Rebuilding Glenwood

A string of maintenance-of-way gondolas heads uphill.

Like I mentioned last time, long-suffering Glenwood got some serious rework recently. I had some good reasons to finally return to Glenwood. The ProRail invitational was going to be in San Jose in April (before COVID-19), and the visitors from around the US deserved to see the layout at its best. I needed a distraction from work, and wanted some projects that could fill a weekend.

I also had several years of pent-up frustration waiting to be unleashed. Glenwood’s also an old part of my layout; I laid the track on the upper level about two years into the layout, and roughed in some scenery. The model doesn’t accurately capture the real location. It’s not up to my later standards for prototype scenes. It's not eye-catching enough to be a focal point for the layout. Glenwood’s also in a darker corner of the layout, and in a location that’s not central to model railroad operations, so it’s never gotten a lot of scrutiny. Glenwood deserved better.

But being generically dissatisfied is one thing; I need a list of things to fix. Let’s run through the problems at Glenwood.

Glenwood before the rework.

Problems with Glenwood:

• The road’s unrealistic, just badly-levelled Sculptamold on foam scenery, with sheer drops and no shoulders.
• The building just above the tracks isn’t prototypical; although there was a small house there, the building on stilts doesn’t match the location, nor does it look realistic for the 1920’s. It also draws attention away from the prototype portions of the scene, hiding that great curve into the cut and tunnel.
• I'd built a station building, but it’s a coarse plastic model. There’s none of the maintenance of way buildings or outbuildings seen on the maps.
• The grassy hillside doesn’t quite match reality; prototype photos show more trees. The grassy hillside doesn't hide the unprototypical terrain, and misses the chance for trees as a view block to frame the scene.

So my plans? Tear out the hillside, improve the tunnel entrance, make the scene more realistic overall, and detail the station area.

Redoing Scenery

Step one was ripping out a bunch of bad scenery - taking out the hillside, the cut, and the house-on-stilts.

Before any of that, I took a pass at a bunch of other unfinished business. The turnout in front of the tunnel was a frequent derailment site. I ripped out the track, leveled it out with spackle, and relaid the track. The old Tortoise switch machine was a problem; it stuck out too far below the bottom of the deck, and was difficult to adjust. I swapped it out for one of the tiny MP-5 switch machines. I also took this opportunity to check on the track in the tunnel, pulling up even more track, using spackle to again ensure the roadbed was as level as possible, laid the track better, and sealed in the tunnel so that stray light didn’t ruin the illusion of a tunnel through a mountain.

With the track done, I hit the rough scenery.

The new hillside started out with the focal point: the road climbing over the hill and curving around the top of the tunnel portal. This road’s actually the Glenwood Highway, the first paved road across the Santa Cruz Mountains, and first state highway over the mountains. The Glenwood Highway, built between 1912 and 1921, split off from the current Highway 17 on the ridge between Glenwood and Laurel, dropped down into the Bean Creek canyon, then headed through Glenwood towards Scotts Valley. The concrete road, 15 to 17 feet wide, had banked curves and oiled shoulders. It was the height of modern highway design. When the Glenwood Highway was widened in 1939, the town wasn’t big enough for the highway and the railroad; the SP lost that battle, and the depot was torn down to encourage more space for cars. The current route of Highway 17 later won out, but the jazz-era Glenwood Highway still remains if you drive through Glenwood today.

Road during rework.

Road after rework.

Old photos show the key details of the Glenwood Highway: precise curves and straightaways, the odd slalom around the top of the tunnel portal, and an even descent. I followed an approach I’d used elsewhere. I’d started by roughing out scenery to match the rough slope I wanted, and tore out as much of the old road as I could. As I’ve done elsewhere, I used 1/16” styrene sheet for the roadway, scribed with expansion lines. I cut the styrene at the workbench so I made sure curves were accurate and straightaways were smooth. I glued the sheet to the scenery with Liquid Nails contact cement, and used weights and straight lumber to keep the road flat until it dried. Once the road was glued in place, I used Sculptamold and spackle to finish the fills and shoulders.

Time for detailing the scene.

SP 84 heading out of Glenwood tunnel towards Santa Cruz.

SP 31 coming out of tunnel.

This photo of train 84 coming out of the tunnel shows that the bottom of the canyon had a bunch of pine trees in the 1920's. I'd always intended to capture scenes like this: the conifers in the canyon, oak trees higher up, and the privacy screen of trees between the highway and the railroad tracks. Rearranging the hillside and roadway helped this a bit. Filling in undergrowth and deciduous trees is easy; I've been using either Supertrees or Woodland Scenics Fine-Leaf Foilage. The redwoods and other conifers were more of a problem. I'd covered the hillside around Wrights with Woodland Scenics conifers, but I'd found these slow and tedious to build. I'd started trying to do the same at Glenwood, but eventually figured out that gluing tufts of sponge to the plastic armatures was not how I wanted to spend my hobby hours. Luckily, I'd gone to a model railroad train show right before COVID-19 struck. Grand Central Gems out of San Diego was there with their pre-made trees; I bought a few bags of tall pines, and loved how quickly I managed to get the scene finished. I bought a couple more bags later, quickly filling the hillside. I've always been cheap and unwilling to buy pre-made trees, but spending less than a locomotive to get this scene finished was worth it. With enough trees, it was also easy to give the look of separate areas of fields separated by tree lines. Static grass and a barbed wire fence made of wood posts and fishing line completed the scene.

Turntable:

In the earliest track plans for the Vasona Branch, I’d sketched in a location for the pit for the former South Pacific Coast turntable. Glenwood had been a key spot for narrow gauge lumber traffic; many short trains would carry lumber up to Glenwood; from here, a single engine could pull a longer train through the summit tunnel and down to the Santa Clara Valley. One of Bruce MacGregor’s South Pacific Coast books mentioned the filled-in turntable, so I added it to the track plan as an interesting bit of history. I’d cut a half-moon hole in the homesite for the turntable at a convenient location when I first laid track.

