Back to work on benchwork and backdrops

 

Modeling the AT&SF - D&RGW Joint Line through Colorado Springs from Milepost 70 to Milepost 80 circa 1978-1979

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Post 14; Back to Work: Benchwork and Backdrops

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OK, back to the real work at hand: building benchwork and installing the hardboard backdrop so that I can start to lay track.

 

I finally got around to enclosing the narrow viewblock wall in between the staging yards and the rest of the layout. On the staging yard side the backdrop will be cosmetically finished to depict the industrial area to the east of the Rio Grande's North Yard, with the distant skyline of Denver's downtown core skyscrapers in the corner where it turns onto the viewblock, like this, although there were far fewer towers in 1978.

 

The pierce-through will be disguised with an overpass, only nominally based on the I-70 bridge just to the south of North Yard. In the foreground I have decided to locate a truncated model of North Yard Tower right at the front edge of the deck, a key signature building that will definitely set the scene with it's Rio Grande and Rock Island signs. Even so, it will almost certainly have to project out a bit above the lower staging yard, which represents the Pueblo yards.

 

 (click on image to enlarge, open in a new window to zoom in) 

 

Edited to add: My friend Chuck Conway just sent me a 1978 Kenton Forrest photo looking 

south from the old 43rd Ave footbridge at Fox Jct so I did a quick & dirty photo mock-up to 

see what the backdrop might look like:

 

 

 The east side of the tower faces the tracks, so it will not normally be seen, except maybe in photographs, and the model will be cut off just past the Rock Island sign, but it will still cement the location as North Yard. 1973 view

 

 

Edited to add: And here is my photo mock-up of the tower

as it might appear on the layout:

 

 

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The pierce-through on the other side of the wall will be disguised with another overpass, this one carrying I-25 across the Joint Line right of way at the far north end of Colorado Springs. The mainline then wraps around the turn-back barrel on a 42" radius curve as it descends on a 1% grade to run down the other side of the wall, crossing a large fill with an original 1870s cut-stone culvert, a low pile trestle across a dry wash, and a culvert or two along the way. We'll be looking down into the forested area along Monument Creek here, with Austin Bluff across the valley on the backdrop. Some might be tempted to put a scenic feature, town, or industry inside this large turnback curve, but trust me, there is nothing to put there in this case, plus I want to create a linear diorama-like shadowbox along the mainline here.

  

 

The track exits the turnback through a sweeping S-curve with spiral easements, offering what I hope will be a dramatic view as it crosses Garden of the Gods Road and then runs through Russina.

  

 

Russina will be built on an eight foot section of open grid benchwork so that I can work on it comfortably and then install it on the layout. I notched the cantilevered plywood supports to recess the grid, with the subroadbed on risers. This is to allow for a drainage ditch that deepens as we move to the right, where it then empties into Douglas Creek draw. The main will cross the draw on a short deck girder bridge to continue down to Roswell.

  

 

That's all to report for now. Materials are on hand to continue the backdrop down grade and along the staging yard, and to build more benchwork, so I should have more to report shortly.

Until next time.

 

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Laying out the Rock Island industrial park lead

 

Modeling the AT&SF - D&RGW Joint Line through Colorado Springs from Milepost 70 to Milepost 80 circa 1978-1979

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Post 13: Laying out the Rock Island industrial park lead, Part 2

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And now for the other side of the Peninsula, but first, here are couple photos to enjoy of the Rock Island switching leads being worked in later years by a D&RGW GP40, albeit patched with it's new UP number: 

 

UP 1445 heading up the Rock Island main in 2009 with a cut of loaded centerbeams for Foxworth Galbraith (El Paso County Lmbr). And returning with empties. Note the trainman riding the end car as this is a shoving move.

To the east of the first Rock Island switching lead are two more. Make that three, since the middle one splits into two separate leads north of Fillmore St. The industrial park that they served was laid out in the late 1940s on an old airfield and grew steadily through the 1950s and early 1960s, filling in with low-rise light manufacturing, warehousing and wholesale distributing firms. No major large industries here, and I don't think there was a single two-story building among them.

