Scenery for Moody Gulch

Work's definitely going in fits and starts here; after a couple months with no work on the layout, my visit to Desert Ops, the Phoenix-area operating weekend, must have inspired me. My challenge: get some scenery in the Moody Gulch scene.

The scenery on the shelf above Los Gatos has always been problematic, and I haven't wanted to rush decisions. There are hidden tracks below (for the lowest reverse loop and staging), so covering the tracks always seemed... risky. When I'd put in the Alma siding, I also added room for a future, at that point undefined, industry, so I was unsure about what scenery would be appropriate. The scenery between Los Gatos and Alma also deserves to be impressive - that stretch of track goes through the narrowest part of Los Gatos Canyon. If I was being fair to the railroad I'm modeling, I'd have track clinging to a sheer cliff face... which wouldn't fit when Los Gatos is only a few inches below the track.

When I last tried building scenery for Alma a couple years ago, I thought a crossing of Los Gatos Creek might be appropriate; I had a bit of styrofoam, so I mocked out half of the scenery, used the tail end of a bag of Sculptamold to make it solid... and stopped as I ran out of material. The scene just didn't work; the creek wouldn't be low enough to be believable as Los Gatos Creek, there was no space to expose the creek bed on the fascia in front of the scene, and the tracks descending on a 2% grade across that bridge just seemed unrealistic. The scene's been sitting there half-done ever since.

Today's adventure was doing that scenery right. I'd learned in the past that if I can completely finish a scene, it's much more likely to turn out well *and* end up being permanent, so luckily I'd stocked up on a couple bags of Sculptamold and a sheet of 2" styrofoam insulation from Home Depot. (My local Home Depot in San Jose even had a sheet of 2" pinkboard, though I was just using beadboard.) I pulled out the hot glue gun and the hot wire knife, looked over a couple of inspirational photos in books, and started building.

The two photos here show the progress tonight. (Sorry for the poor quality and the chair leg in the photo; I should have taken the pictures before cleaning up.) I've had the best luck building scenery with sheet styrofoam. I cut pieces roughly to fit, and glue layers together with a hot glue gun. The hot glue does melt the foam, but at least some of the glue holds the foam together, and I can usually start trimming the layers within minutes of gluing, avoiding the need to wait a day as I used to when using contact cement. I then start trimming the hills with the hot wire cutter to get the rounded look of California hills, correctly angled cuts, and the like. The result are hillsides that look very California-appropriate. As soon as the hot glue is cooled and the styrofoam armature is in place, I use a thin layer of Sculptamold as the final shape of the scenery. Once the Sculptamold dries, the scenery is rigid enough for further layers of spackle or Sculptamold, and is ready for the paint and dirt that will make the hills look like... well, hills.

This scene really draws attention to the branch to Moody Gulch at the expense of the mainline. The Moody Gulch spur looks correctly cut out of the hill with minor filling and depressions along the way. The main line is still looking a bit unrealistic as it drop below the Moody Gulch spur then dives into a tunnel. That tunnel wasn't on the real SP between Los Gatos and Alma, but (1) there was a tunnel in the narrow gauge South Pacific Coast days, and (2) the tunnel is a heck of a lot more realistic than some strange cut might be.

Next steps: get rid of the bare plaster hills. The hillside along here should be a mix of chaparral (typical for the south-facing slope near Moody Gulch) with occasional redwoods in the distance. I'm also starting to think about Moody Gulch structures; I've got ideas about some additional oil well details as well as a small warehouse for supplies for the drillers.

Los Gatos: the Midland/Odessa of the Santa Clara Valley

Another Moody Gulch article from a bit of Google searching, this time with a photo and progress update:

"Moody Gulch Oil Well Daily Expected to Come In" (San Jose News, June 24, 1930).

I also found this description of the 1880's Moody Gulch oil well infrastructure in a text version of Pen Pictures from the "Garden of the World", or Santa Clara County California":

Moody's Gulch, which is a branch of the Los Gatos Canon, at wells Nos. i and 2 (which are about one hundred feet apart), runs about north twenty degrees east. Altitude at this point, eleven hundred feet. At the bridge a little above, fine-grained sandstones and shales strike about north sixty degrees west, and dip sixty-five southwest. Within two hundred feet east of this bridge and seventy-five feet or more above the bed, and still higher up the hill, is well No. 5. East of this and yet higher is well No. 8. On the opposite side of the gulch and about two hundred feet from it is Logan No. I. Altitude, about thirteen hundred and eighty feet above sea-level. About three hundred feet south, twenty degrees west, from Logan No. i, is Plyler No. i. All the oil obtained from these wells is a green oil, known as parafline oil, and has a specific gravity of forty-four degrees. It is piped a distance of about a mile to the mouth of the gulch, where it is received in a tank that stands on a side track of the South Pacific Coast Railway. The first well, named Moody No. i, struck oil at about eight hundred feet. Unfortunately the detailed record of operations has been lost, but that of subsequent wells is complete.

Two Thumbs Up for Oil Wells in Los Gatos Canyon!

It's amazing what turns up in old newspapers. This article, for instance, from the June 24, 1929 San Jose News, breathlessly reports that drilling had started again in Moody Gulch, right around the time I model. It may still be unrealistic to think that the SP would have built a branch across Los Gatos Creek and up Moody Gulch, but it's sounding a lot more realistic.