In the last episode, I mentioned finding the valuation maps and spotting the actual location. There were actually two turntables. The one at north end of town that apparently was filled in and tracked over during standard gauge times. The other turntable was at the far end of the siding, hanging over creek edge. Neither matched my guess when I'd first sketched the track plan.

I’d already cut the notch in the layout for the turntable in… oh, 2005, and wasn’t up to moving it. Stories claim the turntable was mostly filled in, but I took the existing hole, added stained balsa wood around to support it, added some debris on the bottom, and called it a day. It'll be a good location to throw whatever clutter I happen to have kicking around.

Glenwood Station:

I scratch built the Glenwood depot using some existing plans, and inference from photos. Gary Cavaglia published plans for the Glenwood depot in the March/April 2003 Narrow Gauge and Short Line Gazette. His drawing laid out the original narrow gauge depot building from the 1870's. That building contained a waiting room and tiny baggage area, and was completely sided in shiplap siding. All the photos from the times I model show a different structure. Apparently, the station was extended some time before standard gauging. The 1920's station extended the office portion of the station, built on a long addition for baggage and freight, and added a large raised freight platform matching SP's standard station designs. The station, however, kept many of the details seen in other SPC depots in Alviso, Agnews, Alma, and Wrights: similar doors, roof supports, and roof peak decorations.

Cavaglia’s drawings of the depot gave me the rough shape: walls were 12 feet tall; the gable peaked at 17 feet, and end walls were 14 feet wide. The drawings also laid out the rough sides of the passenger section. During the reconstruction, a door moved; I assumed the windows stayed in the same location. Using these measurements and various expectations (doors 30” wide, windows three feet off the ground) I could infer other measurements. The waiting room originally had two windows with a door between; later photos show a solid wall and a door to the right. Apparently, the reconstruction kept windows in the same locations but blocked up the original door location.

The later extension to the freight side of the depot was board-and-batten which made guessing at lengths easier - the battens appeared to be spaced 12” apart, so I could make guesses about the overall length of the extension. I sized the freight dock to the space available on the layout, rather than the size of the prototype’s.

SketchUp model of Glenwood Station

I sketched the whole model in SketchUp because I could do so quickly - I already had 3d models for the SP-style windows, so putting together the rough shape was fast. Once I had a rough model, I could compare it to photos and confirm that it looked about right. I could have done the same with pencil sketches or with a cardboard model.

I built the model using sheet styrene, window and door castings from my hobby stash, and vacuum-formed shingle material from Plastruct. I was lucky that all the supplies were already in my hobby stash, for I started the model just as the Covid-19 shelter-in-place started here in Silicon Valley. Like many of the SP stations I built, I used the Grandt Line 5031 windows (12 pane double-hung windows) to match the main windows, and the narrower Grandt Line 5029 windows for the sides of the operator’s bay. (I use those windows a lot, so my box-of-windows-for-projects usually has some on-hand.) I scratchbuilt the freight doors from styrene sheet. It doesn’t take a lot of styrene to be able to knock off one of these models; I usually keep a couple sheets of board-and-batten material, a couple sheets of shiplap, and then strip styrene in 1x4, 6x6, 2x6, and 2x8 dimensions, and that’s all that’s needed for most buildings. I also keep large sheets of 1/16” sheet styrene from TAP Plastics because it’s cheap and useful for bases or backing support. I also had some very beefy .156 x .250 sticks of styrene; these turned out to be really handy for building up a base for the loading dock. I could have done the same with Plexiglas, but that would have required shopping, and also required using power tools in the garage. Building from styrene let me build quickly with just a #11 X-acto knife, a square, and a straightedge.

Overall, scratch building a model like this is quick - probably a week of evenings including design and painting. The worst part is cutting out the window openings. If you haven’t tried scratch building, find some simple building, get $25 in plastic from your favorite hobby store, and start cutting!

Maintenance of Way Buildings

Who was around in Glenwood? Even with the large station, Glenwood never attracted the business one would expect; it didn’t become a wine center, didn’t have a major lumber industry, never attracted farmers. The August 1916 Southern Pacific payroll on ancestry.com showed Campbell station had an agent, warehouseman, and clerk, and apparently had a part time “fruit checker”. Wrights had an agent and warehouseman in their little hamlet. Meanwhile, Glenwood’s large station only had Alfred Feldt, operator, making $80 a month. Feldt eventually moved to San Lucas; in 1920, Edom N. Davis had the agent role. The abandonment proceedings in 1939 declared that only 196 people lived in the Glenwood area.

The section gang was a big chunk of that population during the teens and twenties. 1916 payroll records show six laborers and a foreman in Glenwood, reminding us that the section housing and work sheds deserve to be prominent. The August 1916 records show similar section crews at Campbell, Los Gatos, Wright, and Santa Cruz. The 1916 crew included V. Simoni as foreman, P. Simoni as watchman (perhaps for the tunnel), and G. Simi, M. Mariani, J. Jilla, A. Scarponei, U. Balleroni, and G. Berlacgua on the crew. The 1920 census showed a similar crowd: Benjamin Capp, Vigellio Elli, Toni Gianti, G. Luciano, Joseph Menta, Sam Chientilli, and Angelo Fideli. The railroad apparently was a good gig for the new immigrants. A separate continent of Mexican workers listed their occupation as wood choppers in the same census pages. Valuation maps don't show housing for the workers, but a few 1920's photos show what appear to be bunk cars on the siding next to the tunnel. Twenty years later, a Vernon Sappers photo of the Felton depot in 1935 shows maintenance of way bunk cars on the siding behind the Felton station, suggesting the maintenance of way workers moved closer to the bright lights of civilization.

