcar is not a bad choice. I'm also planning to redecal a BLYM car as one of the NYC's all-steel boxcars based on the pre-war (1937-1941) boxcars.

ATSF All-Steel Boxcars

Kadee ATSF 31564, new 1950 - LMRC 2011 photo

In the January 1953 photos in Tom Dill's San Joaquin Valley book, there is a photo of an ATSF all-steel boxcar at Lone Pine being switched. It is a little hard to read the car number series off the photo, but I expect it could be a 31k series boxcar, like the Kadee car above.
Again IMRC, IMWX, or RC 1937 AAR cars will work for modeling these cars in the 38k series or a 138k series car. I also have several BLYM series kits for BX-27 class cars. I'm uncertain which kit I will be using on the Owenyo Branch versus building for operations at LMRC.

The prototype photo shows no map on the side of the car, but the 'Ship Santa Fe - All the way' slogan on the carside as shown in the photo of Kadee ATSF 31564 car above. I currently don't have an ATSF car with this exact scheme. Something to ponder at some point down the road, as I have 4-6 of the previously mentioned car kits, I probably will not be looking for a Kadee car.

Other Boxcars

I'm sure there were other foreign road boxcars that traveled the Owenyo branch which will justify operations of some of my other boxcars. A Seaboard Air Line car photographed at Bartlett shows that there certainly could have been some other esotaric cars on the Jawbone. Several cars that are in the background of the photos are too dark or weathered to positively read their reporting marks or recognize the owner.

In Closing

Some cars like the ATSF boxcar wouldn't be that surprising, probably some east coast freight forwarder company sending something out to the Jawbone Branch or it could have even been sent from a more local freight house at San Bernardino, Los Angeles, or even Bakersfield with Santa Fe freight forwarder traffic recombined into an freight forwarder LCL shipment to Lone Pine's community. Some
of the foreign cars on the line were probably also freight forwarders and LCL shipments to the branch. Some would have been empty cars sent for loading for off-SP destinations, with the empties either 'captured' as they went past Mojave by the Agent, or specificly sent to the Mojave Agent for distribution to Monolith on the KI Local, Palmdale and the Mojave desert on the "Blitz" Local, or to the Jawbone's traffic generators on the Owenyo Branch or the Trona Rwy.

Loading of Freight Cars, as published in 1953 ORER Register.

At a certain point, a boxcar is just a boxcar and the customer needs one. We'll follow the AAR's loading practices as much as possible (see upper half of above image, click on image for larger view).

Hopefully this has been an interesting look at all the colorful traffic that showed up! In the future I'll be looking into the traffic patterns on the branch if there was any rhyme or reason to which foreign cars were showing up where.

Jason Hill

SP Jawbone Branch (Part 1) - Concept

SP Jawbone Branch (Part 2) - Researching and Changing of the Plan

SP Jawbone Branch (Part 3) - Consists and More Bartlett Research

SP Jawbone Branch (Part 4) - Freight Car Roster

SP Jawbone Branch (Part 5) - Pulling the Trigger (Buying the materials for the benchwork)

SP Jawbone Branch (Part 6) - Q&A Continuing Design Tweaks - Working out the logistics for the staging yards other details.

SP Jawbone Branch (Part 7) - Film & Construction Begins - Historic movie film clip of Owenyo Local and starting construction of the layout.

SP Jawbone Branch (Part 8) - Little Lake Grows - More research materials have surfaced for my modeling of Little Lake

Freight Symbols Over Tehachapi - Part 4 - SP Locals

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

SP Jawbone Branch (Part 3) - Consists & More Bartlett Research

California Division of Mines - Owens Lake Alkali Plants

The previous two posts on my layout concept for the Jawbone Branch has stirred up some friends to dig through their archives and research materials. David Coscia dug up a great reference from from the SPNG 2014 Convention at Lone Pine which found an entry in the California Division of Mines 1959 Soda Ash Industry of the Owens Lake publication on the development of the industry from 1887-1959. Included is information on the 1928 Pacific Alkali Company's production plant at the Bartlett.

