Rain in the Santa Clara Valley

Considering how wet December has been in the Santa Clara Valley, this video of floods in the Valley in 1937 seems very relevant.  If I needed ideas about modeling farm roads in the Valley, this provides some nice details like the "soft shoulder" and stick fence seen in one scene.

The videos are on-line thanks to the California Pioneers of Santa Clara County.

The video of photos of the Moriconi farm in San Jose is also worth watching for some images of the Valley in the 1930's.

Diesels in the Drawer

Although my layout is set in the 1930's, there are occasional inconsistencies. For example, if you look in a drawer under the layout, you'll find a pair of 1950's diesel locomotives on hand. They're still SP, one in the Black Widow paint scene, and the other in the simplified "pumpkin" black and orange scheme. They're important - they're my insurance policy.

One of the big rules in operations is that a layout needs to run well, and that means the locomotives need to run well. No locomotive, no train, no operating session. Worse, an operating session is much more wearing on the trains - hours of running, multiple locomotives running at the same time, rougher operators, less respect for known trouble spots - so even engines that work perfectly for you on your own can fail during an ops session. Having a few spare locomotives on hand becomes necessary when one of the locomotives develops a hitch in its mechanism, or a coupler breaks, or a locomotive stops running completely.

My operating sessions tend to use the same locomotives - a few nice-running Consolidations - that can pull all the needed cars. Some lesser trains run during the operating session use some weaker locomotives that can be commandeered in a pinch, giving up pulling power or sound. The passenger train locomotives can also be useful in case of problems, but my two 4-6-0's tend to derail going backwards which makes them poor choices.

And if all goes completely wrong, then the two diesels get pulled out, and finish the operating session. The show must go on, and the trains must complete so the crew has fun.

Luckily, the diesels hardly ever get pulled out.

Unfortunately, they were needed when I had some neighbors over earlier this week; the layout hadn't run for months and I'd just started on cleanup when they stopped by.

• Engine one stopped moving as the motor whined. (Pulley started spinning on axle in a painful-to-disassemble Bachmann Spectrum locomotive, annoying to fix.)
• Second engine was stalling on the dirty track.
• Third had a bind in the mechanism.
• Another had electrical contact problems.

Each one got pulled aside and it's replacement took over the train. Finally, no more spare steam locomotives were available; the diesels go pulled out and saved the day.

That's why I'm spending the next couple days on tuning locomotives, including tearing apart the very awkward locomotive to get to the slipping gear. It's time to fix those mechanisms, touch-up paint, and get some new locomotives ready for the layout.

Moral: always have spare locomotives if you're planning on doing operations. And don't forget to hide a pair of diesels in a convenient drawer.

Those Old Buildings Were Young Once Too

Before you read any further, do me a favor and examine the close up pictures of the Market Street warehouses.  Those photos are from 1906, so they're a good twenty-five years before the era I model.  When you look at them, how worn, dirty, or unmaintained do you expect them to be?  How much is your opinion based on photos from the same era, and how much is based on similar buildings you've seen recently?

One of my big challenges modeling an era that I didn't live through is that I don't have a good idea of appropriate weathering for the various buildings.  I remember some of the old warehouses and buildings along the railroad right-of-ways from my childhood in the 1970's, but the condition of SP's warehouses under what's now Pac Bell (er... AT&T) Park probably doesn't hint at what they were like in the 1950's, or in the 1930's.  Photos help a bit, but my own biases mean I'll aim my industrial buildings too worn if I'm not careful.

With the Market Street warehouse, I'm doubly cursed - the buildings I'm modeling on appeared some time between 1915 and 1935, but other warehouses and packing sheds in the area probably date to the turn of the century, or perhaps even to when the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad first visited San Jose in the 1860's.

On top of just deciding on age and era, most of the packing sheds and other buildings used for part of the year don't appear to be well maintained even in good times, as can be seen from these photos of contemporary packing houses in Central California.

I decided to model my warehouse with moderate to severe weathering, trying to capture the look of paint that's wearing away and wood that's darkening.  I tried a technique I've used before to model weathered, bleached wood: distress the styrene, cover with primer or gesso, then use india ink and brown washes to bring out the texture.  Here's a photo of the warehouse so far with the walls painted, but no roof or view block to keep the sky behind the building from poking out - it's not perfect, but it'll do for now.

