Stuff Sucks

One of the days when the cleanup was surprisingly under control.

We lost our mom last year, and my sister and I spent a good part of last summer emptying the family house. We got through it, but it was, as expected, an emotional and draining process. My parents had lived in the same house since the 1960’s, and they both lived in that house until nearly the end of each of their lives. That meant that all the items they’d collected over the years - all they’d collected to remember their childhoods, make a home, take in items when emptying grandparents’ houses, saving special items related to their children, or saving items to help my sister and I start our own homes - all that was packed into the house and garage. They’d obviously tried to prune at different times, but age, memories, disagreements, and a bit of procrastination kept an awful lot of stuff in the house.

Like most children, we had to sort through the items and find a new home for items in a too-short time. Some were meaningful to us, and we kept. Some went in the trash. Lots went to Goodwill and other thrift stores. Some items were hard to find a home for, but were sentimental enough that we couldn’t just pitch them. Some of those never found a home and ended up at the dump. The bookshelf my father made as a newlywed was too big and unwieldy for the Facebook Marketplace free furniture crowd. Others had strong memories for us and seemed worth extraordinary effort to re-home: the piano I learned to play on, the cool 1970’s stereo, some cool mid-century-modern furniture. I kept asking until we found someone who wanted each. Some items were so tied up in emotion that they went into our garages in hopes we’d have energy to sort them later, like the Christmas ornaments.

I suspect many of the folks reading this have gone through the same process, and know the same challenges. Some of the items we find bring a smile or a memory, and get a photograph before we toss them. Others we cling onto and keep, only to realize months later that the item isn’t actually so useful. It took a couple months before I could let go of a mid-century modern cake holder. I realized a couple months too late that it wasn’t useful, it had pinholes of rust and a subtle dent... and identical vintage items could be bought on ebay for $12 if I truly wanted one. Other items had too much of a connection to a parent or grandparent - a cigarette case given to my 20 year old grandfather by coworkers when he emigrated, a book that was one of the few remaining possessions from my other grandfather, memorabilia from my father’s time at the Western Pacific, my mom’s photos of the students she taught. A very few items were useful and were kept: a few dishes, some Christmas lights I remember from childhood, all the photos.

All of our experiences also aren't just a result of baby boomers shopping too much, or the Silent Generation following their parents' exhortations to save everything because of memories of the great depression. My father remembered cleaning out his grandmother's house in San Francisco's Eureka Valley. Her victorian dining room table wasn't interesting to mid-50's furniture dealers, so it also went to the dump. Letters from English relatives described the sadness of emptying a maiden aunt's house with old clothing and useless furniture. I imagine Neanderthal children complaining as they swept useless stones out of their parents's cave that had been saved "just in case we need to make more arrowheads."

I kept repeating to myself throughout the process “Just because something was important to someone else doesn’t mean it needs to be important to me.”

The stuff that we haven’t yet dealt with weights down the garage, makes it hard to get into the model railroad layout to do work. Every time I trip over it, I’m reminded that I haven’t dealt with the items, and the items within are slowly decaying without being used or enjoyed. I’ve got to go through the boxes at some point. Leaving them piled in the garage just pushes off the problem to the next generation, and just keeps us from doing other fun stuff with the space.

Model Trains Holding My Father’s Stories

Southern Railways locomotives at Waterloo Station during one of my dad's trips into 1947 London.

My father's photo of Flying Scotsman when it visited San Francisco

One of the boxes contained a bunch of model trains my dad had collected over the years. There was his Varney F-7 locomotive that he’d built and painted as a teenager, along with a few HO cars he’d also built from kits. He’d bought some British and European prototype trains when he visited Europe in the early 1960’s. He had other locomotives he’d bought at various times, such as a Pennsylvania GG-1 electric locomotive that he’d bought after a family trip to the East Coast. He kept some of these on display, and kept others in boxes in the garage, not wanting to lose the memories attached to them. When I’d offered to find homes for some of the stored model trains several years ago, he relinquished some, but held others; these model trains had memories of his life, and he didn’t want to let them go.

I had to keep my Dad’s Varney locomotives because he built those. The same with the half-done trolley model - for now I can’t let go something he put blood and sweat into creating.

For the others: well, my dad had strong memories for many of these trains. I’d heard some of those memories - of taking similar commute trains into London as a tourist seventeen year old, the freight car he’d gotten from a shipper trying to solicit ocean freight business. Locomotives which reminded him of childhood or his first railroad job. I’m glad he had that sentimental attachment to the trains, but that wasn’t reason enough to keep them. There’s other cases where I never heard the story. Why did he want that particular SNCF locomotive? Why did he keep that Life-Like 4-6-0 in a box for 50 years? Did it have meaning? Or perhaps there wasn’t a story. Maybe it was an impulse buy of something on a sale shelf. Did he just not know what to do when he no longer wanted it?

But Some of My Items Also Hold Stories. Do I Need to Hold Them?

And at the same time I was thinking about my father’s sentimentality, I was dealing with my own. I had my own piles of stuff with memories, and some of those piles got in the way and kept me from some of the fun I wanted to have. Pruning my father’s sentimental items encouraged me to do the same.

I cleaned out and rearranged the closet where I keep some of my model railroad gear, and picked out items that wouldn’t fit back in the closet. I cleaned off places around the layout where I’d stored anachronistic freight cars - usually freight cars from my childhood that I’d pressed back into service when I started building the Vasona Branch, but no longer needed. I picked through storage to find some old locomotives from teenage years that brought back memories of getting started in model railroading. I went through boxes of half-done projects, or badly built kits, or experiments with new materials, often highlighting memories of how I improved my modeling skills over the years.