California Division of Mines article. - David Coscia collection

Text of article from California Division of Mines article. - David Coscia collection

The 1928 plant was designed to produce 99.5% pure borax. The yearly production of 12,000 tons of sodium sesquicarbonate (trona mineral), 12,000 tons of soda ash and 2,000 tons of borax.

These production rates would average of about 100-tons each per trip (tri-weekly) of trona, soda ash, and about 1 car per week of borax. This means 4-5 cars per trip just for Bartlett, which seems possible.

Oddly I think the document has a typo where it says "2000 thousand tons of borax" - , which would be about 300 cars per trip. That seems to be too much, and a result of a typo. - Perhaps they mean "20,000 tons"... or "20 thousand tons", which would be about 3 cars per tri-week trip.

This seems to be a question of scale, and while I could see maybe up to 3x50 tons 3x week of borax... that would put the car loading out of Bartlett at more like 7 cars per trip, which seems a bit high from what the photographs of the Owenyo Local look like during the 1948-1955 era.

As a side note: There are still remains of charcoal kilns several miles south of Bartlett at Cottonwood Creek, so I'm not sure where they're getting their lime from for this process. The charcoal was probably being used for the CO2 needs of the processing of the soda ash and trona at the Bartlett facility and others in the area.

Columbia-Southern Chemical Corporation - Bartlett, Calif.

In 1944 the plant Pacific Alkali Company at Bartlett was sold to the Columbia-Southern Chemical Corporation, a subsidiary of Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company. They left the plant alone until the late 1950s by which time they decided that the nearly inexhaustible supply of trona at Owens Lake was worth upgrading their plant. The upgrades came on-line in 1958, tripling the production rates!

Check out this great website of Owens Valley History! There's a lot of good information which I'm still trying to digest there. One part of the website shows a map with Columbia-Southern Chemical at Bartlett, with US Hwy 395, CA Hwy 190, and the SPNG removed, suggesting this map was post-1960 vintage. Some of the photos of Bartlett (townsite) are pretty good too, which I didn't know about until I saw the pictures... Still so much more to research!

This information was found at http://www.owensvalleyhistory.com/owens_valley_owens_lake/solda_ash_industry_owens_lake_REDUCED.pdf which is a great dive if you want more information!

Clark Chemical Company

The Clark Chemical, which I previously commented on from the Ghosttown.com link actually seems to be farther north by a mile or so in the center of Bartlett Point, which this document from Cal Div of Mines says was abandoned after only having a test plant there. It would be interesting to find the next page or two of the paper and see what is said about that company. The Clark Chem Company was planned to make caustic soda (NaOH), a.k.a. 'lye', from soda ash from Owens Lake and lime. -

SPINS Chart

The SPINS Chart I was sent this week shows a pair of single stub at Bartlett.

SPINS Chart, cropped to show only Bartlett, (east-north to the right) - David Coscia collection

At this point, I'm going to pull up the GoogleMaps/GoogleEarth images of Bartlett and see if I can gauge the width of the spur at Bartlett, to see if there's room for a second spur here.

I don't really see any extra width in the track next to the plant, than the main track arcing by next to the lake to the east.

Freight Traffic to Bartlett

SP 3237 Bartlett on the Jawbone branch - Leo Barusch photo - Inad Akeb Collection

While I don't have a lot of information on what types of cars were used at Bartlett, I can make some good guesses for the late 1940s and early 1950s. The photo above with SP 3237 shows three standard 50-ton boxcars at Bartlett. This would appear about right for the 1928 estimate of 12,000-tons per year of both trona and soda ash each would say about two 50-ton carloads per trip of the Owenyo Local of each, or in other words, four empty cars and four loads on average from the plant at Bartlett each trip.

