78 Miles to Yosemite

Category: Research

YV29 after the YV

Posted on by jkdummler

After the YV shut down and the equipment was liquidated, YV 29 was sold to a railroad operating in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico.  There, the locomotive operated for years until it was retired, and eventually was placed on display in the parking lot near a train station in Veracruz, Mexico.

This is a Google street-view capture of YV 29 on display in Veracruz, Mexico
A Google satellite view of YV29 on display in Veracruz, Mexico

I recently ran across a DVD offering from Image Rail, titled the “Mexican Collection”.  This is a set of 8mm video transferred to DVD of some railman trips to Mexico from the early 1960’s. Knowing that a large number of US equipment retired to Mexico, I picked up the DVD in the interest of just seeing steam engines running, but with the bonus of the summary of the video saying that there was one trip that had been made to the Yucatan.  

First, it’s a fun video.  There are great shots of steam run bye in color.  Many of the locomotives I could identify from their original owners, and that was fun.

Two screen captures from the DVD of former YV29 in service on the Yucatan in Mexico in the early 1960’s.

However, the part that got me greatly excited was when I got to the portion of the video that shows the Yucatan trip.  In the waning light, apparently just before dark, a lone 2-6-0 rolled across the screen.  Using photos of YV29, I was able to identify the engine as the former YV29 recorded in service in Mexico.

That was a fun catch.  

-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

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

The Ice House – Part 4

Posted on by jkdummler

I have made a couple of adjustments to plans for 2020 that will affect which projects that are started, and planned, so it’s important to document those changes and plans.

First, I’m not changing what is being built first.  I still plan to work from the furthest West on the YV and head to the East.  That plan I’ve been comfortable with for a long time, and it makes the most sense to me, starting with where the railroad connects to the outside world.  That means the first structure is still the Merced Ice & Cold Storage facility.  I had hoped to be well into building that by this point, but illness intervened and I was out of commission for almost two months and am just now getting the energy back to return to modeling work.  

What is changing is the positioning of the facility on the layout.  It’s been bothering me that in my plan the Ice House was directly across from the YV Merced station and freight house.  I understand compression for modeling, but I’m also coming to grips still with planning for Proto48, and when it feels wrong, it’s wrong, and if I’m unhappy with things, I’ll always be unhappy and I do this kind of thing to have fun and enjoy the results, so a change is necessary.

Looking at the maps of the YV in Merced and the area around the SP interchange and the Ice House (my friend Jack Burgess has drawn fantastic maps of the area that can be found here: http://yosemitevalleyrr.com/prototype/tracing  or the maps are also in his book, “Trains to Yosemite” on pages 96 and 97) the general track arrangement shows what I have roughly redrawn roughly here.

The YV / SP interchange is slightly North of the SP station.  The interchange track leads to a YV track that somewhat parallels the SP North/South direction.  To the North, the YV track curves to the East and enters the main yard facilities.  To the South, the YV line takes a switch that again parallels the SP, and then there is a second switch that diverts to the East and reaches the Ice House.

I pondered what the track between the Ice House and the SP station was for.  Not being able to sort that out myself, I asked Jack.  At one time that track was used for YV passengers to board trains headed for the National Park, but the spur was out of service and removed by 1935.  

I made the decision to move the Ice House from across the tracks from the YV station to a more prototypical location, and also to create more of the right location for the SP Interchange.  I am still going to keep the same slim 18” deep by 6’ layout section for the interchange area, which means I’ll have to compromise and locate the ice House on the wrong side of its spur.  That compromise is less offensive to me than having it directly opposite from the YV station, and is just part of layout planning and space considerations when compressing real world locations to the confines of benchwork.

I will be omitting the unused passenger track and it’s connection to the YV line.  It’s fortunate for me that it would mostly have been unused in 1928 so I feel justified in compressing it out to fit the space.  If it had been in regular use, I would have wanted to include it on the layout.

Here is the track plan for the Ice House and Interchange section.  This plan feels right to me.  When it’s right, put it on paper, stop working on replanning that, and move to the next item.

With the plan now ready, what you’re looking at in this track plan is my layout construction goal for 2020.  Finish the interchange and the Ice House.  I still plan to build the freight equipment associated with the ice and cold storage going on here, and now that I’m feeling better and have resolved my planning problem and visual problem with location for things, it’s time to get building.

