78 Miles to Yosemite

Category: El Portal

More El Portal Plans: Compression and Reality of Layout Space

Posted on by jkdummler

I have been working on track planning in earnest this week in my free time.  There is a daily routine going of gluing and weighting parts for my YV15 caboose build, work, and then digging into track plans.  At the moment I’m please to share some of that progress with you.

What is wrong with the plan I had?  The easy answer is, it’s not buildable in my circumstances.  It’s a buildable and workable plan, yes.  It’s 100% of the prototype track at El Portal, in the prototype locations.  I did, however, need to include a bend in the yard that never really existed, just to get it to fit into my 20×20 maximum space.  That space, too, is the maximum, but the reality is I need to get down to a space that is roughly 20×10 so the other 20×10 can be shared with my wife for her own layout and modeling projects.  Not super easy, with all the track included, which means some choices need to be made.

First choice, the yard needed to be straightened.  The big bend in it wouldn’t, with my skill and vision level, be buildable on modular benchwork.  That’s a given of reality and needed to be addressed.  Second, compressing the yard would require me to loose some of the track, and likely some parts of some structures.  That’s also probably a given with the limitations of size and layout space.  

Off we go then.  

My first pass at a new drawing removed two of the 4 yard tracks, and tried to keep as much of everything else as possible.  It worked, but then we’re at 30’ long.  I’m never realistically going to have a 30’ space to put a layout in.  However, the yard was straightened out and the 4+’ depth across the tracks was fixed.  That’s a good thing!  Progress.  It still “feels” like El Portal to me as well, which is important as well.

This is the “middle” stage of drawing El Portal again. It’s 24′ long, still too long, but the process of picking what track to shrink is ongoing at this point.

Next changes, removing some of the track in certain spots in the middle of the yard gets me to 24’ long.  Then a further decision to loose the passenger train shed and part of the YV station gets the plan down to 20’ long.  I’ve finally achieved getting the turntable in, which I’m thrilled about, and the “business” end of the YV station is still there.  I could park some passenger equipment in front of that occasionally for fun and photos.  

Almost there! I’ve got the plan down to 20′ in one direction, but it’s still 11′ in the other. The El Portal yard has been fit to a reasonable and buildable space. Now there’s a new dilemma brewing where the red arrow points.

I used a 52” radius curve on the West end of the yard, and that then get’s me to 11’ in the opposite dimension.  Getting closer.  By using a 52” easement and a 48” main curve, I can get to a 20’x10’ overall footprint.

This then brings me to a new dilemma.  What to add to the space opposite the El Portal yard?  Three options come to mind.  Option 1, a scene in the Merced River valley, with just a single track running through it.  Option 2, the next real station to the West, being Incline, where the log trains could operate.  Option 3, the next spot to the West where the local freights would have much work to do at Emory where the limestone quarry for the Yosemite Portland cement Co. was located.

I discussed the thoughts with my wife.  The plan to have one train operating is a strong draw for me.  There isn’t really room here for more than one train, “the” local.  However, the space available is also valuable as an opportunity to add some additional operation to the layout plan.  “You like switching, so add some more operation” was the suggestion I received from her. She knows me well.  That eliminates just a track running, so option 1 is out.  Again, the idea of incline, while tempting, means two trains, and one just moving back and forth along one side, without much to do.  That eliminates Incline.  Emory wins as the other location.

The current working and nearly final plan for a 20’x10′ Proto48 version of two places on the Yosemite Valley Railroad. In the next few days I’ll fill in actual structure sizes, fascia and scenery locations, and begin to lay this out on paper in full size to make sure the CAD drawing fits what I’m looking for in the full size model.

With El Portal and Emory on the layout, in a 20’x10’ space, the CAD drawing looks pretty good.  This is a plan I can lay out in full size and see how things fit on a roll of paper.  

That’s the next planning step.

-Jeremy

It’s 1928 in El Portal, not 1920-1928ish

Posted on by jkdummler
The date I set for my modeling year and month sets lots of other things. Check the reweigh date on this car. It’s within the right period to be in service in August of 1928.