The processing notes suggest CO2 was needed for the chemical processing of the trona and soda ash, plus various levels of heating, furnaces, etc. There was probably some form of fuel imported to Bartlett to supply this.

Comparison to Trona/West End Fuel Needs

Fuel oil unloading at Trona. - Photographer Unknown - Jason Hill collection

The plants at Trona and West End were located about 30 miles off the Jawbone at Searles, and supplied by its own nightly 50 car train! They used SP supplied fuel oil with about thirteen 12.5k gallon carloads per day on average, 162,500 gallons per day! While I'm not 100% sure that Trona was receiving all their fuel oil in 12.5k gallon cars, it still suggests over 100,000 gallons per day if some were 10k or 8k gallon cars, which SP generally didn't have very many of in their fleet. Assuming Bartlett was shipping about 26,000 tons of material out per year (520 car loads at 50-tons each). That puts Bartlett at about 1/35th the production rates of Trona.

Kitbashed Athearn 12.5k gallon tank car to earlier class SP O-50-series with radial course tanks for fuel oil service.

Assuming similar fuel requirement rates. That puts Bartlett's needs at about 4,600 gallons per day, or roughly two-and-a-half 12.5k gallon carloads of fuel oil per week Combine this with Owenyo's fuel needs for the SPNG's engines and anything they needed for fueling the talc at Keeler and dolomite mining operations... there was probably at least one 12.5k gallon fuel-oil tank car going up the branch every trip (tri-weekly) during this era.

Another option which I suppose could have been a fuel source is the wasted wood, chips, and sawdust from Linnie's lumber operations, although I can't imagine that they would have been able to supply Bartlett's requirements of fuel in comparison to Trona's rate of consumption.

Special Car Types?

One of the SP's earlier covered hoppers class H-70-6 built by AC&F in 1949, model from Kato.

Given that I'm modeling the first few years of the new concept of car construction known as the "covered hopper", most such cars were still be purchased for specialized service with customers that had the volume of traffic to set up for the bulk-loading of such cars. Smaller plants such as Bartlett, I highly doubt installed large over-track loading silos to load covered hoppers, when they're shipping maybe 600-tons of material (12 boxcar loads) per week.

Trona on the other had was one of the early customers on the SP that pushed for the new technology. The SP converted a dozen open hoppers for assigned use at Trona, not even waiting for the post-war surge in freight car orders to die down before pushing the SP to provide the cars. - However, I'll talk about those cars another time.

General Boxcars Then?

So it appears that the loading at Bartlett will be done in standard 50-ton boxcars, and from the photo with SP 3237, that foreign cars were preferred by the SP clerks at Mojave! The SP's home road cars are seen on the loading tracks at Owenyo, so probably are being sent to some on-line customer, where as the cars from Bartlett are going to be interchanged farther from home rails.

SP 3237 Bartlett on the Jawbone branch - Leo Barusch photo - Inad Akeb Collection

In the SP 3237 photo at Bartlett it appears to be a Seaboard (B-3/6 class) outside-braced boxcar immediately behind the tender. I can't quite read the second car's reporting marks... possibly CV or CNW. No herald is visible. The third car is some form of all-steel car, possibly SP without a black background on the herald, although it could be another RR's car with similar lettering and herald placement.

Consist Photos

Looking at other photos of the SP's Owenyo Local in Tom Dill's San Joaquin Valley book, I see that two photos from Dallas Gilbertson show SP 3227 working the Owenyo Local back to Mojave on a frosty January morning in 1953.

The train at Lone Pine, westward, it has the following on House Track:

1. ATSF all-steel boxcar
2. SP all-steel boxcar
3. SP all-steel boxcar
4. PRR all-steel boxcar
5. Unknown all-steel boxcar (open door)

Main track in Lone Pine being switched:

4-6 GS gondolas.

Siding:

SPMW water car and other cars seen in the train at Little Lake (below).