Customers on the main center lead and its west fork included Timken's Rock Drill Bit Division (remember, hard rock metal and coal mining is very big business in Colorado), a carburetor manufacturer, a concrete block manufacturer, the local Canada Dry bottler, a good size Sears furniture and appliance warehouse, a small printing plant, a Maytag warehouse, a team track, a telephone pole yard, and the Pepsi Cola bottler. The east fork served two roofing contractor-distributors, a machinery company, a produce distributor, a PPG glass distributor, a waste cardboard recycler, and a couple miscellaneous warehouses.

The third (fourth) lead further east is very short, not even reaching Fillmore St, and only served yet another drywall distributor and yet another small lumber yard.

I chose to focus on the center east fork as it runs up an alley between N Century St and N El Paso St, flanked on both sides by parallel customer spurs and buildings, creating sort of a low-rise urban industrial canyon. Actually, I blended the two forks a bit, moving some customers around to better fit my scheme of the center building view block, and to yield a good mix of customers, buildings, and car types. There was plenty to choose from as I selected which ones to locate along my single lead track.

Here's the layout of the center Rock Island leads:

(click on image to enlarge, open in a new window to zoom in) 

The center lead, ran about a mile and a half north to above Nichols Blvd. It split into two leads 

just north of Fillmore St. The Timken complex was completely gone when this satellite view was 

taken, as was the concrete block manufacturer.

 

This 1965 aerial shows the center Rock Island lead curving north to cross Fillmore St, with Timken occupying 

the arched roof building at center right. Across the track is Carter Carburetors in the building with the white roof. 

Their spur has already been removed. Across the top of the frame is the RI west lead curving to run beside 

the Santa Fe, with the Amoco bulk plant at the edge of the frame.

 

Here's the view north from Fillmore St on the peninsula. I don't have room to fit Timken below Fillmore, 

and the first building north of Fillmore is already Everitt. Above there I am basing the lead mostly on the

eastern fork. First up on the right is Alpine Roofing, based on the the Roofers Mart wholesale operation.

  

 

Beyond Alpine on the same spur will be the machine company. It's an interesting looking building with a center 

clearstory, and a boom and hoist projecting over the track for lifting heavy loads and getting them into the building.

 

 

 

 

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 Across the track from the machine company is a nondescript modern sheet metal building. I plan to relocate 

Hexol Chemical here and have mocked up two ideas for a more substantial structure to house it. Buildings with 

arched roofs like this are fairly common in this area. I envision boxcar spots to the left, with a tank car spot to 

the right. I think the longer building parallel to the track better fits the center view block plan.

 

 

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At the end of the east customer spur at 4th Street is the PPG distributor, another example of a low-rise building 

with an arched or barrel roof common to a certain era, especially in the West.

 

The building has three dock doors on the track side. 

Across the tracks is a nondescript concrete block building. Stevenson Produce is listed at this address, but the building 

shows no evidence of a dock or doors along the track. Perhaps it has just been renovated, but a block west along 4th Street 

was the Sears warehouse, and I plan to move it to this location.

 The former Sears warehouse clearly has two dock doors along its own customer track.

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Above 4th St are two last customers. On the east is a plain Jane concrete block warehouse building with 

five dock doors. This building was probably subdivided and recombined to suit multiple tenants over the years. 

Maybe I'll locate Stevenson Produce here so I can spot a mech reefer or two.

 

To the west was one of the busiest customers on the center lead. In 1971 it was occupied by Enresco Inc, 

an agricultural implement dealer, but later it housed a waste cardboard and paper collection and shipping concern. 

Today it is operated by Waste Management. I'll just bill it as a larger City Waste Paper facility than the one adjacent 

to the ATSF yard downtown. The building is another of those precast concrete twin-fin tilt-up structures, with two spots 

along the open dock and another three along the enclosed section.  

Here's a shot with a couple boxcars spotted for loading, and here's a shot of D&RGW 3129 switching the dock in 2003.