My grad school layout with teenaged boxcar.

Getting Thomas the Tank Engine ready to be seen by nephew.

And as part of preparing to sell my dad’s trains, I decided it was time to do the same pruning on these items. Some to keep, some to throw away, some to find a new home for. I had a station I’d scratchbuilt when I got back into model railroading. It wasn’t appropriate for my current layout, and had an unrealistic roof line. I knew I could do better now. I liked the attached memory of learning to scratchbuild, but didn’t need the model. I had plastic freight cars from teenage years that brought back memories of the excitement of getting started in the hobby, but beyond that weren’t interesting. I had Thomas the Tank Engine locomotive I’d bought to interest my nephew in trains. He’s now 13, but never got the bug.

I also had model trains I’d bought as part of my own travels. One was a French freight locomotive I’d gotten at model shop in some small town in southwest France. We were staying with friends in a house in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by wheat fields. We left the friends by the pool and took the car one afternoon and drove several towns over to a small town which had a model train hobby shop. The owner didn’t speak English, but my wife could translate a bit. I asked about trains that would run in the local area, and he pointed out a freight locomotive and covered hoppers, and also sent me home with some French model magazines. I got a tiny Hornby OO “Smokey Joe” switching locomotive from my sister when she first visited England. I had a Chinese National Railways diesel engine and passenger cars I’d gotten on a trip to Hong Kong. I’d walked by some store in the Central district and realized they had train models (though their main business was bus and tram models.) I’d never seen Chinese prototype locomotives (surprisingly from Bachman), and the locomotive ran wonderfully. (The owner of a hobby shop in Singapore scowled when I asked about Chinese-prototype models. "Why would you want that? The stuff from China's all cheap. You should buy these Marklin engines!") I had model kits I'd picked up in the UK when on a top-secret work trip.

I’d run some of those exotic trains when I was first building the Vasona Branch. In fact, the earliest shots of the Vasona Branch - photos taken at the end of a four-day binge of building - show the Chinese locomotive testing the trackage. I didn’t have many steam locomotives in those days, and big diesels were better for checking for crooked track and braving dirty track. Some of the teenaged freight cars operated on the Vasona Branch in the early days when I didn’t have enough rolling stock to make the layout fun to operate.

I lied. The Chinese locomotive wasn't on the tracks during the first weekend of construction.

They all had memories, good memories, my memories. But they all spent most of their time in boxes in the garage, occasionally pulled out to be looked at, and quickly put back. It wasn’t much of a life for a toy meant to be enjoyed, seen, and played with.

And So The Pruning Began

The first boxes went off to some local clubs. Dad’s books went to model railroad club at the Santa Clara depot; they could eBay the salable items to help support the club, and had a big table of free stuff for members to pick through and take home. Some of the odd books my father had relating to railroad rates went to that table. Much of my teenage HO cars and locomotives went to the Silicon Valley Lines, specifically for their younger members. They were having an operating session on a Saturday, and some of their new teenage members pounced upon the box like wolves tearing apart a carcass. One kid liked the look of the battered Athearn SDP-40 locomotive I’d bought at a swap meet table at the first serious model railroad event I’d ever attended. “Looks like the clips holding the body onto the frame are broken.” “Yep, that’s because I had too much fun with it when I was a teenager. Think you could fabricate new tabs out of styrene?” He thought about it for a while and kept it.

Full disclosure: I remember multiple times in my childhood where folks were giving away unwanted toys and trains like that, and and I was so excited to just have access to all these cool things - the neighbor dumping his hot wheels when he moved away, box of modeling supplies from someone's father. Watching the kids dive into the box and want the stuff was really fun!

The British trains were a challenge. My dad had strong memories of English trains as connections to his father’s country of origin and as memories of my father’s own trip to visit England in 1947. He told plenty of stories about catching the train at a stop near his cousin’s house and wandering into bomb-scarred London all by himself. He bought trains to remind himself of that important place and his first bits of freedom in a foreign country. There was a lot of sentimentality connected with those trains, but they were also the oldest and the least interesting to contemporary modelers. Instead, they went to someone on reddit.com who was asking about how to get started with British prototypes - fingers crossed those trains will get out of the box and actually be used.

The bulk of the European models got sold at the local model railroad group’s quarterly auction - in about 10 minutes, all the items started on a path to a new home - this Marklin locomotive to an enthusiast, that locomotive to someone who sells at swap meets, a couple freight cars went to who-knows-where. My French freight locomotive went to some younger modeler who seemed to revel in its oddity; I think it’s going to a very good home.

My Chinese locomotive - well, that went off to the swap meet guy at the auction because apparently it wasn’t interesting enough for the assembled crowd. I’m a little afraid I may see it again when looking on the tables at the next swap meet. My sister had a similar bit of haunting. She’d been taking a bunch of dishes and glasses to a local thrift store, and they were so grateful for everything, even the worn stuff and the unfashionably 1970’s glasses. Late in the cleanup, my sister found the lid to a dish she knew she’d given to the thrift store the previous week, and she wanted to make sure it got matched up again. So she marched into the thrift store to pair it up… and realized their whole housewares section was filled with our parents’ dishware. Our childhood was stretched across several tables, all priced at $2 each. She didn’t go back.

So it’s all gone now, and I’m a couple boxes closer to reclaiming the garage. My father and I had bought model trains because we thought they were interesting, because we liked constructing a model railroad, or because the trains were paired with some special event like travel or a particular time in our lives. We saved these artifacts because they highlighted an era in our lives, or a milestone in building our skills, or because they were just attractive to us.

My father saved those items - sometimes on display, sometimes just kept in the garage to know they were near. I’ve saved items so I can use them actively on the model railroad, or stored away so I can run across them again. In a very few cases, I’ve saved particularly significant items.