The X3227 West at Little Lake, has the following:

1. SPMW bunk car of some flavor at the head-end

2. SP steel boxcar

3. SP steel boxcar - probably
4. Possibly SP outside braced boxcar. Could also be some other RR shorter boxcar.
5. Probably SPMW water tank car.
6. SP all-steel boxcar
7. All-steel boxcar, painted darker boxcar red.
8-10. 3 SP gondolas, the third is interesting as it has a herald on the center panel, which means it's not one of the SP's regular GS steel gondolas. - Probably open loads from the SPNG transfer trestle at Owenyo.

11-13. 3 more steel boxcars. The second two are SP all-steel cars.

14. Black tank car, possibly a leased fuel oil car for Bartlett or SP fuel car for Owenyo.

15. SP steel caboose, or wood bodied C-30-series with wide rebuilt cupola.

Another Owenyo Local was captured on film by Andy Payne on Febuary 5, 1952 with the SP 3201 leading at Lone Pine.

1. SP composite gondola
2. WP or MP 40ft all-steel boxcar with its door open.
3. SP-style F-50-4/5/8/9/10/12 class flatcar with short height load. (probably, but could also be UP/T&NO/NWP, etc car)
4-5. Low sideboard gondola versions of SP flats or other low-side gondolas with materials. - Car #3-5 possibly a group of SPMW cars sending supplies and material to Owenyo and the NG?
6-10. Group of five GS-type gondolas, probably SP cars. I'm guessing going to the NG transfer trestle at Owenyo for loading.
11+. Remainder of train is boxcars and a caboose. Impossible to tell what else is in the train from the angle of the photo, probably another 4-5 boxcars.

Breakdown of Freight Car Consist

From these three trains we can get a rough idea what a 'typical' SP Owenyo Local would be hauling. It seems that Mk-2/4 class engines can handle about 14-16 cars over most of the branch. Usually there's 4-5 GS gondolas for loading with material from the SPNG transfer trestle at Owenyo. There are also several "ore dumps" at other stations, such as Little Lake & Leliter, which probably received the occasional GS gondola to dump ore into by truck. The black tank car probably, as I mentioned above, is probably the fuel oil car for either Owenyo or Bartlett's industrial needs. The balance of the cars are standard boxcars, probably 75% of which are SP in our few samples.

One of the tank cars usually in the consist is a FCR painted SPMW car, usually reserved for water service for the engine. Although recently I'm starting to wonder if it wasn't always the same water car in the train all the way, where they would drop the water car off and let it fill overnight. Alternately, the water car movements could be to supply the outfits and company villages along the way when they needed more water. More questions to answer.

In Closing

I hope you have enjoyed another deeper dive into the Owenyo Branch of the early 1950s and a closer look at Bartlett.

Jason Hill

SP Jawbone Branch (Part 1) - Concept

SP Jawbone Branch (Part 2) - Researching and Changing of the Plan

SP Jawbone Branch (Part 3) - Consists and More Bartlett Research

SP Jawbone Branch (Part 4) - Freight Car Roster

SP Jawbone Branch (Part 5) - Pulling the Trigger (Buying the materials for the benchwork)

SP Jawbone Branch (Part 6) - Q&A Continuing Design Tweaks - Working out the logistics for the staging yards other details.

Freight Symbols Over Tehachapi - Part 4 - SP Locals

Saturday, November 7, 2020

SP Jawbone Branch (Part 2) - Research & Changing Track Plan

This week I've been working on some changes to the design. Remember that this track plan has the operators standing inside the space looking out to the "East" generally geographically. Railroad East (Geo-North) is to the left and railroad west is (Geo-South) to the right. This gets messy as some of the siding sides are really geographically east and west of the main line, but in railroad terms are north or south of the east-west main track. So hopefully the direction conventions in this post don't get too confusing!

Under steam, SPNG 18 meets SPNG 9 at Laws, Sept 23, 2017 - Jason Hill photo.