Modeling a month, and a year, provides absolute context.  That’s one of the reasons I chose to model August of 1928.  August in California is usually hot, the grasses that give the state it’s nickname, “The Golden State”, are tall and that unique golden that sets them apart.  

On the YV, August would see a number of tourists/tours headed to the wonders of the National Park, so passenger service is still high, and much of the freight traffic that might be season-dependent is running a or near a peak before the drop off into the Fall and Winter.

Modeling a specific year allows me to properly choose the equipment to run, properly paint the equipment, and properly letter that equipment.  The same thing goes for the structures, and the track layout.

In my last post about refining El Portal, I discussed the baryte mine and changing the plan so that the mine no longer appears on the track plan I shared.  You may also have noticed that the same revision removed the logging operation on both ends of the yard.  I’m modeling August of 1928, and the logging operation moved from El Portal to the station of Incline, further to the West, in 1924.  In 1928, there wouldn’t have been any activity, and the track connections to what would have been the El Portal logging Incline would have been removed.  Therefore, I’ve removed the logging operation from El Portal.

I had originally considered stretching the logging operation date at El Portal to be able to include this really interesting set of car movements with YV log cars and tank cars for the oil reload.  While this would be a wonderful operation to have on a layout, it didn’t exist at El Portal in 1928, and I’ve picked 1928 for specific reasons related to what I stated above, the equipment, the paint schemes, and the operation, so out goes the logging operation from the plans.

While this reduced the amount of traffic, it puts me back into a spot where I am more comfortable with prototype modeling.  A specific month, of a specific year, was chosen to accomplish a model of that time.  If I include elements of an earlier, or a later, year, I’m not really modeling that specific month and year, at least in my head.

The operating plan will now include the Merced Local arriving in El Portal, doing it’s job, and being put to bed (likely before a lunch break).  Then the El Portal Local will be built, and depart.  One train, one crew, probably two people, and an agent/dispatcher.  More boxcars, more gondolas, fewer flat cars, fewer YV log cars, and still a bunch of interesting operation.

So, the plan was adjusted by removing the leads to the logging wye at El Portal, and my plans will adjust for operating the model accordingly as well.

-Jeremy

El Portal: New Information on the Baryte Mines

Posted on by jkdummler

After my last post about starting to refine El Portal, I received some additional information and had some fascinating conversation with my friend, Jack, about several parts of El Portal.  The part I’d like to sort out here right now is the information we have, and what we don’t have, about the barium mine at Rancheria Flat, about a mile to the West of El Portal.

The El Portal Mining Company quarry and upper bin on the North side of the river in 1913-1914. Loaded ore cars from the quarry are dumped into the bin on the right.

The things we know:

The history of the barium mine and processing operation is relatively well documented after the National Lead Company took over the site and built a processing plant on the location in 1929-1930.  That plant processed ore from both the North and the South barium deposits (North and South side of the Merced River).  The processed barium was shipped in bags in boxcars over the YV.  

After my post about shipping ore in gondolas, Jack and I had some conversation about if the ore was shipped in gondolas or in boxcars and in what state prior to the National Lead processing plant. 

Things that are confusing:

A 1913-1914 California state report indicates some interesting information about the barium mine.  That report is found here:  https://books.google.com/books?id=97ozAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA571&lpg=PA571&dq=el+portal+mining+company&source=bl&ots=sMna5jKisw&sig=ACfU3U3sRisog-aojW7yHikEBS6HK8Eitw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiBh-HqyPfoAhV0dc0KHV_VD_o4FBDoATACegQICRAt#v=onepage&q=el%20portal%20mining%20company&f=false

The interesting pieces there are the statements about the mine having a bin near the upper mine and one at the railroad.

Another piece of information surfaced, titled “Mining and Milling Barite” that indicates that prior to the National Lead plant being built in 1929, the ore was being marketed “raw” by the company running the mines, and the raw ore was being trucked to El Portal in the amount of about 75 tons a day.  

What I think was going on:

Putting these things together seems like a square peg in a round hole.  I had based my initial plans on a line from “Trains to Yosemite” that stated that the ore was being shipped in gondolas, and the belief that the “bin” at the railroad was in use to ship the ore in those gondolas.  Collecting all the information together, that may not have been the case in 1928.  