And I’ve let a bunch of them go. For some, the memories aren’t quite worth the space they occupy. For others, a photo is enough. For yet others, I just needed to write down the stories so I could get them out of the garage and instead let them linger right here in these words.

ChatGPT: "The Poisoned Track"

There's nothing wrong with asking ChatGPT (or any of the other AI tools) about model railroads, right? I've played around a bit - asking it to describe fictional towns or a packing house in a 1930's California farm town. The generated text always seems a little rough or awkward, but I suspect it's got its uses for brainstorming. I couldn't get Google's Gemini AI tool to design track plans, but it keeps borrowing the same track plan image from some site on the Internet.

Wonder if it can put a model railroad into a story?

"describe a dashiell hammett murder mystery involving a model railroad"

Oh, my. I've got my issues with the story, but the whole "Something was off about the layout" sounds like a good hook for some good old human creativity.

Try for yourself here.

Title: The Poisoned Track

It was the kind of night that made you want to lock the door and bury yourself in a bottle of bourbon. The rain was coming down hard, the streetlamps barely cutting through the thick, swirling fog. I was nursing my second whiskey when the phone rang. A woman’s voice—steady, sharp, and as cold as the night air—cut through the haze of the bar.

“Mr. Alden?” she asked, like she already knew I’d be there.

“Yeah?”

“My name’s Marla Durant. My husband’s dead. I need you to find out who killed him.”

I straightened up, the weight of her words sinking in, cutting through the liquor fog.

“Dead, huh?” I asked, glancing at the reflection of my face in the dirty mirror behind the bar. “What makes you think it’s murder?”

“The way he died,” she said, her voice dropping to a near whisper. “He was shot, but that’s not what’s bothering me. It’s how he was found.”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “You mind telling me more?”

“He was found in his study,” she said. “In front of his model railroad.”

Marla Durant was a tall, elegant woman in her late 30s—dark hair, sharp cheekbones, the kind of woman who could make a man’s heart skip a beat and his wallet empty in a second. She met me at the door of her mansion in Pacific Heights, wearing an expression that said she’d already seen too much for one lifetime.

The house was quiet, as if it had been holding its breath since her husband had died. She led me up the winding staircase and into the study, where the scene had been found.

It was a room I’d seen in a thousand men’s fantasies—mahogany shelves filled with books, heavy leather chairs, and an oak desk polished to a perfect sheen. But there was something strange about it, something that didn’t sit right. The thing that stuck out wasn’t the expensive furniture, or even the faint smell of gunpowder that still hung in the air. It was the model railroad.

It sprawled across the floor, winding in and out of miniature hills, through tiny stations, around ponds and rivers that looked like they could’ve been real if you squinted hard enough. The tracks were arranged with military precision, and there, near the center of the room, sat a small, delicate train—the kind that looked like it belonged in a museum more than a man’s private study.

And there, slumped over the desk, was Patrick Durant—his face pale, eyes wide open, the gunshot wound to the back of his head a clean, efficient kill. The revolver was resting just beside his hand, like someone had made sure it looked like a suicide. But something didn’t sit right.

There was a small train set at the far end of the room, nestled near a large model of a station house. It was different from the rest of the set—off, like a jigsaw piece that didn’t belong. The tracks seemed slightly bent, the cars slightly out of place. My instincts were on edge. I knew it was important, but I didn’t know why.

Patrick Durant was a quiet man by all accounts—wealthy, successful, a former stockbroker who had made a killing when the market was still roaring. But his real passion, the one thing he’d loved more than his business empire, was his model railroad. It was his obsession, something he’d spent years building. And it was something he kept locked away from the world—his sanctuary.

But then there was the question of his wife, Marla. I dug into their past, and what I found wasn’t pretty. Marla Durant wasn’t just the grieving widow—she had her own set of problems, ones that didn’t take too long to dig up. She’d been involved in some shady dealings, things that had nothing to do with her husband’s wealth. There were rumors about gambling, debts, and men who didn’t take kindly to being stiffed.

But nothing pointed directly to murder—not yet, anyway.

I spent hours going over the model railroad. It wasn’t just the tracks—it was the trains themselves, and the way they ran. Something was off about the layout, something I couldn’t put my finger on. I could feel the obsession in every inch of the track, in every tiny piece of scenery. This wasn’t just a hobby; this was a man who had poured every ounce of his soul into this little world.

Then I found it.

A hidden compartment. A small, well-concealed safe buried beneath the track near the station house. Inside the compartment was a ledger—carefully hidden, and filled with names, dates, and figures that didn’t belong in a model railroad. They were business transactions—shady deals, loans, and payments to a few names I recognized: some of the more dangerous men in the city.

I knew immediately what had happened. Patrick Durant had been involved in something he couldn’t get out of—a web of debts, illegal dealings, and people who wouldn’t hesitate to put him six feet under. And that model railroad? It was his way of hiding the evidence, a tiny, miniature world where he could keep his secrets safe.

The breakthrough came when I learned about a man named Alex “Big Al” Crawford—a former business partner of Durant’s. Crawford was the kind of guy who didn’t play by the rules, and he had a reputation for making people disappear when they became liabilities. Durant had been trying to cut ties with him, and that’s when the pressure started to build. But Big Al wasn’t the type to let go without taking something in return.

It all came crashing down when I found a letter, carefully hidden among the tracks—an unsigned note with a single line of text:

"Track 13. Final payment due."

I stared at it for a long time before it clicked. Track 13. There was no Track 13 on the model. But there was something wrong with the layout—a missing piece of track, a gap that should have been filled. The more I looked at the set, the more I realized the significance of the note. Durant had been trying to get out. He’d made a deal with Big Al, but he wasn’t going to make his final payment.