I did learn an important lesson from this exercise.  Put the things on the layout where they belong as close to the prototype as possible and it will feel right.  Overly compressing things, especially in Proto48, does not feel right.  That lesson will help when it comes to the next steps.

-Jeremy

Thinking Things Out

Posted on by jkdummler

Tony Koester’s recent first installment in Model Railroader about his Proto48 layout has inspired some interesting review and rethinking of my layout plans.  I find this kind of thing to be important in the Fall and Winter allowing me to improve my plans for “construction season” when the weather improves.

In March, I made the decision to change scale because of my vision.  I hope you can tell from what I have been building how much I’ve enjoyed that change.  Now, closing in on a year later, with the experience of building the section of layout that I worked on last summer under my belt, I’m evaluating and making sure that my plans are solid and that I’ll be able to enjoy this layout plan for years to come.

My plans last summer set the layout height at 56” high.  That’s roughly shoulder height for me, and puts the trains right at eye level when viewing them.  That’s not uncommon in model railroading these days.  This height implies that the operator or viewer of the layout needs to be standing, and likely needs to be about my height (roughly in the 5’6-5’8” range) to be comfortable viewing the layout.  Not really a terrible issue, but I’ll come to why I’m rethinking this.

Last summer I designed a leg system that provided strength, light weight, and stability.  The catch was I hadn’t sorted completely out how to get the layout section onto the legs without assistance.  Setting up without the help of our oldest son was difficult to impossible.  It brought back not so fond memories of the rolling layout section of the N&W I had built the summer before that required 4 people to get upright, and even then, needed some adjusting.  On a good note, the triangle formed when the legs were attached provided stability.

As the winter set in here (and it was winter early, we barely had a fall), I moved the layout section into the house and into the closet where the layout will live.  Moving the layout section alines not easy.  The 3/4” plywood of the supports and deck mean that instead of being the sturdy and light weight layout I had hoped to be creating, I find that I’ve created a sturdy, but heavy layout section.  The overall weight for 6’ by 18” of this section is close to 70 lbs.  Maneuvering that by myself is not super easy as the section can be awkward (it’s bigger than I am).  

I had figured out late in the summer that the section of layout was heavy as I was moving it around the garage for painting and testing the mud.  To address that, I ordered a layout section of the same rough dimensions from Model Railway Solutions Ltd in England.  (https://modelrailwaysolutions.co.uk).  The layout section is much lighter, and I’m looking forward to test-building this section soon.  It arrived just as my preparations for RPM were really ramping up and I didn’t get a chance to do the construction before that event.  

This brings me to the whole reason I’m thinking about these things.  Tony Koester’s article about his P48 layout includes some really interesting tidbits of information .  He discusses how he planned to build his layout to be light, which will be discussed in a future article (looks like the MR that arrives at the end of December) and built out of foam and aluminum channel.  That would create a very light weight layout section indeed.  Those sections would be manageable by one person for sure.  Additionally, near the end of the article, there is some discussion about layout height.  Tony had planned to make pieces of PVC to increase the layout height because his plan was to display it on folding tables at train shows and events that he attends, and getting the layout higher was, he thought desirable.  Then he had an experience with a differently able individual who appreciated the fact that the PVC had not been made and the layout was at table height.

Funny how things percolate up at opportune times.  We have recently been discussing in our house the fact that standing for long periods is not desirable for some ongoing medical issues, and that the ability to sit next to a layout is something that might be an improvement, either in a rolling task chair or on a rolling stool.  That would make it easier to have longer operating sessions without causing pain and discomfort.  It also would be good for displaying a layout at RPM’s and elsewhere.  In reality, displaying this layout at those kinds of venues is going to be important. 

About the same time, I was moving some modeling books around and chanced again on Lance Mindheim’s “How To Build A Switching Layout”.  In the opening chapters there is a discussion about using hollow core doors as the benchwork for smaller layouts.  This got me thinking about my plans and materials.

There is a lot swirling above, so let me try and coalesce a coherent line of thinking from that.