I’m going to accept that the 1913-1914 report is true, and that there was a bin at the railroad.  We can see a bin in later photos that was used to supply ballast to the YV from this location.

The 1928 date that I am modeling is a little bit of limbo, with the National Lead operation building their plant in 1929-1930, meaning it’s likely that the bin was maybe in need of repairs.  The hauling of 75 tons of ore a day would be huge from a location like that via truck.  The book “Memories of El Portal” by James Law states that after the railroad closed, the company hauled the ore to their processing plant in Merced.  That is much later, but I think can be sort of a tangential confirmation of the trucking of the ore from this location.

What I think was going on in 1928 is that the mines were trucking ore, up to 75 tons a day, to El Portal for loading raw into gondolas, shipping via the YV, to processing plants closer to San Francisco Bay or maybe occasionally into Nevada where there were also processing plants for this kind of material.  The bin at the railroad may have been undergoing repair work, or for some other reason we don’t have documentation of at the moment, it was out of service.

How these things affect my model rendition:

You’ll see from the revised track plan here that the spur for the rock bin is now gone.  That affects the spotting of cars at that location, and I won’t have a dedicated spot for gondolas.  However, there will still be gondolas at El Portal.  There is a later photo of rock being unloaded from gondolas at El Portal by a bucket crane on the back of a truck with the cars sitting on the Automobile track at the YV station.  This, then, becomes the loading location for gondolas of barite ore, in at least one if not one and a half cars per day.  I’ll need to readjust my thoughts on the number of gondolas again, but the exciting thing is that this means some fun models, and some interesting operation, continues to be part of the landscape of my version of El Portal.

More to come, there are other locations that are now missing from the drawing and some other operational things to share soon.

-Jeremy

El Portal Industries: Information to Refine the Track Plan and Adjust Freight Car Construction

Posted on by jkdummler
Postcard of El Portal station (Author’s collection)

I’ve written before about operating at Merced, or at least some of the beginning thoughts I had about operating a layout based on Merced.  With my shift to modeling El Portal as a more realistically accomplishable location on the YV in Proto48, part of the planning for that is to look at what kind of operation, and how many cars, go to each location.

For the moment, we’re going to work the the track plan I published here (http://trainmodeler.com/el-portal-first-plans).  I’m pondering still how to compress this plan further as I don’t have a 2 car garage to build in, but that will come, and figuring out what needs to go where will help greatly.

Starting in the West, we have, at Rancharia Flat, a loadout for barium nitrate.  This location will load and ship ore via gondolas.  I would expect to be making some kind of movement here every operating session, be it spotting gondolas or a boxcar of mining materials.  Using the same planning tool I showed previously in discussing the Merced Ice & Cold Storage operation, I have created seven “scenarios” for car movements at the mine, using 2 boxcars and 5 gondolas.  The movements, as shown below in the table, bring one or two cars during most operating sessions into or out of the mine, with some shuffling of cars necessary to spot things in the proper locations.  Doing the calculation for 40’ cars, to operate the mine, we need a siding that is about 30” long for car spotting.  I can see a scenario here as well where gondolas might be used to bring in cribbing timbers for the mine and then reloaded, so some interesting loads can arrive here as well, not just empty cars.  Models wise, I own a USRA gondola kit from Intermountain, which I’ll build and finish as a El Paso & Southwestern car, but the other four gondolas are yet to be determined models.  Boxcars I have lots of, so we’ll sort that out later, as rotating which car delivers here will add to the visual interest.

Barium-MineDownload

Moving into El Portal, we have a number of industries, as drawn, to deal with.  We’ll look at the logging operation on both ends of the yard as one industry later on.  That means there is the Standard Oil facility, the Government Warehouse, the Fresno Consumers Ice building, the automobile track at the YV station, the freight track at the YV station, and the passenger operations to look at.