Big Al had come to collect, and Patrick Durant had fought back. But in the end, it was no contest. Durant had been too deep in, and the man who was supposed to be his partner had become his executioner.

When I confronted Marla, she didn’t deny it. She wasn’t the one who had killed her husband, but she knew who had. Big Al had made her a deal—help him cover up the murder, and he’d make sure she wasn’t left with nothing. But the deal had gone sideways, as they always do. Durant had been killed, the tracks had been rearranged, and Marla was left holding the bag.

She didn’t cry when I arrested her. She didn’t scream. She just stood there, eyes cold as stone, watching as the whole thing unraveled around her.

As I walked out into the rain, the sound of a train whistle echoed in my mind. The case was closed, but the model railroad still haunted me. In the end, it wasn’t just the trains that were moving in circles—it was the lies, the secrets, and the people who thought they could bury them beneath tiny tracks. But nothing stays hidden forever.

The poisoned track had claimed its final victim.

The Not-Pretty Side of Los Gatos

[When you’re modeling a location on a prototype railroad, part of the fun and challenge is figuring out what to model. For most places, you can’t model a location exactly because it won’t fit on a model railroad. (If you can model a place in its entirety, then perhaps you’re modeling a place that’s not quite interesting enough for a model railroad, or maybe you’ve won the lottery space-wise.) Instead, you're forced to pick and choose the interesting bits of a location that'll help you tell its story and give you a fun place to run trains.

When I started sketching out the Los Gatos scene for my model railroad, I had to make my choices of what to model. Los Gatos is a confusing location to model, with a mix of interesting operational and scenic attributes, but not enough activity to make for a great model railroad location. The city sits in an enviable location up against the Santa Cruz Mountains and at the mouth of Los Gatos Canyon. Railroad-wise, it represents the end of straight track and easy grades. It served as a key point for controlling trains entering Los Gatos canyon, a terminus for commute trains to San Francisco, and a place for steam locomotives to take on water. The downtown area along the railroad tracks is interesting architecturally, with a mix of grand storefronts and less attractive back sides of buildings. It’s less interesting for freight traffic - a freight house, the Hunts cannery, a team track, and a couple other rail-served businesses are the only source of freight traffic.

In terms of structures, I knew I wanted to model the former Hunts cannery, both as a source of traffic for the layout and to keep my focus on the fruit industry in the Santa Clara Valley. Other potential scenes included the houses along the right of way north of downtown, the team track behind the Santa Cruz Ave. shops, and finally the passenger, freight depots, and water tower on the south side of town.

Any reasonable person would have modeled the station as a destination for passenger trains, a spotting location for freight cars, and an iconic and identifiable spot for visitors from the local area. My problem was that I didn’t have space to do the depot scene justice. Because of the Vasona Branch’s focus on freight operations, sidings and industries won out over passenger facilities. Instead, I modeled (1) the cannery, (2) the houses along the tracks to remind folks of the scene of tracks running through the backyards, and (3) the track and backs of businesses to highlight the urban part of Los Gatos. I’d already filled in the first two scenes, but hadn’t yet done the team track area.

So what did the track look like around here? Historical documents hint at how the area changed over the years. It’s been easy to keep compare the changes over the years - I’ve scanned and saved away the various maps on the computer so I can consider my plan. My notebook is full of of map sketches of towns that tell me where I’d found inspiration 15 years ago, and which photos I should look at when I started building.

Los Gatos track arrangement, 1880. From Southern Pacific valuation map, California State Railroad Museum collection.

Freight Trains in the Sky

One of the bigger changes in model railroading since the 1970’s is whether we’re modeling a completely imaginary railroad, a plausible but invented railroad, or if we’re trying to model the real world as it was at a particular time. The “imagine everything” folks might build something that’s a caricature - think John Allen’s mountain-crossing Gorre and Daphetid — or that borrows some historic reality (“bridge route in Colorado”) Owners get all the freedom to choose what they’re building out of whole cloth, create cities along the railroad from any inspiration, and avoid all the pesky research and visits to actual sites. Folks building to a plausible reality might need to understand something about the economics, architecture, and industries of a specific place and time - modeling an agricultural short line in California, or a fictitious logging railroad in Washington state. However, they’ve also got the freedom to imagine new places using whatever constraints they choose. I’m on the other side - I choose to model actual locations, and try to accurately model what’s there. I enjoy the research, I think I get a more realistic whole, and I suspect that the research helps me fill in details I couldn’t imagine on my own.

Or, more bluntly, the real world is stranger than I might imagine, so modeling a real place from photos helps me fill in those details I couldn’t possibly invent.

How strange is the real world? How about “freight trains in the sky” strange?

Report on Steam Railroads of San Jose

I was poking around in San Jose Library’s California Room, the library’s local history collection. One item caught my attention: “Report on Steam Railroads of San Jose”. This report from 1925 described the current state of the different railroads in San Jose at the time, and suggested ways to improve both the profits of the railroads while improving quality of life for San Jose residents and businesses. Considering the author was a well-known urban planner from St. Louis (Harold Bartholomew, who apparently had an entire urban planning firm specializing in railroad rethinks), I think we can imagine we’re about to hear a bunch of crazy ideas from those Back East crazy consultants. And it doesn’t disappoint, with a crazy proposal that I couldn’t have imagined.