  1. My testbed layout section is perfect for using as a photography or static display, but the weight of the construction, the difficulty in moving it and setting it up with one person, makes it less desireable to me because my layout is going to nave to be able to move often and be set up by one person most of the time.
  2. My chosen layout height of 56” from the ground, while providing excellent viewing for the equipment, does not provide comfort for some operators and viewers who may need to sit through an operating session due to joint or back issues.
  3. Resolving the height issue and the setup issue is easily accomplished if folding tables are used to set the layout on, which also solves one person setup issue.
  4. Resolving the weight issue can be done by using lighter, imported, model railroad “baseboards” or by using hollow core door benchwork.

The fact that I’m likely to have to move this layout around often, take it to train shows and set it up, and do that with little assistance is weighing heavily on me at the moment.  Getting that sorted out this winter will make achieving progress in layout building come Spring and better weather much easier and faster.

-Jeremy

Patience Pays Off

Posted on by jkdummler

Hunting for materials and models is part of the fun of prototype modeling.  While we’re now entering the early winter “holiday dead zone” for work in my workshop as family and other events surrounding the Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year holidays transpire and take time and energy, I am using this time to hunt for and plan for projects that will start once the Christmas tree retreats to storage again and the cold winter sets in and I once again begin construction projects.

One of the most exciting finds from recent hunting includes a kit I have been seeking since last March.  A Mullet River Model Works kit for Yosemite Valley Railroad caboose 15 was recently put up for auction and I was fortunate enough to be able to acquire the kit.  This will get slotted in early next year for construction.  It’s definitely time to have a YV piece of O scale equipment built.

My ongoing project to create car routings for industries on the layout and beyond the layout on the YV has lead me to some choice points in my hunting for kits and rolling stock in general.  I’ve been collecting information about kits that have been made in O scale that would be appropriate for the pre-depression era modeler.  My rough starting list will be a future post here.  I’m working through identifying cars that would be appropriate for me to hunt for, as the holidays usually bring listings online for cars, and the March Meet in Lombard, IL, will be taking place in the next few months.  Knowing what I’m looking for there will be important.

Hunting for a San Juan Car Co kit of this WP car is higher on my list than a SOO line saw tooth boxcar, even though the SOO car is a fantastic model, making choices in rolling stock that are plausible and justifiable in my modeling date and location is important to me.

The rest of the projects are waiting for parts.  I’m hunting for brick to use for the Merced Ice & Cold Storage project, brake wheels and grab iron bolt castings for car projects, and other details are in the process of being sourced, so come January (or maybe later this month) I’ll be ready to get going on the ongoing projects.  The punch list of things I want to do is long.  I’ll be looking forward to sharing projects with you as I get progress made.

In the mean time, there is an exciting (to me) new series starting in Model Railroader magazine with the January, 2020 issue.  Tony Koester’s P48 layout is being featured as the new MR Project Layout for the year.  It’s going to be really interesting to read these articles.  If you read MR, or if you might think about changing scales, or model in P48 or O scale, these will be worth reading.

-Jeremy

Playing With Operation Planning – Initial Thoughts

Posted on by jkdummler

Size of freight car fleets gets quite a lot of attention from people.  Some railroads require more than others, numbering into the thousands of cars sometimes depending on the size.  One of the things I really wanted to do when I converted to P48 from HO in the earlier part of the year was to shrink the number of cars that I need to build from about 200-250 to what I’ve quoted at various times as a guess of about 40 or 50” cars.  To finally start to figure out if my guess numbers were realistic, I thought it was time to start doing some operation planning.

As elsewhere I’m working on the Merced Ice & Cold Storage along with cars to service that industry on the layout, that made the logical place to start working.  I created a spreadsheet version of an On-Line Industry Planning form that Model Railroader Video Plus published a few years ago on their website when they did a series on operating their expanded Milwaukee Road Beer Line.  I started sorting out what would come into the ice house, and what would go out, and then realized that the answer was somewhat different than I was assuming.

The size of the Merced Ice & Cold Storage facility is rather limiting.  I could create a scenario where fruits, vegetables, meats, and dairy are all coming into the facility for distribution in Merced and for reloading for transit up the Yosemite Valley to points along the line but especially to El Portal for the hotel there and for use in the National Park.  Additionally the consumers ice would be shipped in other reefers.  Sounds fantastic, right?

Then I look at the size of the building.  The cold storage portion of the facility does not warrant all that traffic.  Fruits, vegetables, meats if they’re coming in, and all those other things have to be almost LCL service.  California having lots of agriculture and farming, I’m guessing that quite a lot of what I could send to the ice house didn’t go there.  

