Planning Larson Ladder

[Subtitled, "For Goodness Sake, Don't Look At the Map Again!"] There's a couple holes in the layout that need filling; one obvious one is in a gap between the road I'm declaring is Meridian Road and the WP track. In reality, there's a few blocks between these two locations filled with a random mix of light industry, but on the model railroad, I've got maybe 80 scale feet to fill. And, of course, if I want to make the area look like it's the place for business, that means I need to build models of businesses.

None of the industries there look like particularly good fits, so I've already located my model of a Rio Grande gas station right at the tracks. Behind it, I'm not so sure - one potential candidate is the frequently-mentioned Larson Ladder, maker of the three-legged orchard ladders that were common throughout the Santa Clara Valley. One of my neighbors who grew up in San Jose even remembers them, so as a hometown favorite, they've got first dibs on the location.

But what did a ladder company look like? Bill Foley from the California Pioneers of Santa Clara County managed to find a pair of aerial photos of the area, one from 1941, and the other from 1958. Both show that much of the area west of the tracks was still orchards, but the 1941 photo shows Larson Ladder sitting a block west of Meridian Ave on Moorpark - a bit far from the tracks, but let's use it for inspiration. The plant sat on a narrow lot in the middle of orchards. There's at least one long gable-roofed building, and then another, lower building, probably a couple hundred feet long with a sawtooth roof. I normally think of these as brick (which seems inappropriate here), but Packing Houses of Southern California shows a pair of wooden sawtooth packing sheds on SP's Santa Paula branch, one from the McTeague-Kevett packing association, and the other a Sunkist lemon packing house. Either might be a nice inspiration for Larson Ladder.

Er... wait a sec... Larson Ladder would have been several blocks away from where the tracks are. What was in that "light industry" area closer to the tracks in the photo?

Oh, nothing much. Random warehouses, lots of little workshops. Oh, and a sawtoothed building, right at the corner of Lincoln and Auzerais Street with a loading dock facing Lincoln Ave. The building's still there by the way, with the cask mounted on the front of the building from when it was owned by San Martin Vineyards and the Filice family. Before that, it had been Balfour Guthrie, which purchased Virden Packing, a peach canner, in 1926. Big concrete building because of its previous use for meat packing. Back side would have faced the WP tracks.

Interesting. I've got a large, cool, sawtooth building next to the WP tracks and along a roadway, just like I've got on the layout. It's got an interesting loading dock on the front that was an SP spur. Why exactly am I not modeling it?

Er... because I didn't think of it before now.

I may not have room to lay track from my mainline into Virden Packing, but I think that Rio Grande gas station is about to be moved. As I think about that plan, here's some photos of the Virden Packing building that I took even though I didn't think I'd be modeling it. Throw in your comments on whether the cute gas station should be kicked off the layout just to be replaced with an awfully coarse-looking concrete cannery.

[Street level photos: mine. Aerial view: Google.]

A Quick Quiz on California-appropriate Buildings

One of the common themes I've discussed here is the idea that to have a good California-style model railroad, I really need to know what sort of buildings ought to be in a small California town in the 1930's. So far, I'm doing ok at this by looking at old photos of California towns from the 1930's, and extrapolating construction style, sign lettering and the like. I'm still trying to figure out what sort of a building Larson Ladder might have had at its world headquarters on Moorpark Ave.

But practice makes perfect, so let's head over to the website describing the historic structures at Pier 70, San Francisco's shipbuilding center. There are plans to turn part of the site into offices by reusing some of the historic buildings. The catalog of buildings (some from World War II, some from the plant's original occupants of Bethlehem Steel and Union Iron Works) makes for a nice survey of industrial buildings in California over the last century. Click on some of the links for slideshows of the machine shop and piers to get a look at the shipyard when it was working. The machine shop slideshow highlights the great internal detail in building #113 - wooden trusses, huge tools, and a cavernous interior.

And if you're a California modeler, it's also a great source of information for a pop quiz. Look at each building in turn, and ask yourself the following questions:

• Does this match my expectations of a California building?
• Do I have similar buildings on my layout?
• Which manufacturers make kits that would be a starting point for a kit like this?

I'll give you one answer for free: warehouse #6, the place for marshaling the fabricated pieces going into a newly-constructed ship, looks awfully like a 1960's era Suydam corrugated iron building. It's awfully big compared to my layout, but I keep trying to decide whether the Santa Clara Valley Mill and Lumber (Tilden Lumber) yard near Auzerais St. ought to be wood or steel.