I'd hoped on hinting at the folks who worked in Glenwood. I've got some bunk car models (care of Jason Hill of Owl Mountain Models fame), but I hoped I could include the section house where the foreman lived. Unfortunately, I'd started figuring out a location too late - I already had the station and an Atlas water tank in their rough locations. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out an arrangement that didn't appear too crowded. Instead, I added a tool house built from a A&LW Lines laser-cut kit, and an outhouse next to a privacy fence.

Scenery improved? Check. Unrealistic buildings removed? Check. Prototype station in place? Check. Tons of trees? Check. Glenwood was always a place I modeled because I wanted to capture the real look - the curve into the tunnel, the redwoods, and the interaction of the new highway and the old railroad. It’s now got that look I intended.

Bring in the Photographers!

Full disclosure: all photos here are mine documenting the weekend, not the shots the pro guys made.

Well, that was an interesting weekend. As part of preparations for the NMRA 2021 National Convention, Rails by the Bay, I got a chance to get my layout photographed for articles about the convention. Model railroading’s a lone wolf hobby for me, so I’ve never had anyone else doing serious photos of the layout. I instead got to sit and see how others thought of my layout, and how they worked to get great photos. I also changed a bit how I think about the layout as a result.

So let’s talk about aiming for good photos in terms of planning, preparation, and the photos.

If model railroading taught me anything, it taught me project management. Building a model railroad always involves a long effort to build something significant: deciding what to build, sequencing all the work, rolling with the voluntary and involuntary changes, and ending up with a completed model railroad. I found out about the photo sessions at the beginning of the year, and realized I had some time to finish a couple scenes that had been lingering. I used my usual tricks for deciding what to figure out what to do: fix what annoyed me the most, and fix what I was in the mood for.

Two projects won. First, long suffering Glenwood’s scenery finally got redone. I’ve written a bit about that previously, but to recap: it has the potential for an eye catching scene, the prototypical curve makes it easy to stage reproductions of historical photos, and who doesn’t like model trains in mountain scenery? I’d first ripped out the old scenery and fixed some notoriously unreliable trackage near and in the summit tunnel. I redid the hills and Glenwood Highway to better match the terrain. I then covered the area in trees. Normally, I try to build trees from Woodland Scenics kits, but this time I bought from Grand Central Gems at a recent train show, and had a redwood forest ready in days. I ballasted track, detailed the former turntable pit, and built a quick reproduction of the Glenwood station from styrene. (I’ll talk more about the station another time.). Glenwood needed a water tank, so I quickly grabbed one of the venerable Atlas kits and put it into service.

By the time the scene was done, COVID-19 had hit and the original deadline for the work - the Prorail operating event had been cancelled. We rescheduled the photoshoot for August, which gave me motivation for another project. This time, I decided to go after downtown Campbell. The Campbell scene’s always been a focal point for the layout, but the scenery and structures have been half-done for years. I’d built the station model years ago and scenicked the station side of the tracks. However, the opposite side of the tracks was still temporary buildings and little scenery. That included downtown Campbell, Sunsweet, the Hyde Cannery, and Ainsley cannery. This area provided some great scenes - space to photograph long trains, switching action, and lots of canneries. I started on a big push a couple months back to redo everything. For downtown Campbell, I redid the road and building bases, and started trying to pull all together.

I’d already done four of the five buildings for the downtown Campbell Ave., but had held off on the most impressive of the group - the Growers National Bank building that had been downgraded to the local movie theater by the 1930’s. (The building still exists in 2020, though I think they're still fighting about whether to allow it to become a night club.) I’d made a couple attempts at starting the bank, finding a suitably regal plastic model, but the space on the layout was tiny - only about twenty feet wide - and the model wouldn’t fit. Unable to do things perfectly, I just gave up and decided I’d do the model another day.

That day finally came as I cleaned up Campbell Ave. I tossed out my ideas of a "perfect" model and decided to just start building and see what turned up. Like the Dutch signal box, I finally got annoyed enough to just start building. Like that model, I used styrene sheet primarily. Again, large dimension styrene rod worked really well - the 2 foot inset for the doorway was simply 0.250 styrene bar, simplifying the construction. A leftover door and window served for entry. I used brick sheet for the walls; the detail along the roofline were strips of board-and-batten siding standing in for carved stone. I crafted the theater sign from styrene sheet. I would have liked to 3d print it to get the lettering perfect, but my older SketchUp software doesn’t seem to want to render 3d characters.

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Campbell Theater

Bank of Camera Close-up

With Campbell Ave. in, and the road glued down, my next project was fixing the Ainsley Cannery. The Ainsley site’s had a posterboard mockup ever since the layout was built; I still remember Byron Henderson complimenting me during an early operating session because the freight door spacing matched my 40 foot freight cars. Back in 2006, I had a great solution for the cannery - I’d found a YesterYear Models “fruit packing house” - actually a former Sunkist packing house from Riverside, California. The box has been gathering dust ever since as I waited for just the right inspiration to use it for the cannery. This was finally the time to pull the kit out of storage. The overall shape of the buildings are similar - both were a row of wooden barn-like buildings. Like Sunkist, the Ainsley cannery had an office in the end closes to Campbell Ave, and a loading dock dominating the front of the building. As a result, the rough arrangements of windows and doors would work fine as-is. One big difference was that Sunkist’s building had two joined wooden sheds, while the Ainsley cannery had two corrugated iron sheds and two wooden sheds in a line; historic accuracy went out the window in order to get a "good enough" model done as I ignored the corrugated iron sheds. I ended up cutting the Sunkist building in half, and using both ends side-to-side, and ignoring the different materials in the various sheds.