[ Partial version of Report on Steam Railroads of San Jose here. I didn’t bother to scan the fold-out profiles for railroad elevation for the three plans. Sorry! ]

The problems of San Jose in regard to its steam railroads are similar in every respect to those in other Cities of normal and rapid growth, where the expansion of industries, commercial enterprises, and residential sections has taken place with little or no regulation. Instead of well defined and segregated industrial districts, we find in San Jose clusters of factories, warehouses, coal and lumber yards and a great number of packing establishments located close up to the railroad tracks, often main lines, as they have always existed. The industries have closed in on the railroads, so to speak, thus hindering greatly both their own expansion and that of the railroads.”

As a reminder, San Jose in 1925 was different from the railroads we know today. In the 1920’s, the College Park yard straddling the Guadalupe river was the main SP yard. The “big old barn” of an Eastlake-style wooden station on Bassett Street was San Jose’s primary railroad station. The line to Los Angeles ran down the center of Fourth Street, past office buildings and San Jose State University. The old South Pacific Coast line broke off the SP mainline at the old Lentzen Street roundhouse, past the current Shark Tank and future site of Diridon Station, and then off towards Campbell and Los Gatos. Santa Clara’s Newhall Yard hadn’t yet been built. The old freight yards were congested, lots of downtown streets got blocked by trains around the clock, and the residents complained about the 19th century feel of the railroad facilities in town. Main roads crossed the railroad at ground level, so busy streets such as First Street, Polhemus (Taylor), San Pedro Street, and the Alameda were constantly blocked by trains coming and going.

What’s Wrong with the San Jose Railroads?

It was a very different San Jose than we know. The report highlighted many of the challenges: the passenger station and yards were overwhelmed, the freight station wasn’t modern, and the city wanted the SP off Fourth Street.

There were 100 passenger trains running through San Jose each day. 70 of the trains were the commute operations - nearly as busy as today. Most of those passenger operations went to the San Jose Market Street station - a two track station that was too tiny for the service, stuck in the middle of the city, and ill-equipped to turn commute trains and send steam engines to and from the roundhouse. There were also five trains to and from Oakland and Niles, six trains to and from Los Angeles and points east, and six trains to and from Monterey and the Salinas Valley. None of these were trains to Santa Cruz - the Santa Cruz trains all stopped at the former SPC station off the Alameda.

The yards and services were still based on 1870’s San Jose. Freight switching of College Park blocked Polhemus (Taylor) Street; San Pedro Street had six to twelve tracks to cross. The consultants were particularly dismissive of the old Southern Pacific freight depot on San Pedro Street. The freight station was a fine building, 600 feet long with two tracks holding 44 freight cars each (assuming temporary bridges could be placed between adjacent cars.) However, the freight station predated automobiles. There were no loading docks for trucks on the property, the station was reached by a narrow driveway, and the only exit along San Pedro Street required crossing eight active yard tracks.

“THE FOURTH STREET PROBLEM That a problem exists as to the proper disposition of the Southern Pacific track in Fourth Street, is granted by all, including the railroad itself which some twenty years ago anticipated the situation and purchased the necessary right of way for relocating its track to by-pass the city to the South. The detour was never built, however, and in the interim the city developed a rapid suburban growth to the South and west so that the proposed route is now fairly well surrounded by residential and potential residential areas and is intersected by some 20 improved streets. Naturally, a well established community such as this resents the intrusion of the railroad into its midst. On the other hand that part of the public along and in the vicinity of Fourth Street, and those utilizing its own streets have endured the presence of the railroad for about 50 years and now feel the need of relief. It is also the sentiment that the natural expansion of the business district eastward is hampered boy the operation of trains on Fourth Street.
The railroad without a doubt would prefer to remain in Fourth Street, operating at grade for the rest of its life, as the sight loss in time due to speed reduction through the city is inconsequential and any change it may make to materially better the situation will probably cost from one to five million dollars.”

The great thing about the report is that the consultants went into detail about how the Southern Pacific and Western Pacific ran their railroads. They noted a ton of operating details about the SP.

San Jose yard assembled trains going to San Francisco, Oakland, Niles, Tracy, Watsonville Junction, Redwood City, and Santa Cruz.

30 switch engines and crews were needed for yard and industrial switching during the fall season.

30-40 freight trains a day, and 1600-1800 cars per day came through San Jose. “This is not an extraordinary great volume for the facilities at hand but the great diversity of classifications necessitates quick handling.”

SP had four team tracks just west of North First Street and north of passenger depot, and two additional tracks west of San Pedro Street that had a loading platform and Gantry crane.

For Market Street station, the two tracks under the train shed and one track north of the train shed were used for loading and unloading passengers. Five tracks north of the station were used for storing passenger equipment.

WP cars were only interchanged on the south side of town near Fourth Street and Alma. This was also a point of contention in the report, and the authors stressed that better and faster ways of interchange were needed.

The consultants were also detailed, explaining exactly how cars for the Santa Cruz branch were handled. They stated that Santa Cruz branch trains were assembled in “a small yard in Senter Street prolonged” (aka the current main line between Lenten Ave and Diridon Station). Train crews didn’t have to do any additional re-blocking or organizing there; instead, trains could sort cars at “several tracks on the Santa Cruz division in the vicinity of San Carlos Street (called the South Yard)” This is some great detail that I’m not sure how I’d get any other way. From the point of view of my Vasona Branch model railroad, it would be quite accurate for crews to sort and shuffle cars near Plant 51 either for local work or in preparation for later work further down the line. Best of all, I now know to refer to this stretch of tracks as “South Yard” - a little detail that otherwise might never have been recorded.

So What Should We Do About It?

The Eastern Consultants made four proposals, two that made sense and one that was batshit crazy to my modern eyes.

A: Bypass around San Jose to the west.

B: Elevated tracks along Fourth Street

C: Reuse the Western Pacific right of way around San Jose.