Notice anything cool about the Pier 70 buildings that's applicable to a model railroad?

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.

Movie Night VIII: All Kinds of Industry in San Jose!

It's that time again - movie night!

One of the advantages of modeling San Jose is the sheer diversity of industry that was in the area. Sure, the prune industry dominated, but there was also heavy industry. You can model the Food Machinery Company's plant if you want to build freight car loads of rotary cookers, or the the Accent (Stauffer Chemical) MSG plant on the south side of San Jose.

And if you model the Accent plant, buy some extra glow-in-the-dark paint at the hobby store and model the siding on the opposite side of the tracks for the GE Nuclear Plant, where you can practice your skills building a TRIGA reactor load for your flat cars!

Now turn off the lights, bring out the popcorn, and watch this tour of the GE San Jose plant where you can watch lathes turning, fuel rods being assembled, and control rod assemblies moving up and down!

[Don't ask me why YouTube is occasionally showing a Santa Clara swim meet video; search for "San Jose Facility 1958" on YouTube if the embedded video isn't correct.]

Meanwhile, in San Francisco...

Thanks to my interests, I follow a bunch of history and map blogs. That blog list often turns up articles like this gem, tracking down the source of a nicely-tiled entrance to a now-missing building at 7th and Hubbard in San Francisco.

You can't say enough nice things about people who combine pictures on the modern-day ground, Sanborn maps, and a good bit of gumshoe research to pull out a story.

Better Brakemen

You've got to admit that model railroad operations does tend to focus your mind. Many have said how running on a double-deck layout isn't that distracting; usually you're so focused on your own train that you don't know the action happening on the lower level.

That's also true for keeping track of what's happening near you. One of my first operating sessions almost ended in disaster when the crew switching Campbell started pulling a long train of cars towards San Jose, and a crew in San Jose started pulling a long train of cars towards Campbell. Because there's a curve between the two stations, the crew didn't notice that they were trying to occupy the same track until it was too late.

Soon after, I printed out some of the Operations Road Show paper flagmen, and I keep a few scattered around the layout so crews can guard track and avoid another crew intruding into space they need. Usually this works, though we've got a few flagmen with wheel marks showing that even careful crews sometimes run over flagmen.

John Plocher liked the paper flagmen on my layout, but felt they were insufficiently noticeable. John came up with the elegant solution of the DCC Brakeman, a little PC board cutout of a brakeman with a base that could touch both rails to power an LED. His little brakemen are both human-shaped and light up nicely - a great idea and very nice implementation.

John has put the plans up on his website, but he also had a set of brakemen built and assembled. They're currently for sale at the Train Shop in Santa Clara for around $7; the only work is to solder the figure onto the base, and attach the weight to the base. Go pick a few up for safety!

SwitchList: Suggesting Cargos

When I first started doing model railroad operations, the worst part (after fixing all the rare derailments and mechanical problems) was writing up the car cards. I had to write down a couple hundred possible cargos and routes to name all the possible things that boxcars could be carrying on my railroad. Canned fruit from Del Monte to the East Coast. Cattle being unloaded at Alma. Crates going to the packing house in Campbell. It was tedious and annoying work, and when I realized I didn't have the amount of traffic right, I had to go and write more cards. After all that, I created SwitchList so I wouldn't have to write all those cards.

SwitchList cuts the effort, but while I don't have to make twenty cards for all twenty cars of dried fruit leaving from Plant 51, I still have to decide what shipments might be received or sent from each industry. It's possible to learn what each industry might ship, either from books or from the OPSIG industry database, but that's stuff the computer ought to know how to do well, right?

Time to make that computer work a bit harder.

SwitchList-1.1.1 now contains a "Suggest Cargos" feature where you can name an industry, and it'll suggest some potential cargos that can be shipped from or received by the industry. SwitchList will guess at your industry based on its name, let you adjust its guess, then suggest several cargos that would be appropriate from that industry.

For now, the feature's simplistic; not all kinds of industries are listed, and some that are listed only have a few suggestions. But I think this could be helpful; I'd love feedback on whether you find this to be a useful feature, and I'd appreciate suggested cargos to include.

Check out the latest version of SwitchList over at the main SwitchList site, try it out, and if you like the Suggest Cargos feature, make some suggestions of your own about potential industries and cargos that SwitchList ought to know about!