And if Fred Voorhees thinks that the wells are going to produce, I'm willing to lay the track to get that promised oil to market.

In other news, the Hotel Saint Claire's 65 cent luncheon doesn't sound too bad, either.

S.P. Rails Reach Moody Gulch!

There must be something in the water this month; again, something caused me to go after a long-lingering feature or complication and just build it. This week: filling the empty space over my helix.

Several track plan doodles in my railroad notebooks have covered the area over my helix between levels. Like most helixes, mine takes up a pretty significant piece of real estate, and crowds the Los Gatos scene something awful, so finding a way to get some value out of the space has been at the back of my mind for a while. When I redid the Alma scene a few years back, I'd realized that it would be pretty easy to run a spur off the downhill end of the Alma siding and climb to another town or industry above the helix. I ended up added the needed switch at the end of that project... though not the track to the helix or the industry.

I'd initially considered a mercury mine for that space; Alma was one ridge away from the extremely rich New Almaden and Guadalupe mercury mines. On the negative side, the San Jose-Santa Cruz branch didn't have any mercury mines served by rail, though there was a station at New Almaden, a couple miles from the mine proper. Most of the significant mining at New Almaden ended by around 1900-1915, so it's not like the abandoned mercury mines in the 1930's needed much supplies. Even if they were still running full speed, the incoming freight would be limited to mine timbers and occasional supplies. Mercury mines tended to keep the retorts on-property and only shipped out the finished mercury rather than ore. The 76 pound mercury flasks were compact and valuable, usually shipped in a baggage car rather than an operating-session-friendly boxcar.

Another possibility would be to do an oil well scene based on the oil wells in Moody Gulch, a side canyon a mile or so north of the site of Alma on the opposite side of Los Gatos Creek. Moody Gulch is probably a bit less reasonable as a model location than the mercury mine area. Not only was there no branch to Moody Gulch, but the oil production through the 1930's was small. However, before the turn of the century, there was a tank at Alma and a pipeline running to the oil field so that the oil could easily be shipped to a refinery in Alameda. There were also hopes in the 1920's and 1930's to get a major strike in the area, though the searchers never hit it rich. The oil well scene would, though, be a reasonable source of traffic for the model as tank cars of crude head off the layout to a nearby refinery. Even if the idea of significant oil in Los Gatos Canyon isn't prototypical, having Moody Gulch on the layout would be a nice reminder that there is oil in those hills.

And I woke up this morning (1) extra early and (2) feeling like it was a good day to try something big. I'd initially considered redoing some of the scenery around Alma and the uncompleted siding, but didn't have the needed scenery materials. "How about mocking up the Moody Gulch scene and see what I might be able to pull off there?

So that's what I did today - put in a temporary shelf above the helix, checked clearances (and realized the Moody Gulch scene would have to be smaller than I thought because of clearance issues with the helix), then did some quick thoughts about a track plan for a few stub-ended sidings at the end of a long grade uphill from Alma. Once the rough idea and track plan was figured out, it was just a matter of cutting some plywood.

Of course, that happened. By the end of the day, I had the Moody Gulch benchwork screwed in place, homasote glued on top, and track temporarily nailed down. I still need to connect the track up at Alma, get power to the tracks, and power the switch machines, but the project's started now, and that'll all be easy stuff I can do in passing. More importantly, having the Moody Gulch shelf done over the helix, I've got a better idea where the backdrop behind Los Gatos will go, and might have an easier time planning that scene.

The new construction did force me to abandon a bridge and creek crossing I'd temporarily put in just downhill from Alma; although I liked the idea of a bridge and the track disappearing on the other side of the creek, there really wasn't enough vertical space for the scene, and the new spur track blocks the view of the main line and would make any crossing awfully awkward.

Next steps: Get Moody Gulch working, and see how it operates. There's no runaround track at Moody Gulch, so crews would need to get all cars in order at the Alma siding (or, preferably, somewhere flat to avoid runaway cars), then push the cars up the hill and spot them at the various tracks. I'm planning on two tracks for oil loading, and an extra track (with a spur facing the wrong way) for a warehouse for the drillers. This month's Model Railroader article on vintage oil refineries ought to be inspiring as I think about scenery and details.

More importantly, this bit of work reminded me how fast construction can go once I've got a design and the materials handy. If I'd had a couple Tortoise switch machines handy, I suspect I could have had the entire project soldered and running by this evening!

"What this place needs is a good, producing oil well."

I've shown my fascination for oil wells in the Santa Cruz Mountains before, but oil in the Bay Area isn't just under Cupertino and Los Gatos.

This USGS map shows all the oil wells dug in the Santa Clara and San Mateo areas from the 1870's on. Most of the interest has been around the known finds - Moody Gulch in Los Gatos Canyon, the La Honda and Half Moon Bay fields, and the Sargent field. None have been huge producers, but there's still the potential for a big find. If you're looking at a vacation home out in the redwoods, or a 3/2 rancher on 5000 square feet in Cupertino, make sure to get mineral rights!

If I don't give Alma any signs of the Moody Gulch oil production, I'll be very disappointed with myself.