D: Pass around the city to the east/north, and parallel the WP on the east side of town.

The consultants thought the bypass around the west side of San Jose was a non-starter. Although the SP had owned the land for twenty years, suburbia now surrounded the right of way, and the neighbors were unlikely to want trains coming through their nice neighborhood. (Two years later, the Willow Glen neighborhood incorporated as a city, primarily to block the Southern Pacific from coming through. They merged back into San Jose once the SP bypass was built to their east, avoiding the neighborhood.) The consultants also noted it was going to be pricey to raise the tracks around the Alameda and through Willow Glen, build bridges at the Alameda and San Carlos, and fight the neighbors. “It is therefore recommended that this plan be definitively abandoned.”

Plan B was their favorite - they assumed that the then-current mainline north of downtown and down Fourth Street could be raised 15 feet in the air, and the city streets in the vicinity could be dropped four feet. More importantly, they only suggest raising the through tracks to Los Angeles - the station would remain at ground level (though it would be “replaced by an efficient and modern station”), and San Francisco commute trains would continue to stop at ground level. This plan seems to assume the College Park yard must be decommissioned, for there would be no way for a train leaving the yard to reach the ramp to the elevated structure. They still note that “freight and passenger terminal reconstruction will be quite expensive as will also the elevated line of open type design” - an interesting admission when they discounted the bypass around Willow Glen because of the cost of routing and elevating the tracks there.

To my eye, they’re being awfully optimistic about the plan:

“The principal advantages of plan B are as follows: (1) Property values along Fourth Street will not be depressed but should be favorably affected.” Honestly, I can’t imagine freight trains rolling by at second floor level would be pleasant, either for noise, shaking, or strange stuff dropping from the train. They also admit that “certain industries particularly in the vicinity of North First Street including in the Wye… will be unfavorably affected.” I think they’re primarily talking about the Golden Gate Packing Co on Fourth Street here - apparently, its sidings couldn’t be connected after all the work to raise the line.


The third option, Plan C, was to bypass San Jose to the west like Plan A, but avoid the challenges of forcing a new route through the Willow Glen suburbs. Bartholomew proposed having the SP move the main line to the former South Pacific line, build a new station at today’s Diridon Station, and build the necessary overpasses and underpasses along the way. When the tracks passed by the Western Pacific crossing, though, the mainline would follow the WP line through the Willow Glen neighborhood and onto open country. The consultants suggested that a jointly operated double track line could be created, or the SP could just parallel the WP immediately to the south. They claimed this approach would remove all the tracks on Fourth Street, “no important industries would be affected”, “no additional interlocking plants would be required with the WP.”, and a joint line would allow for a more convenient place for the railroads to exchange cars. They also admit that moving the SP’s passenger depot away from downtown is a drawback, “passengers will be carried through an industrial area largely and will not get a satisfactory impression of the city as a whole”, and requires acquiring a different set of land through Willow Glen.

Paralleling the WP might not be as easy. From modern eyes, the WP’s line through Willow Glen seems to weave its own way through suburbia on a narrow right of way. I’d imagine the neighbors would have complained just as loudly as they had to the SP’s bypass proposal. The consultants proposed a joint line with the WP, or at least a parallel line, and do note that these would be much more unsafe than the existing situation if the line continued to have street level grade crossings - drivers and pedestrians were too likely to start moving when one train passed, not realizing another was coming on the parallel track.

Plan D appeared to be a bonus proposal, provided mostly as an afterthought. Although they noted the SP could go around the east side of San Jose, they noted that the railroad would need to push a right-of-way through many blocks of existing neighborhoods, increasing the cost and the outcry.

How’d the Consultants Do?

All joking aside, I really love this document. Not only does it propose an alternate San Jose that I would never have imagined myself, but it also provides so many details that are helpful for my model railroad based on the real railroads they examined. I appreciate their fact gathering about the activity in San Jose: the number of trains and cars switched, the work done at the freight house and passenger depot, the switching practices, and the informal names for pieces of track. I can’t imagine anywhere else I might have learned that the tracks near the Del Monte cannery were referred to as the “South Yard”.

I love the document, but that doesn’t mean I love that alternate San Jose they propose. I don’t know how serious this plan was, but the elevated tracks through flat San Jose doesn’t match my image of California - elevated structures like this definitely sound like something we’d find “back east”, not here. However, the fact that someone proposed this definitely highlights that this could have happened, and I could imagine someone building an interesting “what-if” layout with freight trains flying by downtown San Jose at treetop level. If I were into modeling plausible railroads, it might be interesting to build a major mainline through downtown San Jose on an elevated structure. However, I suspect it would look awkward and out-of-place. If we’re building a plausible layout, that also means we want to avoid the stuff that might be accurate but that doesn’t match our viewers’ expectations much. Just because some fancy east coast consultants thought it’s possible doesn’t mean my next guest to see the model would think so.

I’m also not sure it would be a fun model railroad. The operational challenges - the long climb paralleling existing tracks, the new two level station at Market Street, the curve onto Fourth Street - make me wonder whether it would be good or bad as a model railroad - the elevated and ground level tracks seem like they’d remove some of the complexity and action we’d like in a model railroad.

The whole plan, though, highlights how strange the real world is, and how folks might have suggested plans for our hometown that might seem surprising or improbable to our eyes. Apparently, someone in City Hall or the Chamber of Commerce didn’t think it was so strange, and was willing to cut Mr. Bartholomew a large check to “think outside the box” and consider freight trains in the sky.