 

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So that in a nutshell is the Roswell industrial park served the Rock Island as I would build it on a peninsula. Combined with the ATSF lead and some staging tracks it would make a great self-contained layout all by itself. In fact, if I was smarter I would have built it first so that I would have something to operate while I built the larger layout, and it would all tie together in the end.

 

As they say, things are always clearer in hindsight. 

Until next time.

 

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Pikeview: Laying out the Santa Fe and Rock Island

 

Modeling the AT&SF - D&RGW Joint Line through Colorado Springs from Milepost 70 to Milepost 80 circa 1978-1979

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Post 12: Pikeview: Laying out the Santa Fe and Rock Island, Part 1

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Yet another planning post?

I know, just what I need, yet another diversion, right? But after I mentioned in the Trains and Traffic post that the Rock Island had quite a few customers in an industrial park in Roswell on the north side of the Springs I just couldn't resist dragging out the long sheet of cardboard on which I'd already drawn a plan for that trackage. It is not shown on the layout plan, but the name is there where it could be.

Basically it would be a long, stub-end peninsula coming off the RI staging track along the wall outside the layout room. And it wouldn't just be for the RI tracks to the industrial park, it would also host the isolated piece of the old Santa Fe mainline used as a switching lead to reach several still active customers, giving both switch jobs more work to do.

You can see just how easily my attention wandered, can't you?

Anyway, since I already had a stack of building mock-ups and several drawers of freight cars and locomotives handy from mocking up the rest of the layout, it was all too easy so out they came. At least I was having fun, even if I wasn't laying down track in the staging yards.

So, the physical track layout up at Pikeview looked like this:  

ATSF notes and customers in red, RI notes and customers in light blue

(click on image to enlarge, I suggest you open it in a new window to zoom in)

The vestige of the northbound Santa Fe main is on the west, running 1.4 miles right beside N. Nevada Avenue after crossing over the Rock Island main. That bridge was removed, completely isolating this trackage. To the east is the first of three Rock Island switching leads swinging north off their mainline. It curved sharply and climbed steeply to cross Fillmore Street and run right beside the Santa Fe a short ways before making an S-curve to reach several customers, at one time continuing just under a mile to north of Nichols Blvd. 

To get to their their now isolated track the Santa Fe reached a deal with the Rock Island to use the RI mainline through Roswell, and then the RI switching lead to tie into the old Santa Fe main just below Fillmore Street. In return, the Rock was allowed to use a short stretch of the Santa Fe track across Fillmore, and then divert back onto their own track. This resulted in only one flasher-protected grade crossing across Fillmore, which was being rebuilt and widened at the time. Win-win-win for both railroads and the City.

So what customers justified all this. From the south the Santa Fe served two drywall companies, Building Specialties and Drywall Supply, two petroleum distributors, Amoco and Texaco, a team track, LPG distributor Empire Gas, a branch Transit Mix batch plant, and the Miller beer distributor, High Country Sales.

On the Rock Island lead there was the very large El Paso County Lumber Co. yard (later Brookhart Lmbr, currently Foxworth Galbraith), the smaller Everitt Lumber Co., Pike's Peak Distributing, the Budweiser franchise until it moved over to Russina on the Rio Grande, a couple warehouses, and CSDPU's Birdsall gas-fired power plant, although it didn't get anything in by rail after construction was completed. The lead was then cut back to the lumber yard.

My plan is to model this Santa Fe and Rock Island trackage on one side of a 14 foot long, 36 inch wide peninsula. On the other side will be an amalgamation of the other two Rock Island spurs, but I'll get to that in Part 2. Running down the middle of the peninsula will be a long row of buildings serving as both the rail customers and as a view block to separate the peninsula into two distinct scenes within the same industrial park. These buildings will be finished and detailed for different customers on opposite sides.

And here is what the area looked like on the ground, and what the west side of the peninsula might look like.