Scott Inman reminded me that Trainline No.135 (Spring 2018) from the SPH&TS has a beautiful photo gallery of Owenyo from the lens of Robert M. Hanft and several others, courtesy of the Western Railway Museum. John Signor adds his great plan drawing of Owenyo and a short history of why the SP Narrow Gauge and Owenyo should be coming up again with the renewed interest (as of 2018) in the operations at Laws. Many of the photos have never been published before!

Front cover of SPH&TS Trainline No.135, Spring 2018.

Those of you that have subscribed to the quarterly issues of Trainline with your SPH&TS membership, can go pull out your copy and follow along!

Original Nov.3, 2020 Plan

Track plan as of Nov 3, 2020

The changes of just four days of design considerations are shown between the two drawings (above and below).

I should note that I'm using my professional copy of SolidWorks to draft and render the CAD trackplan and other features of the space I'm considering. The walls have been eliminated to allow easier viewing of the space.

First Revision Nov.7, 2020 Plan

Among the first changes is dropping the idea of a 'continuous running loop' with a grade climbing back up the front of Owenyo to meet at the West Door. Also dropped is the idea of connecting into the middle of the wye with the continuous track, as that will really destroy the look of the wye area, town, etc, and add a diamond to the middle of the area. Adding a diamond doesn't really scare me building it trackwise, but I don't want to change the 'signature' scene in the town that much.

So the main line will drop and duck under at Owenyo. I have also pulled the staging mainline in slightly at the SE corner of the room to clear a bookcase that will have to move onto the desk in the SE corner. This should only be a change of a couple inches, and will result in a bit of a tangent that should help in adding a couple of switches to the room's east end of the staging yard.

Track plan with changes as of Nov 7, 2020 (connection across the door at the right side not shown)

The Trainline 135 article also has a lovely drawing of Owenyo by John Signor to accompany the photos which shows several other details of the company buildings, an over-head crane (which probably used ground rails and was a simple overhead bridge based on the photo in the article), and the livestock transfer platform.

The major compression in this version as of Nov 7, 2020 has much of the central trans-loading platform compressed out of existence, leaving only 120ft of platform. The loading ramp has been moved to be at an angle and off a wye-switch at the east end of the north track.

Owenyo

The general plan, as shown in Part 1, calls for Owenyo to be built over a Mojave Stating Yard, which will be about 5.5" lower. This may cause some clearance issues, and I may have to push the grade up towards 1.75% or even 2% if needed. I believe I can fit about four tracks under Owenyo comfortably and plan to have most of the switches along the close side of the staging area. A single crossover at the stub end should allow run-arounds and a short stub for extra cars or engines I wish to keep on the layout, but not assigned to another track or train consist.

It is possible that I may depth compress the structures slightly and even pull the whole arrangement of Owenyo off the wall slightly to make room for 'scenery flats' along the wall with NG boxcars and the faces of some buildings and trees to overlay the basic background of the scene.

Owenyo with roughed in buildings, transfer pit/ramp (far left) and the trough for the Dump Trestle (right).

Owenyo had some company dwellings inside the wye. I have used GoogleEarth's measure tool to measure the length of the disrupted dirt at the end of the west leg of the wye (~300ft). The radius of the wye show at about 570ft, which puts it at about three times larger than my plan for 24" radius. The result is I'll probably only have room for 3-4 dwellings, not the prototype five structures.

East end of Owenyo with some rough structures blocked in. Mojave Staging in gray below Owenyo.

The water tank was an elevated design, so easy to raise it. I don't see a raised oil tank above the trees, so I have sketched in as a low tank. The buildings along the space between the SG and NG might be adjusted to try to get more transfer docks and shift the crane to the east.