The Drew Cannery, formerly Ainsley

Preparation

All that major work took me up to last week. However, I still hadn’t done much of the preparation work, so I kicked into a big cleanup mode. Our photographers recommended doing a serious cleaning so extraneous dust or debris visible on photos. I also got rid of all the little problems I'd ignored over the years. Some was operating session damage - having folks handle models is always going to trigger a bit of damage. I fixed broken signs and bumped trees, repaired damaged cars, fixed scratched paint or bent grab irons, and filled in ballast holes triggered by past cleanups. I dusted off a set of “good cars”, and stashed away cars that were the wrong era or had visible damage. I fixed long-lingering projects -holes in scenery I’d never addressed, half done patches, and rough surfaces. Some were really quick - I’d never patched scenery when I’d rearranged the Wrights tunnel. Some were larger, such as finishing half-done spackling in the Meridian Road scene.

Most of the preparation work was the same I’d do for an operating session. For operating sessions, I’d also be worrying about reliability, cleaning car and locomotive wheels, testing that engines were working fine, testing couplers and trucks. None of that sort of work mattered much here - the trains would be stationary in the pictures. I was pretty relieved not to be doing a serious cleaning. Serious cleaning's always a huge time sink, and I always want to over-prepare - I’m always worried before operating sessions whether a balky engine or dirty track will make for an unpleasant operating experience.

Another great advantage of photos is that locomotives don't need to run well. The real Vasona Branch likely had small 0-6-0s switching the canneries. On my model, larger 2-8-0 locomotives instead get the job. I really like the little 0-6-0s, but can never use them for operations. They tend to be balky runners and stall way too easily. When operators are focusing on how to solve a switching puzzle, the last thing they want to do is deal with a stalling or broken locomotive; it interrupts the illusion of working on the railroad, and usually ends up with waiting for the layout owner to clean track, fix the engine, or provide another locomotive. With photos, however, a balky or stationary locomotive isn't a bad thing, for the trains don't need to move in a good photograph. I cleaned one of the rarely-used 0-6-0s, and it got a few chances to be on center stage. To be fair, it's still good to have working locomotives if only to quickly pull cars around the layout to a new photo site, but a photo session removes a lot of the worry of mechanical problems.

While some tasks such as wheel-cleaning and locomotive tuning don’t make sense for photos, other tasks not needed before operating sessions were needed. I’m usually a bit hesitant about putting detail on the layout. It’ll often get damaged during operating sessions. I’ve hoarded some details so they’re available when I need to fill in a scene to be photographed. The layout hasn’t always been at a stage where it’s ready for detail.

But hey, if the layout’s going to get photographed for real, this is the time for all that detail. I pulled out my box of various details I’ve hoarded during my time in the hobby. Every Woodland Scenics pallet I’d ever gotten from a detail kit went on the layout. Extra parts from a Fine Scales Miniature kit that couldn’t handle more crowding. All the 3d printed boxes, bags, lugs, and can stacks I’d printed went on any available loading dock. I plopped down figures where they were appropriate. I took a pair of 3d printed flagmans shanties and phone booths and placed them wherever they’d fit. I took the large fruit bins from the YesterYear kit and made a box yard for Del Monte #3, just as can be seen in photographs.

I also put in a bunch of telegraph poles along the right-of-way. I’ve had these on the layout before; they tend to get a lot of abuse, but they’re eye-catching. This time, I spent an evening assembling and painting a set of telegraph and power poles from Rix Products and Atlas. I also painted them a bit more carefully than before. Previously, I’d just painted the telegraph poles a quick brown and added a bit of green for insulators. This time, I made the colors stronger than last time - darker posts, silvery supports, green insulators. In place on the layout, they really catch the eye. For the Meridian Road scene, I also made a point of doing a power/telephone line paralleling the road which helps to make the scene even more realistic.

And thanks to some crazy times at work, I crammed a bunch of this work into the last week, and into a mad three days. We were also in the middle of a serious heat wave here in San Jose, so the hardest part was avoiding heat stroke in the garage, but on the plus side the matte medium dried really, really fast. The roof of the Ainsley cannery got painted just as soon as the glue holding the paper tarpaper on appeared to stick. I laid ballast in a bunch of places that had never been ballasted, and managed to paint and clean the rail in time. I decorated new scenes - bushes hiding a farmhouse along Meridian Ave, a path to the bathroom around the edge of the Rio Grande gas station, and a row of posts to keep parked cars away from the Campbell depot. I was bouncing back and forth between touching up scenery, weathering cars, and touching up structures. When I was checking old photos to get the sign on the Ainsley cannery declaring it to now be the Drew Cannery, I noticed a speed limit sign, and quickly printed up several of those to control the HO scofflaws. I was still touching up ballast and fabricating a set of stairs for the Glenwood depot a half hour before the photo session.

I never completely believed those model railroad magazine articles where someone built a well-detailed layout in a year or two. I couldn't imagine they had time to decide on models, do the construction necessary, or add the details. This week's mad rush convinced me it was possible. All I needed was some definite ideas of what should be built, an urgent deadline, a bit of wiggle-room on what counted as "good enough", some well-stocked supplies, and way too much manic energy.

And the Photographers Arrive

Dan and Doug, the photographers, were spending several days just photographing layouts in the Bay Area. They've also done this before for previous conventions and other layouts, and came fully prepared. Although I've read about model photography in magazines, this was my first chance to see pros in action.

They came prepared: lights, power cords, and various secret photographer paraphenalia. The extension cords helped when the breaker blew on the garage circuit - our 1960's house wasn't designed for this kind of model railroad lighting, and we quickly found another circuit to share the load.

Lighting the whole length of the layout

Dan also had lots of cool tricks so he could get into the scene with his SLR - mirrors to capture scenes the camera couldn't reach, beanbags to hold the camera steady on the layout, high tripod for the upper level photos.

And they took photos different from me, too. Some of that was expected: they visited the Vasona Branch for only a couple hours, so they were very careful to make their plan of shots, then slowly move around the layout to hit each.