Moving cars in and out of Standard Oil you might think would be simple, by moving just tank cars around.  In actuality, it’s not quite that simple.  The facility would have been providing gasoline to gas stations in El Portal and the National Park, but also likely was the transfer point for gasoline that was used at Emory for the Plymouth locomotive being used at the limestone quarry, and also would probably have received drums of oil for use as lubricants in automobiles serviced at the gas stations.  This makes for some interesting movements, and again involves more boxcars.  By using four cars, two tanks and two anonymous boxcars, a five day cycle can be achieved, which will also provide some interesting work for crews.  At this point it’s important to note that the barium mine is a 7 rotation cycle, and Standard Oil is a 5 rotation cycle, meaning that the two won’t always line up the same.  Just these two industries likely have a 35 operating session variability before the same moves are being made at the same session.  The spur length here needs to be similar to the one at the barium mine, about 30” will due leaving extra room on the spur.

Standard-OilDownload

One of the smallest industries is likely one of the easiest to plan for.  The Fresno Consumers Ice facility at El Portal consisted of a simple building used to store block ice brought in by reefer and later hauled to the National Park for the hotels.  In this instance, the operating plan is pretty simple.  A car loaded with ice is brought to El Portal and spotted, the next operating session it’s pulled to return to Merced.  That’s repeated with a different car the next operating session.  It’s a small four cycle operating plan, with only two cars, but it will block the turntable access, so operators will need to be aware of the spotting of this car and the need to turn a locomotive so that they aren’t making multiple moves here.  A single spot is needed, and since it’s on the turntable lead, I’ll make sure that’s at least 12” long to allow for the car to be properly positioned to deliver the ice.

Fresno-ConsumersDownload

The passenger equipment at El Portal, consisting of one train worth of equipment, including YV observation car 330, at least one Pullman sleeper, a leased SP diner, and a SP baggage car, are space-fillers.  While I plan to build the equipment, and plan to place the equipment at the station, and plan to shuffle the cars around so the same car is not always in the same spot, it is likely that I won’t be operating passenger trains.  The space required to do so in Proto48 is not something I’m likely to have.  However, as they are an important part of what is going on with the YV, and the cars take up space, I will have equipment there at the station.  I’m likely to try and acquire/build more than one Pullman so I can swap out the names just for adding interest.  Many of the Pullman’s appear to have been in relatively loose “capture” service running up and down the valley and out to San Francisco and Los Angeles.  That means it’s prototypical to have a small number of cars and just swap them out.  In addition to the normal cars, the occasion California State Fish Car may appear on the layout, placed on the Automobile track.  This would “muck things up” some, and crews might have to shift that car.  It won’t likely wind up being operated more than a shuffle movement in the yard, though.

Passenger-StationDownload

Looking to some of the more complicated locations in El Portal, the Government Warehouse, a structure located near the West end of the yard, and owned by the Yosemite Valley Railroad, closely associated with hay shipments for US Cavalry forces in the National Park in the early days, provides a source of traffic that will spice things up a little on occasion.  There is some documentation that this warehouse continued to be used to support services in the National Park, but in addition, may have in the 1920’s, also had a juice company leasing space to provide fresh juice to the park as well.  Beyond just freight, hay, and juice, the spur that the warehouse sits on was, during the time when the logging incline was active, used to spot tank cars of Bunker C past the warehouse so oil could be reloaded into special tank cars used to supply the logging shay’s used by the lumber company.  I have worked out a 9 cycle routine for working equipment through the Warehouse track, and now have what is so far in this study, the longest track requirement of about 40” for spotting cars properly.

Government-WarehouseDownload

The Automobile track at the YV station in El Portal was, as it’s named, a track for loading and unloading automobiles that are carried on flat cars.  The YV had a number of cars that were, in the early 1920’s, in service doing this on the regular passenger trains if needed.  I plan to use this track for the occasional spotting of a flat car doing just that, or a car coming from off-line carrying new equipment for the National Park.  Mostly, this is an overflow track for the House Track, and as such will likely be about 24” long (minimum) to allow for spotting of a couple of cars here.

Automobile-TrackDownload

The House Track at El Portal was in the early 1920’s relocated to the back side of the station when the passenger car shed was built.  This track saw regular use with LCL and other shipments into the National Park and the general area.  This is likely to be the busiest area on the layout, and as such, it has the most variety of foreign road boxcars coming and going (foreign being non-YV).  It also will likely see the YV’s own boxcars coming and going in LCL service as well.  Most photos show two, maximum three cars here, so I need at least 36” of siding, but likely a little more.  I’ve developed a basic 11 cycle plan for service on this track, but some of that will probably see additional changes, as I may occasionally run a stock car with horses for the park, or another special load to the House Track, which will only add additional interest.