So how do you determine how worn your buildings should be?

Inside the Packing Houses

The packing house model's taking shape - I'm currently painting the basic model to get the weathered warehouse look.

Meanwhile, it's worth changing the focus from the outside of the packing house and warehouses to the inside.  What happened in a dried fruit packing house?

Luckily, the San Jose Public Library and San Jose State library can tell us.  Here's some photos from the John C. Gordon collection.  All three of these photos appear to be from the same packing house, and the last photo shows that it's a Sunsweet co-op associated plant from the box labels.

First, a photo of the prunes being boxed.  Many of the packing houses were multi-story, and the Sanborn maps note that the fruit bins and grading were done on the upper floors.  This photo shows why - the chutes from the upper floor drop the fruit into the packing machinery where it's all boxed.  Note that the women doing the packing are actually weighing each individual package as prunes are dropped in--automation hasn't gotten rid of the boxing jobs y as she drops prunes into it - automation isn't being used here.

Second, here's another photo of the women packing.  Another chute's visible at the back right of the photo, and this photo shows the simple interior well--wooden posts, exposed rafters, simple lights. Note the metal sash windows at the back; they're a nice touch, and probably catch at least a bit of a breeze so the plant floor isn't so hot.

Finally, here's the end of the production line with the boxes being labelled and packed in crates.

I'm not sure which Sunsweet plant is pictured in the photos.The metal U's between the posts and beams is an easy spotting feature for noting photos taken in the same packing house.  The Arcadia photo book for Campbell borrows one of these photos, but the horizontal, tipping steel sash windows don't match either the photos of the Campbell packing house next to downtown, or the Lincoln Ave. downtown; both had wooden sash windows.  However, the photos do explain all the work that's needed before those boxes of fruit make it into my railroad cars.

Modeling Small-Town California

Tony Thompson's first blog post showed that he's a freight car modeler first - not surprising, considering he's written the definitive books on Southern Pacific freight cars. Meanwhile, I keep showing that I'm a structure modeler first, whether it's with a week of angsting about the design of an old warehouse, a few too many of my childhood plastic freight cars on my layout, or rambling on forever about what a typical small town in California's Central Valley looks like.

Specifically, I had a note from a European model railroader who's interested in modeling the California Northern short line on the west side of the Sacramento Valley around Davis, Vacaville, and north. He was curious about what sort of buildings would be typical. The poor guy unfortunately got an earful of advice from me, and I hope he didn't mind it all. I'll repeat it here because I really like the small towns along the west side like Esparto, or Winters, or Dunnigan, or Orland, and I like reflecting on what really makes those towns memorable and unique.

So for all the other locals: how does this description match what you think is photogenic about the small towns of the Central Valley, and what would be the key details if you were going to model a short line going through some of the little towns on the west side of the Valley?

What's a Composition Roof?

So the Sanborn map keys show that many of the 1950-era roofs were "composition" roofing. I usually think of this as asphalt shingles, but would these have been used on an old warehouse, or would rolled roofing have been more common?

The Forest Service wrote a nice document on Early 20th-Century Building Materials: Siding and Roofing which states that asphalt roofing existed in the 19th century, but really took off in the 1920's to cut the fire risk of wood shingles. Asphalt shingles were popular by World War I because they were easier to transport. Colors for asphalt roofing with embedded aggregate was limited to black, red, and green until the 1930's when ceramic granules of other colors started appearing.

So, it's a toss-up - shingles or rolled roofing? Time to keep researching.

Mr. DeMille, I'm Ready for my Close-up!

Here's some nice close-ups from the Library of Congress aerial photo of the San Jose railroad yards in the summer of 1906. I suspect the photographer convinced some of the local businesses to paint their names on the roof so they'd be visible in the photos.

The H.L. Losse packing house at 392 San Pedro St. is a name I hadn't already seen.

Another fun detail: Those look like Santa Fe boxcars in front of J.B. Inderriedden! The three story Rosenberg packing house also is another example of how packing houses aren't always low to the ground and temporary.