 

Here's our old friend U33B 196 returning light after shoving a cut of lumber cars up the 

switching lead (center) to El Paso County Lmbr. Train 50 was left tied-down on the 

steep mainline (left). In the distance is the Amoco bulk plant served by the Santa Fe, 

branded as Exxon in this 1973 photo.

 Here is the RI switch lead, rebuilt to jog west to connect with the Santa Fe track as it 

approaches Fillmore Street. It used to run straight to the berm at center right.

(photos by Frank Keller) 

 

Looking north up the former ATSF mainline, where the connecting track ties in right 

at Fillmore Street, with a pair of overhead flashing lights but no gates.

 

And here is the same location as modeled on the peninsula.
 

Everitt Lumber had its own spur, the rails still just barely visible in the sand.
 

A bit further north the RI lead jogged east as it entered the El Paso County Lumber Co. yard.  

Here is a view of D&RGW 3100 switching El Paso long after the demise of the Rock.
 

A view inside the lumber yard, with its collection of sheds and stacks of lumber.

 

Here's the south end of the peninsula, showing how the lead will curve off the Rock Island 

main and staging track at the base to cross Fillmore, and then split into separate RI 

and ATSF switching leads.

 

The RI customer spur into El Paso Lmbr will hold up to six cars, making it a very busy rail 

customer, as it still is today. On this side the central row of buildings will be detailed for 

open face lumber storage and shops. The ATSF track runs north, squeezed between the 

lumber yard and N Nevada Ave, which curves west here off the front edge of the peninsula. 

The ATSF Pikeview House and Team Track cuts off here just before the private grade 

crossing into El Paso.

 

The Santa Fe serves El Paso Lmbr using its House and Team Track, but the Rock 

obviously gets the lion's share of the business with its customer spur directly into 

the yard.

 

Beyond the El Paso Lumber yard the Santa Fe had a short passing siding and 

run-around beside the CSDPU Birdsall power plant. It had been removed when 

the photo was taken. In the far distance was ATSF milepost 667 (from Topeka), 

and Pikeview Station.

 

Just past the bridge across Templeton Gap Floodway and the Mount View Lane grade crossing 

is the switch to High Country Sales, the Miller beer distributor and the last active customer 

on the Santa Fe lead.

 

The old mainline continues only a short distance beyond to serve as a switching tail.

 

As you can see the spur to High Country is quite steep and is protected by a derail.

Here is a view of BNSF 2537 switching High Country in 1999.

 

And here is High Country at the end of the peninsula.  

 

Next time we'll look at what the east side of the peninsula might look like.

 

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ATSF Scale House

 

Modeling the AT&SF - D&RGW Joint Line through Colorado Springs from Milepost 70 to Milepost 80 circa 1978-1979

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Post 11: And now for something completely different; The Santa Fe scale house   

 

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I've been working on the railroad. Maybe not all the live long day, but I had a hankering for a chance to do some model building for a change, and this led me down a small rabbit hole in pursuit of a very small building. A scale house to be exact. Specifically the one that I know existed in the Santa Fe Springs yard as late as 1981, and so very much present in my modeling era.

 

  The Santa Fe Springs yard looking north, showing the scale and south end of the scale house,

with the old freight house and the depot beyond. Notice that the scale is on a slight hump, 

so that cars that have been weighed could be kicked down the track out of the way

 

And the return view looking south showing the north end of the house. Note the gantlet track.

 The live rails are to the right, closest to the house, with the balance beam in a pit beneath. 

The outer rails are fixed to support the locomotive.

Both Larry Green, November 1973

(click images to enlarge) 

 

 

 

  The view looking south in 1981 showing how the tracks squiggled around the scale house. 

The cars at right are on the old freight house track. 

This is the only dead-on elevation of the scale house that I had to work with.