House-TrackDownload

The last industry to look at for regular operation in El Portal is the logging incline.  While this was out of service by 1928, I’m going to stretch a little to be able to add some of the YV equipment and logging I really enjoy.  Not having room to model Incline or to model Merced Falls, having the logging incline in service here on my layout will add another piece to the operation.  The operation really is fairly straight forward.  Empty log cars arrive and are delivered to the furthest East end of the El Portal yard to be hauled up the wye and the incline.  Loaded cars are spotted on the West end of the wye and are then picked up and taken to Merced Falls.  I plan to build in the neighborhood of 12 YV cars,   If I spot half of those cars loaded and half empty, I need just over 4 and 1/2 feet for each spur.

Lumber-Co-1Download
Lumber-Co-2Download

This look does a few things, and it leaves out a few things.  What it does is provide me with some “suggested” lengths for sidings in El Portal that I can use when adjusting my track plan.  It also lets me check my freight car stash to see what I have and what I want and what I should be building.  Additionally, I can get some idea of what pattern the cars are going to come and go from the layout in, so I can figure out what a “typical” train length is going to be.  What this does not do is set any kind of operation in stone.  Railroads are fluid things.  There are patterns, but those pattens change and shift.  

Coming soon, a look at what cars in my stash are assigned to the letters I’ve given them in the planning phases here, and what I need to still find.

-Jeremy

El Portal First Plans

Posted on by jkdummler
El Portal, 1928, in 20×20. Lots of work to do, but a start.

Last year on Model Railroader Video Plus, a series on how to track plan, and the process that goes into track planning, a location in Illinois on the CNW walked viewers through the process of planning Crystal Lake and fitting the location into a confined layout space.  The gist of the series was that photos and maps are important resources for getting started, sketching ideas is a starting point, and actually drawing plans may take several tries to get things “right” for the space and modeler.

Those tips are valuable, and the series on MRVP is fun to watch as the plan for Crystal Lake comes together.  I’ve been working slowly on a plan for El Portal on the Yosemite Valley, and as I’ve been digging in, and learning more about the yard and locations at El Portal in the 1920’s, I’ve started to sketch ideas.

First and rough sketch of El Portal in my 1928 rendition.

The first sketch I did is just a rough one.  Working from maps like this one: http://www.memorableplaces.com/yvrr/Map.Base.DIR/Blind.Maps.html and maps from Trains to Yosemite, I began drawing.  The 1913 map from the link above would have been changed by 1928, with the large train shed having been added adjacent to the station and new tracks at the station added, from photographic evidence, as well.  In 1924, the logging company moved to other grounds at the YV station known as Incline.  However, this is a time of some lack of information and photographic documentation on the YV.  We have some things, but other things are a bit hazy.  

I decided to stretch, slightly, the logging company using the wye at El Portal and to use that as a way to generate some additional operational opportunities at this station.  I did include the Standard Oil facility that was built and serviced by the railroad, and I also included the barium bin at Rancheria Flat for some more things to do.

The first rough sketch gives you the starting spot for what I’m thinking about.  The logging wye is split into two parts, one where deliveries of oil for oil reload and logging supplies can be left along with picking up of loaded log cars, and the other end, near the station, with the empty log car storage and the wye lead.  I did not choose to connect the two legs of the wye, which makes accessing the rest of the yard easier.

With the first rough sketch done, I then set out to draw something in CAD.  I started with a space 20’ x 20’.  This gives me roughly a two car garage sized space to draw in.  We’re still early in the track planning here, There will be multiple iterations of this as I work toward making this something that I can build, not just something I could build.  A 2 car garage is a luxury I don’t have available to build something like this and leave it up in right now, but it’s also the maximum space I have available in a house that I can imagine living in, so it’s the best starting spot.