Big difference number one from my attempts at model photography: they bring in lots of light. The Vasona Branch has a mix of lighting: the garage lights are cool white fluorescent strips, but I've got various cool white LEDs and warm white fluorescent fixtures lighting the lower deck. I'll usually just use the existing lighting when I take photos; if I'm really taking care, I might borrow a couple bright lights from one source or another. As a result, my photos often have weird colors if a scene has a mix of LED and fluorescent lights. Dan and Doug used two or three photo lamps. Their lights quickly overpower any layout lighting. They also didn't seem to worry about the narrow space between decks - bounce light off objects was enough to light the scene. Their biggest concern seemed to be getting the scene evenly lit, and avoiding shadows on the backdrop. In places where they couldn't get lights, they assumed they could photoshop in some sky into the black background of the garage door.

Dan and Doug use mirrors and a hand-held photo light to capture a train approaching Alma station.

Big difference number 2: The big surprises for me was just seeing what caught their attention. I haven't seen their photos yet, but they understandably looked for interactions between trains and the world. Signals were a common tool to add some action, as were road crossings. My best guess is that model photos need the extra busy-ness and action, and really need some focal point other than the train. The Vasona Branch's semaphore signals were common places for photos. (That was also true on the prototype; one real photo that inspired me is a 1920 photo of a passenger train coming into Glenwood. That photographer, like Dan, made sure to catch the train as it "split the semaphores".

SP Train 84, coming out of the tunnel at Glenwood

I also heard a bunch of interest about the farmhouse and orchard sitting in the blob where the tracks turn from San Jose to Campbell. This scene's always been half done and cluttered - details not glued down, ground not quite sloping correctly, the orchard too small to be realistic. I'd done a big cleanup of the scene in preparation for the photos - pulled out details, removed structures, and generally made it innocuous. But interest kept drifting back towards the farmhouse and barn. I'd started thinking about details as I was doing cleanup; I'd added a hedge to protect the farmhouse from the busier road. But the interest makes me think I should more seriously plan the scene out.

Dan and Doug also focused on the large details - freight cars and car models - rather than smaller details - not surprising because of the short time. They did spot one broken crossbuck that would have detracted from the scene; we pulled it out.

And that was pretty much it; they got ten good photos, and moved onto the next layout. I got to stare at the layout for a while; it's always fun to see the layout when it's been cleaned up for an open house or an operating session, and doubly-good when all the usual clutter in the garage has been relocated. Even though I'd crammed a bunch to get the layout in shape, I was still excited enough at seeing the layout in good shape that I finished off a couple projects that hadn't been done in time, replacing a remaining broken telephone pole, putting in some gravel around the Ainsley cannery, and fixing up the famous black walnut tree that sat at the start of Campbell Ave.

What did the photos show? I've seen the first photos, and they're great - Dan uses Helicon to combine photos taken at different focal lengths to get more depth of field. Looking at the photos, I see a few things to do differently.

• I'm vertically challenged. In a few of the photos, it's obvious I've been less than good at making sure everything's standing up straight. They're close, but as soon as several objects are in a photo: semaphores, building, water tank, telephone poles - it's obvious each has a slightly different idea what "up" is. I'll need to work on this, both ongoing, and fixing the more obvious offenders before I next take photos.
• Prepare for the story. I'd made sure to have cars set up in sample trains, but hadn't been good about choosing cars or trains to illustrate themes I'd want in an article about the layout. For example, large industries and lots of indistinguishable red boxcars is a big part of my layout, but I neglected to have a switcher ready at Plant 51, and also didn't make sure that the cars there were the uninteresting ones. I need to sketch out the story I want to tell beforehand, and share it with the folks doing photography.

What's next? The layout's clean and in good shape, and I'm excited to do some more building. Finishing Campbell is an obvious next step: the Hyde Cannery buildings are screaming out to be build. I'd held off on building the Campbell Theater and Ainsley Cannery because I wanted to make sure I did them right. However, my quick-and-dirty building rush seemed to work with these. Maybe I should just go build Hyde and see what happens?

The orchard scene's another obvious project.

Once both of those are done, there's obvious holes to fill. One advantage of cleaning the layout was that I got rid of all the building placed on the layout "temporarily" for lack of better space - a couple of farmhouses that never found locations, a drive-in market built for fun, a bunch of cars that needed repair. Now that the layout's opened up, I'm reminded that the area between Campbell and Vasona Junction is still completely empty. The Del Monte Plant #3 property's also still occupied only by foamcore buildings. There's also a stretch of bare plaster up on the upper deck near Alma. I'll need to take a pass on any of these scenes going forward.

If the last week's any indication, I know how to get those scenes done quickly: lock down my idea of the scene, build something that's "good enough" rather than waiting for perfection, and pull a bunch of all-nighters during a heat-wave.

Rolling Back to Glenwood

Southern Pacific train #84 rolling into Glenwood around 1913.

A few weeks back, I finally started redoing scenery on a long-ignored part of the layout: Glenwood, on the upper deck. When I first built the Vasona Branch layout, I’d thrown in some temporary scenery... which has lasted for a good fifteen years now. Before I show off what I’ve been doing, though, let’s chat a bit about Glenwood.

As we read in the abandonment filing, there wasn’t a lot to do in the Santa Cruz Mountains in the 1930’s: little industry, few people, and a railroad line that tended to get buried in mudslides every winter. The Los Gatos-Santa Cruz branch wasn’t a happy place for a profit-focused railroad.

My Vasona Branch layout models the Santa Cruz Mountains on the upper deck, both for extra mileage and for my chance to model some classic California scenes. I chose to model three locations on the layout: Alma, Wrights, and Glenwood. I chose each for scenery and track arrangement reasons. Alma and Wrights were both on the uphill side of the climb to the summit, so they made sense for the slowly-rising upper deck. I chose Alma because I wanted its passing siding, and because I could find photos of the station. Wrights was an obvious place to include; the track comes up the narrow canyon, then makes a sweeping curve across Los Gatos creek to dive into the summit tunnel. The creek and bridge, toy station, tunnel, general store, and historic location made it photogenic and proper for the layout.