So, I decided to approach operational planning somewhat differently.  I decided that I would approach setting up operating by determine a “where” cars were on the layout, and a destination for those cars.  What this gave me was a chance to envision the moves, and to retain the idea that a car may only be moved by a train crew once, (but a second crew might move a car again if the required number of hours had passed between spotting and pulling moves for the car to unload.  I’ll demonstrate this in a moment.

What I wound up with is a car routing plan that sometimes leaves the facility empty, sometimes leaves it full, sometimes leaves the door to the ice storage occupied and sometimes leaves the cold storage and other goods door occupied.  The plan I created covers a 10 session cycle, meaning that even if I operated weekly, it would be more than two months before a repeat routing happened.

To make things interesting, I created one day where a car isn’t left at the ice house.  The directions for that day will include to spot a loaded reefer at the facility, which should be done early by the Merced crew.  Later in the day, as the El Portal Local arrives and switches their train, they’ll check the clock, and if 6 hours have passed between spotting and the current time, they’ll be instructed to pull the empty car and return it to the SP.  

With this idea now, I can work along through other industries in Merced, Merced Falls, and other points on the YV, to determine car routings.  Some industries might get the same 10 session cycle, but I could start them a different points in the cycle, so the ice house is on cycle 1, while the Freight House is on cycle 5 and the house track is on cycle 6.  This way I can vary the traffic.  The benefit here, too, is that I can determine if my construction plans for rolling stock are on-par with my needs, or if I should be adjusting my plans for rolling stock.

I’m also avoiding using car cards or other routing software.  When filling out the waybills for operating, I’ll be able to have some fun with what I fill in as the items shipped, and I get to find out where things were being shipped from in 1928, which will also be great fun to research and learn about.

-Jeremy

The Ice House – Part 1

Posted on by jkdummler

With another RPM Chicagoland in the books it’s time to settle in for some winter projects.  The first snow hit the ground here on Halloween, 2019, so the cold is most certainly here.

With a myriad of projects to choose from, I’ve decided to build a couple of related things first this modeling-season, and tackle the first of the industries on the YV that one encounters when coming onto the railroad in Merced from the Southern Pacific, the ice and cold storage plant along with it’s associated rolling stock.

This is my redrawing of the basic Sunburn map from 1922. The facility has a powerhouse for providing the necessary power to make ice, a room for ice tanks, an ice storage room that is noted as having a concrete floor, a separate cold storage room, and a platform that wraps around the building. Other structures on site included an oil tank, likely for making the power, offices, tool sheds, and truck scales.

Located at N and 17th street in Merced, a small brick and block building (by the standards of most ice facilities) stood with access to both railroad service via the Yosemite Valley and the local area by road.  

I started researching this location as the idea of “ice facilities” is something that not many of us in our modern world with refrigerators and ice makers in our houses are aware of.  In the early 1900’s ice delivery was something people needed and little plants like the one in Merced were not uncommon across the country.  

The earliest map I have access to, a Sunburn map of Merced from 1922, calls this particular plant “Merced Ice & Cold Storage”.  Storing perishable foods at a plant like this makes sense as well.  Fresh produce and sometimes meats would need to be kept cold, and thus places where there was ice being made would be the logical place to keep those products.  

A later Sanborn map indicates that the name of the facility, same location, later map, is the “Fresno Consumers Ice”.  That peaked my curiosity, so I started digging into the history of ice shipping in California.  

One of the first things that comes up when looking for Fresno Consumers Ice is this link.  http://historicfresno.org/lrhr/003a.htm

The facility in question there is actually in Fresno, CA, so it’s not directly relevant, but the photos give some idea of the size, in color, of what these small ice plants looked like in the early 1900’s.  There is a tower for evaporation cooling, which matches with the few known photos of the plant in Merced.  The date of 1903 for the structure in Fresno makes it contemporary with the structure in Merced that I’d place around the construction of the YV, so right around 1907. (More digging to be done on exact dates is warranted).

Digging further, some documentation starts to come up.

http://historicfresno.org/lrhr/003a.htm

This is a nice state document from California that lists some of the Fresno Consumers Ice information, and confirms the location of the Fresno plant.  