Bartholomew didn’t just try to rebuild San Jose’s railroads - urban planning was his business, and he did similar reports for many big cities from the 1920’s through the 1950’s. The archives of his company, Harland Bartholomew and Associates, are in Washington University’s library in St. Louis, and a listing of just some of their records show how broadly he consulted - the list shows Alameda, Oakland, San Francisco, Berkeley, and San Jose all having reports done, as well as many more cities across the U.S. If I had a couple days free in St. Louis, I’d likely stop by and check out Bartholomew’s other plans. I suspect I’ll find a bunch of “just put the freight trains on an elevated structure” ideas.

We’ve got a lot of choice when we’re building a model railroad - whether we’re building something imaginary, plausible, or historically accurate. I’ve always aimed to model real locations and times because I think I’ll create a more believable scene than I would have if I either had to imagine a place from whole cloth, or where I wasn’t doing research on what a real place was like. The Bartholomew report on San Jose shows highlights both how strange and unpredictable the real world might be, as well as the outlandish ideas that might have been seriously considered in the real world and might be reasonable choices for a plausible layout. Either way, searching through archives and building up knowledge can be a great boon for real or plausible layouts… even if it’ll tell us we ought to put freight trains in the sky.

Image generated by gemini.google.com, which refused to put a Daylight locomotive on the elevated structure regardless of how easy that would be.

Take the Electric Trains to the Broad Gauge Depot!

I had a visit this weekend from YouTuber Interurban Era, a Bay Area custom model and layout builder. I've been a big fan of Miles's work for years. His 1960's Mexico-themed "Alta California" railroad has modeled interesting locations with diesels I recognize from my teenage Athearn years. His Oakland-tinted street running scene on the former layout matched a lot of memories of wandering around Oakland's vintage neighborhoods. Interurban Era also inspired my Google bus project when he showed off one of the Iconic Replicas HO buses in AC Transit livery, and introduced me to the high-quality modern bus models. He's also done virtual model railroading, helping build a San Francisco-themed world in the city-building game "Cities Skyline" called "Presidio Bay". I'd been up to see his workshop and layout a couple months ago, and finally got to repay the favor by inviting him and his other half to visit and operate on the Vasona Branch.

Interurban Era got lucky last year; when Caltrain decided to give away an HO model of one of the Stadler KISS trainsets that are now running on the electrified San Jose - San Francisco line, Interrban era managed to score that rare model. If that model needed a place to run, it would certainly be the San Jose Market Street depot on that portable layout I did a few years back. I set up part of the layout in the garage just for this visit, and that's why we've got an electric trainset sitting under the trainshed at Market Street.

The Market Street station was the Southern Pacific's primary station up until 1935 when Diridon station opened. Market Street often got referred to as the "broad gauge station" because the other major station, West San Jose, was the former South Pacific Coast narrow gauge station. Even after the former SPC line from Alameda to Santa Cruz was widened to standard gauge, the stations still seemed to keep the "narrow gauge depot" and "broad gauge depot" identifiers.

As the trainset was already visiting, we also took it out on the Los Gatos branch, leading to this photo at the Campbell station. Here's hoping Caltrain gets encouraged to string catenary down to Campbell and Los Gatos!

I keep wondering whether the HO Stadler model was a one-off promotional model; Interurban Era mentioned that it's based on a Lilliput model, but the manufacturer did cut some new molds for parts of the Caltrain version of the car. Because Lilliput is one of the brands owned by Bachman, I think we've got a reasonable chance that HO models of these trainsets will show up in stores one of these years. If that happens, plan to take the electric trains to San Jose's broad gauge depot!

Movie Night XXX: Serious Switchman Skills

Playing the model railroad operations means trying to keep track of a ton of cars as you try to place each in the correct location. Real railroaders had the same problem - they'd need to know the cars in their train. Looking a couple cars down a string wasn't easy - for us modeleres, we might just need to glance a different way or perhaps pull out the reading glasses, but the railroad switchman might need to walk a long way down the track to remember which cars are on that spur.

For that reason, the real railroaders were skilled at keeping track of cars, whether having systems for where they'd place cars, or being very good about note-keeping, or just working on their memory. This video from "You Asked For It" from the 1950's shows switchman Brian Stevenson of the Rock Island's Kansas City yard demonstrating his photographic memory. The TV show runs a string of 40 cars past switchman Stevenson, and he attempts to repeat back the car reporting marks from memory. It's a neat memory demonstration, and a great chance to look at some 1950's boxcars up close!

What makes a social group work?

Pat LaTorres greets the public at a garden model railroad exhibit at Bay Area Maker Faire 2016.

What’s it take to keep a group active over generations?

Recently in London, I visited the Museum of Freemasonry at the London Grand Lodge. The Freemasons are one of the oldest fraternal organizations in the western world, combining fellowship, charity, and a bit of mystery together to pull men and women together. Freemasonry starred as informal clubs in the 17th century. Several related groups pulled together for unified rules and rituals around 1717. By the 1760’s, several dozen lodges were active in different pubs and coffeehouses in London.

List of pubs hosting active freemason groups in 18th century London. From Museum of Freemasonry collection.

The “mason” in freemasonry is based on supposed attributes of medieval stonemasons - individualists who would journey around to work on major building projects. Medieval masons created guilds for training, and secret handshakes and processes to help masons share their level of skill when working far from where they may have trained. The projects they built were the most impressive building projects in Europe, and the masons had the sense of building for the ages as they constructed cathedrals and palaces across Europe. The Freemasons borrowed the metaphors and rituals from the medieval guilds. When men are all hopped up on caffeine and focused on bettering the world with talk of democracy, bettering selves, and breaking class levels, borrowing such metaphors of secret truths seems almost required.