But what about the Pacific side of the line? I could have modeled Felton, with its lumber mill. I could have modeled Laurel, with its tiny station sandwiched between two tunnel portals, and side-hill trestles keeping the track from sliding down into a canyon. Glenwood, however, had a tight curve at one end of town that led to the Glenwood-Laurel tunnel, just perfect for the curve on the layout, which made the model in the garage match the real-life terrain. But in the 1930’s, Glenwood was near abandoned: a main line, two weed-infested sidings, and a closed station. So why include it?

Glenwood had been much more important in the narrow gauge days. Bruce MacGregor notes that Glenwood was nearly at the elevation of the summit tunnel; if the South Pacific Coast railroad could pull lumber and other freight to Glenwood, they could easily pull it through the tunnels and down to Los Gatos and San Jose with a single engine. As a result, Glenwood originally had multiple sidings for assembling larger trains before pulling them to the Santa Clara Valley. Glenwood also had a turntable for turning the locomotives hauling the lumber up from Boulder Creek and Felton, and a couple sidings for maintenance-of-way.

Beyond that, Glenwood wasn’t particularly exciting. Tunnel at the west end of town to Laurel and the summit, bridge over the creek at the south end (and eventually leading to the tunnel to Zayante and Felton), the depot, a general store, a winery that looked more like a barn, and a few houses. Some resorts were scattered in the trees, but it wasn’t the most cosmopolitain of places. It made up for its meekness with stories from the early settlers, including “Mountain Charlie” McKiernan, who famously fought a bear and got a dent in his skull.

The California State Railroad Museum has the station plan drawings for multiple years, giving us a chance to see the evolution of Glenwood from the railroad’s point of view for four times: November 1907, December 1907, 1913, and 1939.

A November 1907 valuation map (probably while the line was still narrow gauged) shows three 700 foot sidings, a turntable on the east and west ends of town (the west one apparently filled in), a section house. Bean Creek, awfully close to the railroad tracks, shows up as a 10 foot gully stretching along the scene. The sidings ended just east of the depot where the tracks crossed to the west side of the creek. The current Glenwood Highway doesn’t yet exist; the downhill stretch is labelled “Vine Hill Road”. The road crossed the tracks just west of the station, and proceeded across the creek and up the hill on an alignment that’s no longer a public road. We see a section house (residence) and multiple structures along the tracks.

A month later in December 1907, the SP created another map, probably showing line changes after standard gauging and reopening the line. There’s now just two sidings and the main line, with a spur in front of the depot. Bean Creek’s now been filled in with a concrete culvert.

The 1913 map shows additional changes. This map labels the building next to the Laurel tunnel as “watchman’s house”. There’s also two spurs, probably for maintenance-of-way. There’s a couple photos from about this era showing trains passing the semaphores just before the tunnel. Those photos caught maintenance of way cars - or bunk cars - sitting on the siding. On the east end of town, longer sidings both cross the new culvert to create 1100 foot sidings for longer standard gauge tracks. The maps also show the block signals at each end of town. A private road loops over the top of the tunnel portal; this will eventually be the Glenwood Highway.

The 1939 map shows that very little changed since 1913. The track arrangement’s similar; the only differences are in the roads. On this map, there’s now a section house, tool house, and signal maintainer’s tool house. The depot was torn down to give room for the state highway. There’s also a derail on the east end of town so runaway cars won’t roll all the way to Santa Cruz.

So what do I want from all these sights? I’m not changing the track layout, so we’ll still have the curve into the Glenwood-Laurel tunnel. The Glenwood Highway looping over the top of the tunnel portal is a well-known design, so I’ll need to keep that. The depot’s small-ish, photogenic, and has an appropriate location so we’ll need to keep it. (I’ve got a placeholder model based on some plastic kit, but it’s time to make an accurate version.). I hadn’t known about the section house and tool house; there’s space for both next to the depot, so those deserve to be added.

What’s already there? The old scenery has the Glenwood highway curving over the tunnel portal, but the climb out of town is jerky and doesn’t look smoothly. There’s also a house on stilts right next to the tunnel portal. It’s unprototypical; that hillside looks like it was mostly trees and bushes. It’ll need to go. I’d also cut a space for one of the abandoned turntables. Stories suggest that the turntable was filled in, but I’m willing to leave it as a hole in the ground.

Next steps: Let’s start swinging the hammer and changing some scenery, then let’s scratch build a depot!

Printing a Freight Car: Southern Pacific CS-35A Flat Car

I’ll admit it. I’m not a freight car modeler. Sure, I’ve had an appreciation for appropriate freight cars from my era, and I’ve built a lot of resin kits for the Vasona Branch. But I’m not one of those folks who could argue the difference between the different patent pressed-car ends, or could tell you what percentage of B-50-14 boxcars had Bosendorfer side doors, or would argue about the appropriate underframe for a stock car. But, hey, all that goes out the door when I decide to print freight cars on the 3d printer.

My list of potential 3d-printer projects has always included a few freight cars. As popular as the Southern Pacific may be, modeling the 1930’s means building a lot of resin kits, searching eBay for old kits, or finding a lot of stand-ins. One example would be the Hart convertible gondolas, frequently used for dumping ballast on railroad tracks. Another would be flat cars - Southern Pacific’s 1930-era flat cars look much more fragile than the typical 1950’s plastic flat car kit that’s available, and tended to have a very specific look. More importantly, I needed flat cars for the Vasona Branch - lumber coming from the sawmill at Laurel needed to come down the hill to the lumberyard at Auzerais St.

