The Perils of Modeling a Prototype

One of my favorite parts of my Vasona Branch layout is researching what the area was like in the 1930's, then building models based on photos, track plans, and other details about what was really there. Now, I can't actually match reality; building a model railroad in this way requires occasional compromises to figure out what will fit on the layout, what makes the layout fun to operate, and what makes for an interesting scene.

Occasionally, I get caught and learn that my idea of reality was completely wrong. The last time this happened, I found out my nice shed-style building for Borcher Brothers building materials near the old San Jose Market Street station had been torn down and replaced with a nice Spanish revival facade in the 1920's. Oops.

My latest historical crisis came from History San Jose's Cannery Life on-line exhibition. Del Monte's Plant #3 on Auzerais St. finally closed down in San Jose in 1999l, and was torn down and replaced by housing last year. The article describes the history of the plant. It was once the largest cannery in the world, and some claim that fruit cocktail was invented there.

Del Monte used "the whole hog" when it processed fruit. The choicest pieces of fruit were sliced and canned in their own cans. Smaller bits and parts of damaged fruit went into fruit cocktail. Even the pits from apricots had value, so Plant #3 also had an apricot kernel processing plant which is visible on Sanborn fire insurance maps for the time.

The Sanborn Fire Insurance maps have a small problem. These huge books were used to help insurance companies figure out how much to charge an industry looking for insurance. If a business was next to a dangerous industry or if the containing building was shown not to have fire protection, the insurance company could charge more. Some of these books still exist (San Jose Public Library has several), and University Microfilm also sells access to images from these books. However, it's hard to find a "1930" Sanborn map because most books were updated with glued-in sections as facts changed. University Microfilm's collection, for example, has 1915 and 1950 versions of San Jose, so I have to guess what was there during my era of 1930-1935.


History San Jose kindly included this image from the 1930 map showing the kernel processing part of the plant. (It's labelled here as a separate company.) Unfortunately, there's also the nice pencilled note mentioning that the building burned down in 1932. Now, I don't model the kernel processing buildings, and the corner where the buildings existed holds the end of a siding, but should I be modeling these buildings? Should I be modeling the empty space?

Ugh... a little knowledge causes a lot of pain.

A Few Lingering Projects

My new job has been cutting into my modeling time, but I managed to find some time last weekend. I ended up working on one lingering project, and one bit of detail.

First, the detail. My model railroad layout's gotten to a point where some of the scenes look complete - scenery, buildings, and track are in. Now, I've got time to add little details to make things look realistic. I've been installing working signals along the track. In the Santa Cruz Mountains, many of the signals were semaphore signals where an arm moves up and down to indicate whether a train can stop or go. Semaphores are real attention-getters, so the block boundaries where signals appear tend to get attention. Now, a real railroad signalling system is more than just the signals; there are also the telegraph poles that carry the wires between signals, and equipment cabinets, and, hidden in the weeds, battery boxes.

Battery boxes hold lead-acid batteries that power the signals when regular power goes out or isn't available. These days, there's probably a car battery stuffed in an equipment closet somewhere, but back in the old days, you'd see rectangular concrete vaults half-buried near signals. These vaults held batteries made from a glass jar and metal plates. The signal maintainers would stop by occasionally to replace the plates, refill the water, or add extra battery acid to keep everything running fine.

I thought these would make a neat project, so I made several from a couple pieces of styrene - a base, a slightly larger piece of sheet for the battery vault lid, and a strap to mimic the steel rod that would lock the vault lid on. In the picture of the signals at one end of the Glenwood siding, you can see one of the battery boxes in the dirt behind the signal. I still need to build the equipment closet that holds the relays that make the signal work, but that'll be a project for another rainy Saturday.


My second project for the weekend was building a searchlight signal. The model semaphore signals need a motor and mechanism underneath the layout, but I didn't always leave room for all the machinery. Luckily, the real Southern Pacific occasionally used color light semaphore signals in the Santa Cruz Mountains in the 1930's, so I can always model one of these signals instead.