As the British Empire expanded, freemasonry followed along, providing lodges that brought together all of the British expats and administrators - one of the few ways for men at different levels of society to interact. The museum highlighted an early 20th century British surveyor who knew wherever he went - Cyprus, the Middle East, New Zealand. Or London - there was always a lodge he could visit to make local acquaintances. In India, freemasonry allowed the levels of (British colonial) society to mix. The members also found it a comforting group even at the worst times - the Museum of Freemasonry included the meeting notes from Masonic gatherings at Changi prison in Singapore during the Japanese World War II occupation.

Initiation well, Quinta da Regaleira.

There was also all the fun ritual and secrecy as masons claimed they were passing on secrets from past ages. Some groups took this more seriously than others. One of Portugal’s elites, Carvalho Monteiro, was so dedicated to his Masonic fun that he built elaborate features in his gardens just for Masonic initiation rituals. He built caves and a deep well with a spiral staircase leading down into the depths. The lodge would send the initiates into a cave at the top end of the garden and expect them to find the correct passage to climb the well stairs "into the light." To be honest, if I had a big garden and a ton of money, I’d probably want to build a big occult fraternal society clubhouse in my backyard too.

The London Grand Temple highlights that pride and popularity of the organization. The London art deco grand temple with its two thousand seat auditorium is a beautiful and visible symbol of the organization. San Francisco’s Scottish Rite Temple out on 19th Avenue was a similar reminder. West coast model railroaders and rail fans likely have positive impressions of the Scottish Rite temple in Stockton where the Winterrail multimedia shows were held.

Main auditorium, Freemason's Hall, London.

Freemasonry has declined over the intervening years in numbers and influence. All fraternal societies have fallen out of favor as trends and preferences for how folks spend their time has changed. Freemasonry’s pseudo-historical self-improvement rituals might not be as attractive in this modern age. Their philosophy and attempts to improve the spiritual nature of their members veer awfully close to 1970s cults from my uninformed point of view. Freemasonry also has a very conservative bent. At the London Grand Lodge, the dress code was quite proper and old fashioned. Men in black three piece suits carrying briefcases with their mason’s apron and regalia may not be so interesting for more informal generations. Regardless, they’re still one of the oldest fraternal societies and still have an obvious following.

As much as friendship and gathering appeals to me, I’m likely not a good Masonic candidate - too informal, and too much of a Generation-X cynical bent. I’d pursue E Clampus Vitus, but I’m not sure I can hold my drink sufficiently to make it in.

What’s this got to do with model railroading?

Looking through the museum, I saw reminders of our own concerns about the hobby, especially as members age and interests change. I see the differences in how each generation wants to show their modeling skill: model contests at meets vs. RPM meets with their show-and-tell feel, focus on individual models vs the layout as a whole, layouts focused on operation against round-and-round club layouts. Each of these tensions can separate modelers, limit the size of events, and sometimes cause tension and conflict. For model railroading, I’d hope we can find ways of keeping the communities together just for a larger hobby and more folks to socialize with. I also want the community to keep attracting and encourage the next generation so we have more folks to hang out with and learn from.

Like the fraternal societies, we worry about participation and expectations and uses of free time changes. Formal rituals - the weekly meeting on Friday nights, or expectation of the hobby as a “mens-only” operation limits who might be interested, or when folks have time available. (See also the comments about the decline of scheduled social acitivities. Church groups and bowling groups both have seen the decline. For bowling, league participation has dropped off even as bowling in general is still popular, hinting at changes at how we want to belong. Some in masonry just blame it all on the hippies and drugs which I suspect is not one of the challenges for model railroad socializing.

The fraternal societies also remind us of the need to jump on new trends and styles. For me, it was interesting to see how model railroading changed after the introduction lion of DCC - more focus on operations and operating weekends, the new sub-hobby of electronics and command control becoming a significant part of the community, etc. Here in the Bay Area, we’ve had the DCC lunch on Fridays which started as a place for a dozen folks interested in command control to meet up and share their latest projects. That group’s quieted down after COVID thanks to an aging-out of one cohort of members, less unexplored corners, and changes in who was working close by enough to meet up.

The masons opened their museum, I suspect, in order to be more visible to a younger generation and search for new members. It was a weird and interesting vibe - I got the sense they were proud of the museum and eager to encourage a new generation, but I also got the sense they weren’t completely ready to open themselves up to the world.

For a model railroad group, there’s times where I think we’re hiding ourselves in similar ways. In other ways, I think we’re much more willing to talk with the visitors from outside the community, share what we’re doing, and just share our excitement. Members at club open houses are willing to talk with the public, as are the folks at our local model railroad shows. We also see how similar groups can be public and friendly at events like the Maker Faires (plug: San Francisco Bay Area Maker Faire will be in Vallejo in October!). Adam Savage’s YouTube videos sharing his personal and commercial prop-making skills also shows as an excited and modern way to share the excitement of building for building’s sake - see his video on making a carrying box for his prop gun from the Blade Runner movie.)

Printing group, Maker Faire Bay Area, 2016.

Burning Man illuminated art, Maker Faire 2016.

I like model railroading. I enjoy having a hobby that lets me construct interesting things without needing to navigate city building code, market and coworker constraints at the day job, or be concerned about building things with some critical need. I like using the hobby as a chance to learn and better myself as I research local history, technology, and the scenery in the places I model. I like that the hobby lets me be social with a fun group of people and be part of informal and formal groups. I like that the hobby gives me a framework to help the community whether in restoring and operating real railroads, sharing local history, or encouraging kids to learn how to make and repair things. I like that the hobby would give me ways to work towards achievements if I wanted, but that I’m not required. We don’t have a secret handshake, but we’ve got a lot in common with the Masons. I’d just like to make sure we stay as something active, modern, and interesting for newcomers rather than something defined more by what we’ve been.