I measured the length of what my Mk-6 (SP 3266) with 120-C-6 tender is, and it works out to about 12.5". The regular engine I plan to use is my Mk-2/4 (SP 3203) which is about the same length. The two stub tails of the wye therefore need to be about 14" from the headblocks to the end-of-track. I could probably save an inch, but I would prefer to have a bit of extra space for the engine to drift to a stop, etc and not risk hitting anything.

Several people have commented that I should have the tail of the wye able to fold. As the layout will be at about chin level, I agree that it would be much preferred to be able to lift it, or drop it, out of the way. At this point, I'm just mentally keeping that in mind, but not spending extra time at this point chopping up the CAD renders, as I'm focusing on the other design considerations first.

Bartlett MP 509.02

Bartlett in the NW corner of my space. Drawing Nov 7, 2020.

Looking more closely at Bartlett on GoogleMaps and GoogleEarth there was a light duty road which crossed the spur and the main between the switch and the buildings heading down to the lake. This road will be about where the line crosses the track in the middle of the curve. The backdrop here will be of the Owens Lake, which today is broken up into various salt mining basins.

Bartlett looking east with a yellow line 100ft long sketched on in GoogleEarth.

Currently I have a shelving unit which would wrap over and around the switch at Bartlett. I probably will have to find a new home for that structure as it will interfere with any scenery that I want to put in at Bartlett.

At one point around 1980, the parent company owning Trona and West End were considering acquiring the rights and the facilities around Bartlett and Owens Lake to mine minerals there. This was not done and the railroad was abandoned from Lone Pine back to the US Hwy 395 crossing north of Searles.

From the Ghosttowns.com website, it seems that the station at Bartlett was named for Frank Bartlett, Chief Financial Officer of Clark Chemical, which was the company that I presume was operating the facility at the location. I do not know the corporate history of the companies that ran the operation at Bartlett after it was started and named.

Little Lake

Looking for more information on Little Lake in the last few days resulted in a quick internet search brought me to Ghosttowns.com's page on Little Lake, which is a great little page and gives some good information.

Roughly my planned view will be about the same as the first photo on the Ghosttown's page "Overview of Little Lake from the west. Largest building is the old Little Lake Hotel. October 15, 1998.Courtesy David A. Wright", which nicely shows the area. I plan to run the wayback machine about 50 years back however, to bring the town back to life!

Little Lake, snuggled into the knook between the bookcases and over a desk. Drawing Nov 7, 2020.

The view of Little Lake will be from the mountain behind the track, looking down at the road, hotel, company village and the southern end of the "lake", although most of the lake will be off to the left when viewing this scene, the ridge south of the lake on the east side of the track will probably make up most of the backdrop scene. Unfortunately, the wye at Owenyo forces the model to be looking "down slope" at two of the other three stations. Linnie is more or less "flat", but it too is down slope to the east into the usually dry drainage from Haiwee Pass, north of Little Lake.

Hopefully some further investigation will show more about what the railroad 'village' at Little Lake consisted of. Probably over to the right side there will be a spur with an 'ore dump' near the wall. I expect there was also a small spur somewhere closer to the middle of the scene in which a water car was being stored in the 1958-1962-ish Alden Armstrong photo... but more research is needed, as the photo doesn't really show the track plan well in the area.

Linnie MP 461.5

Linnie, November 7, 2020 CAD drawing.

In the 1970s, the site at Linnie was a Georgia Pacific Lumber Mill, with several acres of cut logs with misters keeping them from drying out too much. Thanks to Jim Sommerskier for that memory he recalled of the area. He mentioned the logs were stored with the bark still on the trunks, explaining how the large piles of bark came to still cover the area in 2002 when I was there.

I have rearranged the spur to be branching off from the south (RR West) end of the station, but looking at the aerial photos on GoogleMaps, it appears that this is wrong, and the spur was from the north end. Being thoroughly confused now, I will await further research before continuing to take time changing this.

In either case: logs, sawmill, spur, boxcars, flatcars, gondolas, bark on the ground... call it Linnie!