You can see from the CAD drawing that leads this post where I’ve gone.  The yard had to bend around the corner, online in my rough sketch, but I did get everything from my sketch into the drawing.  No fascia or benchwork is yet induced, but that will come.

A couple of things still need to be sorted out before I finalize a plan.  Benchwork needs to be drawn in with the sections I plan to use and the plan adjusted to allow for the limitations of my sectional layout style.  I still want to adjust to get the YV turn table into the plan, not just the lead.  I need to figure out the ability of a locomotive to navigate curves.  This plan is drawn with a minimum 48” radius, and if I can go smaller, but not too much smaller, I would in a few places.

This is, however, the right sport on the YV for me to model.  There is plenty of interest and operational possibility here to hold my interest in modeling it and operating it.  There is lots of equipment to build that I might have overlooked, along with full size models of the structures at El Portal.

Time to get back to the workbench.

-Jeremy

Scaling Expectations: A fresh look at what I’m modeling on the YV

Posted on by jkdummler
El Portal yard on the Yosemite Valley Railroad, modeled by Jack Burgess

If you’ve read any of my past posts on track planning for the Yosemite Valley, you might have noticed that I have been struggling with the idea of coming to grips with planning a layout that is not only in Proto48, but in reality the struggle is in planning a layout not in HO scale.  The break with trying to plan a whole railroad to fit in a space, or in my case, to fit on storable and manageable sections, is a mental hurdle that has caused some of my stagnation and inaction.

To give you some idea of the changes involved in scale-switching and learning to track plan in a new scale, check out this first deck track plan from a version of the YV that I started working on many years ago.  Designed to fit in a space slightly larger than a 2 car garage, this plan that I had assistance with from my friend Dennis, shows the area on the railroad from the SP interchange at Merced through Merced Falls on a single deck.  There is a lot of railroad on that deck, but in HO, this is possible.  

Now check out a plan I worked up for just Merced in O scale.  There are elements of the prototype that I’ve left out by choice and as you can see from the 6’ x 18” boxes I’ve drawn on this plan, I was working out how to build this as a portable layout, but the size of this end of the railroad, spread out in the valley, is somewhat daunting in O scale, and in reality is not, for me, a good location to start from to spite my thinking that starting “at the origination point” would be a good idea.

Jack Burgess has on his website a full page devoted to his track plan.  That can be found here: http://yosemitevalleyrr.com/modeling/layout-plans One thing you’ll see on this page is the wide-angle photo of the entrance to Jack’s layout space.  As you enter his layout, the first scene that you are met with is his rendition of the YV yard at the other end of the line from Merced, the yard at El Portal.

On one of my visits with Jack, I took the photo at the top of this post of his El Portal yard.  For anyone interested in the story of Jack’s rendition, the article “A More Prototypical Yard at El Portal” appeared in the 1998 edition of Model Railroad Planning.  Having stumbled back onto this article recently in reorganizing some magazines, I decided to give El Portal of the 1920’s another look to see if maybe it would be a better modeling solution.  This quote from Jack’s article got me really thinking about this:  

“The Yosemite Valley faced physical constrains similar to the ones that I – like most modelers – confronted during the design of my model railroad.  At El Portal, the eastern terminus of the railroad at the boundary of Yosemite National Park, the otherwise narrow Merced River canyon widened only slightly leaving little space or the yard and station.  Despite these limitations, the railroad managed to build a yard that served the like very well until it’s abandonment in 1945” – Jack Burgess, MRP 1998

I dug into two sources immediately.  Jack’s “Trains to Yosemite” and “Memories of El Portal” by James Law.  As I read parts of both of these sources, I began to realize that modeling El Portal solves some of my issues greatly.  The yard at El Portal in the 1920’s included lots of sports to switch, including the YV station for freight, the Government warehouse that may have been hosting a company making orange juice, a small ice house, Standard Oil, until the mid 1920’s, a logging incline, and the barium mines just to the west that were served by the railroad at a small ore bin.  That’s a really good amount of “work” to model and lots of “play value” in one spot.

Energized to do more research, and track plan, and build models, I’m getting going this weekend on finishing projects and starting to put together paper templates for turnouts to draw out my idea of what an El Portal in Proto48 might look like.

-Jeremy