I’d hoped my first-generation Makerbot was going to help me with freight cars, but it couldn’t print something that looked good at HO scale - the layers in the plastic were too obvious. The Makerbot could only print within a 4 inch cube - not big enough for even a smaller flatcar. The Form One, though, was getting big enough. At 125 mm x 125 mm x 165 mm, the printer could print a 36 foot freight car diagonally, or a longer car if I tilted it up on end. So, soon after I’d gotten the Form One up and printing, I tried a couple flat cars. Here’s the details on that first flat car.

The Prototype: Southern Pacific CS-35A Flat Car

In 1903, the Southern Pacific decided to experiment with freight cars built completely of steel. Two plans appeared that year: the CS-35 car (36 feet long with 40 ton capacity) and the CS-35A car (40 feet long, 40 tons). Both these CS (Common Standard) cars represented first attempts at a flat car with a steel under frame: a pair of 15 inch I-beams along the center, and pressed steel sides tied together by a 19 inch deep C-channel. The two designs were apparently in a bake-off; both designs date from October 1903, but only the CS-35A got the green light. SP had 1,000 of the 40 foot cars built by the Pressed Steel Car Co. in Chicago.

The CS-35A, designed during the Harriman era, differed from later flatcars such as the F-50-2 by having only nine stake pockets on each side compared to eleven or twelve on later cars. Other spotting features was the lack of rivets on the bottom edge (unnecessary in the stamped forms of the early cars, but needed in the fabricated side frames of later cars) and twelve rivets on the side at each truck bolster.

These flat cars definitely looked different from the other standard SP freight cars - relatively shallow sides, no truss rods, and longer than most of SP’s flat cars. Compared with modern freight cars, they look positively wispy and fragile. They also lasted a long time, with Tony Thompson’s SP Freight Cars book showing the cars still in common use in the 1920’s, both for revenue service and for maintenance.

Of course, there’s no models of the CS-35A available, whether as a resin kit or plastic model, so it was a great first try for 3d printing.

The Model

The first question was how to build the model - do I try to print the whole freight car in a single piece? I’d seen models on Shapeways where only the metal parts were 3d printed; the wooden deck for the flat car was done with laser cut wood. That seemed great; the wood deck would be more realistic, and I could print the model upside down on the build platform. (That didn’t work; more later.) I tried doing a couple models where only the frame of the flat car was printed, with big openings below. That didn’t work - the printed piece ended up being too thin to print, and wasn’t strong enough to survive removal. I ended up building the model so the top was solid and 6mm thick; the wood deck would be glued onto that surface.

I did the initial drawing for the CS-35 in SketchUp. I started out sketching the rough shape, extruded it as a 6 scale inch thick slab, then started adding details - first the frame and ends, then more and more detail. I scaled the sides so they were 6 inches thick and printed more reliably. For details - stake pockets and patterns of rivets - I often drew the objects in a separate SketchUp model, then made the object into a group and pasted copies into the final model. I learned that 1” diameter cylinders, 1 inch high, made great rivets. I also marked the holes for grab irons by drawing a 1.5 inch diameter hole.

There were also details I didn’t model. I didn’t add brake gear to my initial model. I planned on using wire grab irons, and grabbed brake wheels from my scrap box. I did need to model the brake cylinder for the car; it’s obvious on all the real photos I’ve seen. I started using the Tichy Train Group’s K Brake kit, and bought a half dozen at my local model railroad shop, but found I was only using the brake cylinder. I ended up building a 3d model for the brake cylinder, and printing the brake cylinder myself.

One of my other surprises when building this was the question of what exactly to build. Any model has compromises - I might not want to add all details, or I might need to change a dimension, or I might tweak the model to fit a model railroad coupler. Figuring out these differences between the model and the real thing is the hard part of making a model, whether by hand, with a 3d printer, or when designing an injection-molded kit. For the CS-35A, I had to decide whether to add some of the underbody beams and braces (no), or what detail to add to the ends (minimal.) I also had to choose between scale dimensions and a reliably-printing model. I ended up making the center I-beam much thicker than in real life so it would print more reliably. Instead of 1 inch, I made all the walls 2 inches thick. I also drew it with slopes inside the I so there wasn’t a difficult transition from thin to full-width.

Flat car and support structure. Support structure holds car at 30 degree angle to avoid any horizontal slice through the middle being too large.

I also had hiccups. I had problems printing the final model because of extra hidden faces; I used Netfabb Basic to clean up the models and prepare them for printing. Even that didn’t work reliably. Because of the Form One’s resolution, making a “watertight” model (no holes or gaps between faces) was critical. On the Makerbot, the low resolution meant holes would usually be ignored when breaking the model into layers. With the tinier resolution, even a small hole could convince the Form One software that you intended the model to actually be hollow. I also found that pieces thinner than 2 scale inches (0.020 inches, or 0.5mm) didn’t print reliably. (The design rules from Shapeways for their frosted ultra detail material have similar limitations.) I found I couldn’t print the freight cars flat on the build surface either without layers failing to bond. Formlabs, the maker of the printer, suggests that large flat prints be done at an angle so that any individual printing layer doesn’t cover a large area. Doing so gave me more reliable printing, but doubled print time. I also found I needed to be careful about cleaning the model - I’d been leaving the finished prints in direct sun to cure, but had problems with warping. Keeping time in the sun short, and making sure both sides were exposed to the sun helped limit warping.

Initial model. Note messed up corner caused by deformation when printing near edge. The other cars weren't this bad, but all cars printed with the long edge tipped had a bit of deformation.

The overall process for printing the flat cars was something like this. First, I’d print a couple models over a day or two. Like all the 3d models, I’d pull them out of the printers, remove them from the build platform, and soak them in isopropyl alcohol to wash away the extra resin. I’d remove the support structure added to print the model, then leave the models in the sun for 10-20 minutes on a side. Another day, I’d spray paint the models (Scalecoat boxcar red in a spray can). I’d drill out holes for the screws holding on the trucks and couplers, then attach both with plastic screws, and cut the screws off flush with the top surface. I’d then add a wood deck using individual 2x8 wood boards stained with india ink and alcohol, gluing them on with contact cement. I decaled the cars, then then drilled holes for wires representing grab irons and superglue them in place and touched up the paint on the grab irons. A final spray of Dullcote sealed the decals onto the model.