Then we start finding Merced Ice & Cold Storage in this kind of document, a trade journal for ice companies.

https://books.google.com/books?id=f6A28fPBheUC&pg=RA4-PA54&lpg=RA4-PA54&dq=merced+ice+and+cold+storage+company&source=bl&ots=FHvWBwt2oV&sig=ACfU3U2ahA-Axfb6Uza6YOIZc1lKJnG-WA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjxj5GBnoDkAhXLG80KHV4vCNgQ6AEwAnoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

This indicates that there is now a location at Merced Falls for storing ice.   The date is May, 1912.  I remembered that my friend, Jack Burgess, had noted that there was an ice storage house at El Portal in some of his notes, and shared this information with him.  The facility at Merced Falls is different than what he had in his notes, so more research again is needed on the point, but it establishes that ice as a commodity is being hauled up the YV to at least two locations, to supply consumers ice.

I kept digging, and started to find some information from the 1920’s, which is fascinating (to me).  In this issue of “Ice and Refrigeration Illustrated” I located an interesting connection.  

https://books.google.com/books?id=u24xAQAAMAAJ&pg=RA1-PA209&lpg=RA1-PA209&dq=j.t.+donahue+ice&source=bl&ots=fIrtDeUk9A&sig=ACfU3U0iS7OlXwknZZnewlieKO9PcXuHsQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjQw-r3roDkAhX8B50JHVQNCzkQ6AEwAnoECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

On page 209, a listing for a gentleman associated with the ice association in California, and a company called “National Ice Co.”, listed with a San Francisco address, of the name J.T. Donahue popped up.  I knew I’d seen some information on Mr. Donahue before, so I went back to some previous material that I had ignored.

This information starts to bring things together in my mind.

https://books.google.com/books?id=FgJGAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA852&lpg=PA852&dq=merced+ice+and+cold+storage+fresno+consumers+ice&source=bl&ots=DsLZBoTliC&sig=ACfU3U14BFvZ2VSkZ49ZnHo0VVTcA17wnQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi73em94oDkAhVXZc0KHWnUADgQ6AEwBHoECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

On page 851 of Moodys Manual of Railroads and Corporate Securities, from 1922, near the bottom, the National Ice & Cold Storage Co of Cal(ifornia) is listed.  The document discusses how this company operates, and that they run a diversified business for storing different types of meats, vegetables, and fruits along with selling wholesale and retail ice.  The tie to Fresno Consumers Ice and Merced Ice & Cold Storage is on page 852.  The top paragraph is listing where the company has built or acquired ice making capability, and Merced is listed.  Just below the listing of ice making capacity, the page also lists the names of subsidiaries that the company does business through, and Fresno Consumers Ice is listed there.  On page 853, Mr Donohue’s name is listed as a Vice President of the company, and the company address is in San Francisco.

Coming full circle, the report of the California Railroad Commission, the very first link I shared above, shows the name “Merced Ice & Cold Storage” on page 812, and it lists Mr J.T. Donahue as the Secretary, with the same 22 Battery Street, San Francisco, California address as National ice & Cold Storage Company of California, and the same location and person as the contact, Mr. Donahue, as Fresno Consumers Ice.

So, in my head, I’ve now drawn a line.  The business in Merced that comes about in the early 1900’s is known as Merced Ice & Cold Storage Co.  This company, like Fresno Consumers Ice, is a small ice producing plant that makes product for delivery around Merced, and also is shipping ice via the Yosemite Valley Railroad to locations, at least in Merced Falls and El Portal, for consumer demand.  They are also storing various meats, vegetables, and fruits for consumers, likely coming in via the railroad.  At some point in the space between being established and the 1920’s, the plant becomes part of the holdings of National Ice & Cold Storage Company of California, which also operates the Fresno Consumers Ice facility in Fresno.  At a yet to be determined date, the plant’s name is rolled into the Fresno Consumers Ice subsidiary of National, and the plant becomes known for the insurance maps as Fresno Consumers Ice.  

In discussing all this information with Jack, I wanted to know if I was calling the location the right thing.  That’s at the heart of what I found myself driving at.  When making out paperwork, was I calling the facility the right name.  Funny enough, Jack’s recollection of what the actual YV men called this industry was “The Ice House”, no location name involved.  So, paperwork might list Merced Ice & Cold Storage or the National name, but when talking about it with crews, it’s just “the ice house”.

That’s it for today.  In Part 2, we’ll look at what I plan to model, and the equipment I plan to build to operate this one location.

-Jeremy