In my effort to fold, spindle and mutilate the truncated Santa Fe Springs yard to shoehorn it into a corner of the layout it became apparent that the ATSF track scale just wasn't going to fit where it should. No matter how many times I drew out the tracks and turnouts full size or redrew them there was just no way three double-ended yard tracks and the scale were going to fit properly in the allotted space and look right. You see, the scale house required a three track wide space in between two tracks, which had to wiggle to go around it, so one of the yard tracks would have to go entirely, or at least be truncated to the point of being near useless, and that just wouldn't do. As much as it would be nice to have a scale for simulating weighing outbound loads, having three functioning yard tracks was way more important.

And so I set aside the thought of including the scale. Or so I thought. There was the possibility to at least include the scale and house visually on the layout by placing it at the far end of the north yard lead against the wall. True, it would not be possible to actually spot even a single car on the scale for weighing, never mind work an entire cut, but at least it would be present, just not where it should be. And there was the rub. It didn't look right, and it didn't feel right. And so the thought was pushed to back of mind, right were it could niggle away and make itself felt every time I looked at a photo of the yard with the scale house right there just south of the old freight house.

 

Grrrr.

 

Then one day just a week or so back, I was once again looking at one of those photos and it hit me, if subtly. If I flipped the photo left to right it would look a lot like the scene might look on the layout, with the scale house up at the northern end of the freight house. And if I rearranged the turnouts it would even mimic at least some of the track wiggle to get around it.

 

    The view flipped showing how the scene just might work after all

 

Hmmm. Niggle, niggle.

 

Out came the pencil, eraser, straight edge, turnouts and curve templates. Move the turnout connecting track 3 to track 2 to the north, and the turnout connecting track 1 to track 2 to the south, swapping them in the ladder, and voila: there was the wide space needed between the freight house track and track 2 to fit the scale and house, there was the "wiggle" as track 3 segued into track 2. And the scale would fit in the tail of track 2, the lead/escape track, and thus become functional for at least one car, while the continuation of track 1 would become just a slightly longer engine tie-up and service track. 

Hmmm. The niggle subsided, not entirely, but substantially. Perhaps I could live with this after all.

 

    And the scene mocked up on the full-size layout plan, with the old freight house track at left, 

the scale house between it and track 2 and in line with track 3, and track 1 at right, 

which extends into the locomotive tie-up and service track. The track 2 tail lead is just 

long enough to fit the scale, so weighing single cars can be simulated

 

With the hook set, I tentatively moved on to researching the scale and house. I already had three good photos of the scale house, and I found a few decent photos of other Santa Fe examples on line, so this obviously was a standard design. I also found a drawing of a Pennsy standard "beam cupboard", which was almost identical, just a little more ornate. Perhaps the design originated with the scale manufacturer, probably Fairbanks Morse. Unfortunately the drawing was too low res to read the dimensions, but at least I could use the proportions to work out the Santa Fe house.

 

I had one good dead-on b&w elevation photo of the north, or window end of the scale house. I brought that into Photoshop, flipped it horizontally, and began to recreate the south end of the house with a door instead of a window. I've been using Photoshop since 1993 and can draw with it almost as easily as I can in CAD, so it was short work. Next, I used the north end window to recreate the paired bay windows in the east wall. I already had the one angled bay wall and window, which I duplicated and flipped, completing the east wall. The back, or west wall was blank, except for a small door for filling the coal bin for the stove that kept the balance mechanism warm and true. The last step was adding a simple outline roof.

About this time I noticed that there was a scale bar in the Pennsy drawing, meaning I could work out the major dimensions reasonably closely. I made a new crisp scale bar and used it first on the Pennsy house, then on the Santa Fe house. They matched almost exactly. This was going to work.

I adjusted my drawing as required, and then cleaned up the windows and siding and added some of the finer details, such as the rafter tips. Finally, I colorised it standard Santa Fe cream or buff with a red asphalt roof to match the photos. Here's the result:

Having already built the model in 2D, I'm confident that I got the proportions and dimensions close enough that I plan to proceed with scratch building the 3D model without doing a CAD or even a pencil drawing. Next step will be figuring out if there is a Grandt or Tichy window that matches or is adaptable, and seeing which Evergreen siding will work best.

I'll report back as the project moves along.

 

Until next time.