When I last went to the hobby shop, the only signals I could find were some beautiful kits from Class 5 in Santa Rosa. These kits are a combination of plastic castings and etched brass, and make very detailed, realistic signals. Unfortunately, they don't have any way of actually lighting them -- there's no space in the scale light housing parts for an LED or light bulb. I've spent way too much time getting the signals to work under computer control and correctly change colors as trains go by, so I knew I had to light one of these signals.


After a couple false starts (and leaving the kit on my workbench for months just to annoy myself), I finally dived in with my soldering iron and a two-color LED. The pictures show the results. Rather than use the kit's light housing, I filed the LED down until it would fit through the hole in the brass target. I then soldered one of the LED's leads to the brass rod holding the signal up; the other got soldered to a thin wire that ran down the tube. The rest of the signal was assembled according to the kit's instructions. Unfortunately, the LED didn't quite sit in the same position as the kit's light housing, so the bracket for that is floating in air with nothing to support as seen in the side view.

Note the number plate on the signal indicating (in SP tradition) the number of miles and tenths of miles from San Francisco. (Here in the Santa Cruz Mountains, 3 digits were enough for the number plates; in Texas, the signals had 5 digit numbers because of the distance from the home office.) Another number plate went on the signal near Glenwood as seen in the first photo.

This signal got installed near the station at Wrights. Now, I only need to buy a few more signals for a couple other locations on the layout.

Working on the B and O

I recently got invited to an operating session at Dave Parks's Western Maryland/Baltimore and Ohio layout. David's layout is huge, and can take a crew of 10-15 to operate properly. My job this time was to be in charge of Evitts Creek yard, a mixed freight yard just outside of Cumberland, Ohio. On David's layout, this is the main place for trains to get sorted. Because Dave's layout is primarily a coal hauler (and coal trains get handled at coal-only yards), that meant I didn't always have a ton of work to do. Luckily, I brought my camera to capture some candid photos of life during an operating session.


Coal train passes through Evitts Creek yard.


Switching in Cumberland


I don't know what Jim Betz did, but I'm very scared.


Steve Williams, dispatcher, looks at the train sheet to figure out which train is leaving next.

Redwood Forest at Wrights

I survived the LD/OPSIG layout operating session, and the folks attending sure looked like they were having fun. After they left, I finally had time for some of the messy scenery projects I didn't dare do before the operating session.



Wrights, in Los Gatos Canyon, was where the summit tunnel punched under the mountains and through the San Andreas fault. The photos of Wrights from the 1930's always make it look spooky -- the abandoned village up in some dark, tree filled canyon. Lots of pine trees, high hills, and poor layout lighting look like they'll make Wrights feel spooky enough. Here's photos of at least 30 Woodland Scenics trees on the hillside, and there's still room for plenty more. I also finally got the courage to paint the backdrop. It may not be very good painting, but it'll do just fine for the backdrop.



The 1930's pictures also show some old wooden buildings across Los Gatos creek. At least one was a packing shed for fruit grown in the hills around Wrights. Here's my model on its own and temporarily set in the scenery. The building is just plain white styrene; there's no paint here. I distressed the styrene, carved in warped boards and gaps, and washed it with india ink, dusted on some chalk dust, and ended up with a building that looks like it's been left up in the woods too long.
I've also read about techniques that use white acrylic paint as the base, then texture the paint coat to get a similar look.

An Operating Session with Paying Customers

Every year, there's a mini-convention on model railroad design and operation in Santa Clara. It takes place the weekend before the superbowl. Saturday is filled with talks -- discussions of the problems someone encountered building their layout, history of a real place being modeled, or stories on how to make running the layout seem more realistic and fun. On Sunday, everyone's invited to one of the model railroads in the area to join an operating session.