I made a couple embarrassing mistakes with the model. On my first try, I used the plans in Tony Thompson’s “Southern Pacific Freight Cars” book to build the CS-35 36 foot car. That model turned out well (and the 3d model is available on Thingiverse). When I went to decal the model, I looked for the car numbers for the 36 foot cars… and realized there were none listed - SP never built any. I'd been printing the Loch Ness Monster of SP flatcars.

To correct my mistake, I stretched the design out to make a 40 foot car. In SketchUp, this wasn't too challenging; I'd select the portions of the flat car from the bolster out, then use the move tool to drag these out the appropriate distance. After I printed a few of the longer cars, I compared them against photos, and realized the model didn’t look right - the wheels were set closer to the center of the cars. The CS-35A looked a bit like the ends of the cars were unsupported. I went back to SketchUp, and moved the truck bolsters in.

The final model requires about 15 cubic centimeters of resin and prints in three and a half hours. The resin cost about 15 cents a cubic centimeter, and about half gets lost during printing and cleaning, so we’re talking about $3 in resin per freight car. Compared to Shapeways, which would charge around $30 for a similar part, it’s not a bad deal. On the other hand, I went through a lot of prints for testing - probably 10 to 12 pieces. Once I got the design and printing settings done, it was easy to print more flat car castings on demand.

I still have some minor problems with warping, and the arrangement of the model usually causes one corner to be bent in a bit. Both they’re still fine models,and I’ll be able to make some reasonable 1930’s flat cars for my layout quickly. One potentially big problem is that the models are very light - only about 1.5 ounces with trucks and couplers, much lighter than the recommended 3.5 ounces. I’m planning to either add weight to the loads on the flatcars, or add some lead sheeting in parts of the model.

The Decals I printed and decaled one of the “wrong truck spacing” cars using a mix of leftover details; that process was amazingly painful. I tried finding some commercial decals that had the needed freight car numbers and tiny lettering, but didn’t find any good sheets at my hobby shop. I ended up deciding that custom decals might be reasonable, especially if I was going to build ten cars.

I drew up the artwork in Intaglio (a vector drawing program like Adobe Illustrator). I tried using Ben Coifman’s Railroad Roman font which I’d bought years ago, but its lettering looked a bit thinner than the stock SP lettering style. I ended up doing half the sheet using the Baskerville font available on the Mac which resembled the SP lettering, but had thicker letters. The bolder glyphs should make it easier to read the cars in my dark garage.

I sent the decals off to Rail Graphics; my 1 inch by 4 inch decal sheet cost $50 for a run of 50 decals, each with enough lettering to cover a few cars. The finest 2 inch tall lettering isn’t legible, but all the other lettering was readable and fine for my cars.

I’d never seen any hints on making custom decals, but designing my first sheet gave me a few lessons. First and most important, I made sure that the car numbers included a bunch of optional numbers that matched the real cars. For my CS-35A cars, car numbers would have been between 78500 and 79499. I added several numbers starting with 78/79, and also made sure that numbers starting with 48, 49, and 40 existed in case I wanted to do some of the other SP flat cars. I added several different car lengths and weight capacities so I could do some of the alternates. I also added the SPMW lettering in case I wanted to model any of the maintenance of way cars seen in photos.

I didn’t think about the difficulty of cutting the decal apart. The lettering on these decals was remarkably tiny; I had to borrow my wife’s Optivisor to be able to cut them apart. I put the “feature” lettering - “dirt collector”, “metal brake beam”, etc. on a single line, so it was easy to cut a strip out, then break out the individual words. For the other lettering such as the reweigh information, I did a lot of cutting out individual words. I wish I’d put most of the data for a single kind of car on a single line so I could cut that line off the decal sheet, then cut the individual pieces off separately.

Oh, and if you decal one car by hand before doing the custom decals, don’t use that number on the decal sheet.

The Final Models

So far, I’ve built six of these cars - two of the non-existent 36’ CS-35 cars, one of the CS-35A cars with the wrong truck spacing, and three of the 40’ CS-35A cars with the correct truck spacing. I also have one model that I had printed by Shapeways in Frosted Detail (the lower-quality.) They’re fine cars for my layout. They look positively fragile next to the chunkier Athearn 40 foot flat cars, and I also know that they’re historically accurate.

What’s next? I also like the look of the SP F-50-4 cars, with their narrow sides but prominent center beam. I’ll show more of my progress on those later. I’m also seeing about building models of the W-50-3 Hart convertible gondolas used in ballast service. Keep your fingers crossed that I can print those reliably.

And finally, let's check out the cars in action:

SP Concrete Telephone Booths: The Results

I decided against redoing the design of the telephone booths - the existing models were quite good enough for my layout. Even the ones where the individual flat faces were visible weren't that bad. And, thanks to 3d printing, I've also got around 15 telephone booths finished and painted when I only needed... oh, maybe two. So, no work on a better door, no improvements to hinges. But I've got finished models. One's already in at the far end of the Glenwood siding and looks great!

SP modelers, expect me to be handing out phone booths as party favors for the next couple months.

More Reading: Santa Cruz Trains

If you're more interested in the trains running from San Jose to Santa Cruz than in cannery finances, you might also want to check out Santa Cruz Trains. Derek Whaley from Felton has been writing about the old SP line (among other things), and his latest article follows the old roadbed from Zayante to the Mountain Charlie tunnel.

He's also got more photos of banana slugs in his blog than I do, but I'm probably noticing just because I'm jealous. Go read it.

New Photos

BTW, for your amusement,

Del Monte's Plant 51

East end of Glenwood siding, with some fine-looking static grass.