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.