Operating sessions are a lot like role playing -- you take over a particular job on the model railroad, and do that job as if it were real life. It's fun because you can solve problems, pretend to do real railroad work, and see what happens when everyone works together. I've operated on different layouts for at least four years, and each one's different. On Rick Fortin's layout, that meant sorting boxcars for eight hours in the yard, and figuring out what order to do work to make sure each train was made up in time. On Dave Adam's Colorado narrow gauge, I got to dispatch -- controlling how trains went between towns. On Dave Parks' B&O layout, I got to manage a yard and add or remove hoppers full of coal as trains passed.

This year, I decided to return the favor; my layout's going to be one of the open layouts. Four people will get to spend a few hours shuffling boxcars at the canneries of the 1930's Santa Clara Valley and hopefully get some appreciation for the era and the way railroading was done. My layout might not be the largest layout open to guests, but hopefully it'll be a fun experience.

I've spent the last few weeks cleaning up -- tuning cars and locomotives, fixing problems in the track, improving instructions and labels, and whatever else might make the experience better. In the week before Christmas and New Years, I managed to shanghai four friends to do a trial run and help me figure out what needed to be fixed before the paying customers arrived.


Mark Gurries comes around the bend to find San Jose blocked with two trains already switching industries.


Dave Falkenberg uncouples part of the train before switching Del Monte Plant 51.


The only big issue was stalling locomotives. The track got dirty quickly, and my small steam locomotives would hit the dirt and stop. Mark suggested modifying the decoders in the locomotives with "keep-alive" capacitors to give the train a chance to coast past a bit of dirty track. I took his advice, and also cleaned all my freight cars' wheels in hopes of cutting the amount of crud that could be carried around. Fingers crossed. Thanks for the help, guys!

Real California Scenery!

Latest progress: scenery in the hills. This is the east end of the Glenwood siding. I'd never been sure how I'd put scenery in this area; the track turns a corner and goes into the upper staging yard, so I never thought I had room for anything interesting. In January, I realized that the real line out of Glenwood crossed the nearby Bean Creek, and eventually entered a tunnel as the track headed towards Santa Cruz. Having a creek and tunnel scene sounded perfect; I'd have a focal point for the scene, and I'd have a way to hide the staging yard.

After a bit of work with the saber saw, I had space for the creek. The rest of the work happened in fits and starts; I finally put in several days of effort to finish the rough scenery, paint the backdrop, and add ground cover and trees.


Here's a picture of the whole scene; the road in the background represents the Glenwood Highway leading towards Scotts Valley and Santa Cruz. Simple ground cover, trees, and the backdrop are done; the bridge's foundation obviously needs work. To the left, the road and track are separated by a field, with large trees lining the road. There's also a railroad section house on the left bank of the creek.


With this scene done, it's time to move onward to the summit tunnel and the redwood forests!

So... How Are We Doing?

Well, it doesn't look like I'm making progress, but I am. The layout's slowly moving from "rough" to "trim" work -- from all the structural work such as benchwork, track, and wiring to scenery and structures. West San Jose now has the PG&E gas holder placed at the north end of the yard, just across the Alameda underpass. In Campbell, Campbell Ave. is starting to look like a main street with buildings going up on the north side of the street.

Gas holder, West San Jose; D. O. Curry Building, Campbell Ave., Campbell.

The Del Monte Plant 51 cannery building's in place (with warped roof over the platform), but the building's basically complete. It's located across the tracks from my layout's temporary West San Jose depot Compare the model photo with the photo at right from San Jose's Diridon Station a few years back.

Plant 51, West San Jose. Left photo from my model railroad; right taken at Diridon Station, 2001.

When I was growing up, my father took me hiking on Mount Tamalpais. Getting there, we'd avoid taking the touristy route along Highway 1, but would instead wind through residential neighborhoods on the ridge overlooking Mill Valley. I'd see all sorts of houses clinging to the hillside, sometimes up on stilts, sometimes dug into the hillside. For my Glenwood scene in the Santa Cruz mountains, I placed a similar building on the hillside overlooking the tracks and the new semaphore signal. It's not complete -- the stilts are temporarily in place, unpainted, and unglued, but with luck it'll hold on the hillside til I can get more time to work on it.

Here's a pair of overview shots to show progress: