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August 2, 2017 at 5:00 pm in reply to: Photo of the Week 7/31/17 – EB Orleanean at Beaumont, TX #8425
The street running might be a clue. I tried to identify that trailer marked The Phelan Co., with some words including ‘restaurant’, and while I found one candidate, it’s in Massachusetts so that’s probably not a good lead.
It’s not a shabby train, with a combine and one of the used, er, recently-acquired, P-S lightweight coaches.
Ron Merrick
The turnback loops referred to in the last post are now well underway. A turnback is nothing more than a 180 degree turn, with the appropriate 6″ tangent at each end. These go at either end of the three-module set that covers the north Wichita industrial area, so they’re both double track, and they should be module numbers 19 and 23. One was definitely going to be 180 degrees, and the other seemed to need to be a little less but I determined that the 180 degree angle would work, which vastly simplified the construction.
Building the turnback in two halves, with the joint at the halfway point consisting of the same end plate that any module would have, allows for future changes. These intermediate end plates are actually bolted together with enough give to allow a little elevation change if needed. Earlier turnbacks had a 12″ width at this joint, but these have a 15″ width (aided by the fact that I cut some end plates wrong so had some salvage material to work with). This should look better with city scenery, of which there is none now.
The inside side plates are the standard 1/2″ birch, mitered into roughly 40 degree and 50 degree angles. This connects the end plates rigidly with the intermediate end plates, and allows for the outer plate construction which has short 3/8″ segments at the end, with 1/8″ laminated over it and bent in a continuous curve. This was a bit of a challenge since the circumference of each quadrant is about 67″, requiring splices. The cross section of the outer edge of the module includes a horizontal plywood reinforcement, cut to 42″ approximate radius, which gives the finished fabrication enough stiffness. Intermediate braces are 1×3 like any other module, with 5/8″ holes bored in them for the wiring.
The next stage of construction will be to add the tops, followed by subroadbed.
I too would call it as Pueblo.
The embankment that the photographer is standing on was the site of many a photo.
Ron Merrick
Note also both of the KOG GP-28s on the head end.
Ron Merrick
I don’t believe I ever saw one, with one exception.
Boxcars went into MoW service in waves, as it were, depending on the need and as older MoW cars were retired. So the photographic evidence shows quite a few double-sheathed cars, including 36′ cars and at least one USRA car, giving way to those 1951-rebuilt steel cars with 8′-6 or so height. The 1932 cars seem to have been retired about the same time as the double-sheathed and single-sheathed boxcars, but had a higher scrap value.
I saw one 1932 car, still with its revenue number, assigned to the pile driver about 1971 or so. When I get home I can give you the number, but it was repainted into the 60″ buzzsaw scheme. Would have been a 30xxx number.
Also a rarity — I saw exactly one of the 3713 cu ft 10′-0 height T&P boxcars (Intermountain model) in work service. I should be able to get you the number of that one also, but it had an X number and not a revenue service number.
Ron Merrick
No, there are enough data to letter both sides of the car, if that’s what you’re asking. But there is only one choice of load limit and light weight, and one road number plus a set of ‘0123456789’ numbers, rather than a number jumble that could include several plausible numbers. I think these are exactly the same as the old Glow sets.
The 10267 set does actually have enough data to letter two cars, one with DeSoto lettering and one with lettering good for a similar car in the later lettering style. It would also be possible to do a renumbered car, with the data in the older style and the six-digit number in the newer style.
Ron Merrick
I realized I could answer this question. See attached, on one of the diner-coaches (diner-lounges with the lounge section replaced with coach seats).
RG7
I bought one a few years ago at one of those modeling meets in Houston. It’s glass and has the buzzsaw on it, and the art on the buzzsaw is pretty good, looks proper. Only thing I would note is that similar ashtrays, in various designs and shapes, have turned up on eBay since. I feel confident this one is a fake, since it looks new and unused.
Perhaps there are lounge car or diner photos that might show an actual in-service ashtray. The lounge cars probably had ashtray stands, but there must have been some actual glass or metal ones. Reality check — I’m not sure how often glass ones were used on railroad cars of any type, because of what would happen when one went flying off a table during an emergency brake application.
I do have a couple of real ones that I stole from GM&O and maybe Rock Island, but they’re cardboard with a metallized surface so as to be both fireproof and unbreakable, as well as disposable (and I didn’t feel bad about ripping them off, for that reason). Did MoPac ever use those?
Ron Merrick
I’m finishing today the laying of roadbed on the three new modules that represent the WTA (Wichita Terminal Association). The double-track MoPac main line runs down the center, being crossed by the Rock Island single-track main and the Santa Fe double main track and one parallel industry track, which is part of the WTA and interchanges with the MoPac and the Rock Island. There’s 60 feet of main track and 55 or so feet of industry track to lay. I’ve tried not to think about the ten crossings I’ll have to build.
I ran out of some types of Homabed roadbed, and discovered the original manufacturer is officially out of business. However, there is now Cascade Rail Supply, cascaderailsupply.com or homabed.com, who has acquired the rights to the Homabed name. They claim that the product isn’t completely compatible with the old stuff, however I’ve laid some straight and curved roadbed and several turnout sections and it’s close enough for me to consider it completely interchangeable. Bear in mind that, after learning my lesson on the first module I built, I hit all of the roadbed with a sander to take down the high spots and add some cardstock, if necessary, to fill low spots. Wear a mask for this if you try it.
Next up is probably building two turnback loops. On the south end the turnback loop will definitely be a 180. On the north end there’s an issue of whether I design the turnback to mate with the existing fakey storage yard, which may require a mini-mo to actually connect. Doing this will allow me to be working on module construction outside while at the same time laying track upstairs. Only drawback to this schedule is that I really would prefer not to be fabricating modules in Houston in July and August.
Ron Merrick
I recall a place called the I-GN Cafe, to the best of my knowledge, across from the HB&T Milby St. roundhouse and engine facility in Houston. That yard was originally for servicing passenger engines operating out of Union Station, but in the late 70s the MoPac wreck train was housed there, and any road power operating in and out of the HB&T yards was serviced there, so Santa Fe and Rock Island power could be found there also.
Never set foot in the cafe, but all those years ago it was probably patronized by arriving crews. Amtrak crews used to be put up at one of the two hotels right up Texas Av. from Union Station, both of which I believe are now gone.
Ron Merrick
The tanks make me think this occurred somewhere near the Derby refinery, just to the east of the main line, north of 21st St. and south of the yard. But the background of trees and perhaps houses contradicts that. A lot of the area north of 21st in that area was more populated then, before it was urban renewed in the 60s, so it might still be possible.
Ron Merrick
Over the weekend I built the basic frame of the first module for the Wichita section. This is a simple rectangular one, the standard 24 inch wide by 6 feet long, but it will have complicated ones on either side.
This is part of a ‘module set’ as Free-mo would call it, with five or six tracks spanning three modules but just two tracks on either end. It fits in a space 18 feet long, which is as long a straight run as I can get and still have room for turnback loops at each end. So the frame so far is literally just that, two ends and two sides, plus the top which I’ve already marked track centerlines on. I’m not positive how these will line up so I’d rather not take it any farther until I have all three frames built. The two at the outer ends are the Santa Fe and Rock Island interchanges. Sorry to report there’s no room for the Frisco. I might still buy a Proto SW9 and letter it for Frisco 261, which spent its entire career in Wichita and is still there to this day in the GPTM, painted as BN something, which is how it came to the museum.
I like to do a lot of pre-fabrication, so I have at least six pre-made legs, several 24″ end plates, and other various components so assembling this one went quickly, if not well. The two sides were the same length to within 1/16″, but there’s some lack of squareness due to the sides being slightly bowed. I normally put about two 1×3 intermediate braces in, so that’ll be solved. One of the end plates is slightly twisted end to end, so I brought in the top slightly inward from the end of the side, and I’ll laminate some cardboard on it and sand it flush, so it’ll square up fine when assembled. I didn’t try to add leg clips or any of the other detail components since I’ll be out for a few days, but I prefer to add those on the bench, at a comfortable working height, so I’ll bring the frame back down later. I’m not real concerned with end-to-end parallel alignment, because the fabrication platform is flat enough that the screw adjustment on the legs will make everything work out. A bigger issue concerning tolerances is that the top of the frame sections need to align within perceptible limits by feel, something less than 1/16″, but the tolerance on the width of the frame sections is greater than that. This happens because I buy the Baltic Birch in larger sheets and rip it to about 5-7/8″ width, but the repeatability of my cutting, over time, isn’t that great. (Bear in mind that the sheets are furnished in exact metric sizes with a couple mm tolerance, but aiming for 6″ nominal brings it closer to the 5-7/8″ minimum.)
Laying out the plywood top with track centerlines makes it a lot easier to design the frame geometry, as opposed to the sections of the layout that are just track crossing open country with an occasional scenic feature. (I’m not playing up to the stereotype that Kansas is relatively free of scenic features, but I’ll just say that most of them are fairly uncomplicated.) As it is, I have several #5 turnouts in the interchange tracks and the WTA industry trackage that I’m not entirely confident as to them all fitting, so it’ll be interesting in the coming months.
Ron Merrick
Had the usual assortment of non-rail relatives over today, so had a tour of the layout. They do recognize that every time they come over, there’s more railroad to be seen. I ran a train, or rather I had a locomotive pull cuts of cars back and forth, on sections of it. Kind of hard to do, since the bridge is still poorly supported. I glued a couple of pieces of plywood in the places where piers would be. Worked OK with a switcher, but I ran two F units onto the piece of flextrack and one end of the bridge, the flextrack bowed downward and popped out of the rail joiners at the other end, and the engines did not fall all the way because the couplers held them together when the tops of the ends hit. Fortunately, there were no witnesses. I’m betting that it’s not a common occurrence to have one end of a piece of flextrack get flipped a couple of feet in the air.
Then there’s a spot where the train parts, or at least the Athearn geeps lose their train, right at the end of a module so I have a height difference I hadn’t seen before, or probably a low coupler on the geep.
Somewhat off topic, but I have a Life-Like SW7 which has probably run more miles than any other engine on the railroad. It regularly pulls 20 or more cars. I put an Athearn GP9 in its place, and it didn’t come close. With finger assist, it still bogged down. Added a second unit, not much better.
I have Kadee 5s on most cars built before the introduction of the 58, and 58s on pretty much everything since plus anything older that’s been through the shop. But a few of the Athearn cars, notably the three-bay PS2s, have defied coupler change by having a little coupler box mounting screw which is probably a Phillips #0 or #00, that is driven in so tight I can not get it out. So those cars still have those gross plastic couplers made by somebody, and the plastic knuckle springs frequently fail during slack run-ins or backing, or just plain will not stay closed. So those cars are coming real close to an across-the-board recall. Athearn Airslides aren’t much better, but I usually can get the screws out of those without damaging any detail.
Oh yeah, the new part.
I threw some plywood on the fabrication platform and started drawing three new modules, or what Free-mo would call a module set, for the stretch of MoPac main line in Wichita between and including the Santa Fe and Rock Island crossings. This is arguably the most complex stretch of track on the railroad, other than maybe the yard throat. There’s the MoP, of course, which was double track at the time, a three-track Santa Fe line (It seems to have been three tracks during my era of interest, later it was four), the Wreck Island single-track main line, and the WTA (Wichita Terminal Association, which still exists). The poor Frisco, which also crossed the MoPac, just didn’t make the cut as far as the trackage I was able to lay out.
Previously I built the module frames with a pretty good idea of where the track centerline would be, then added the plywood on top. Here, the only way I could do that was to lay out the tracks first and I’ll figure out where the frame will go. Two of these modules stray pretty far from the idea of 24″ width with the track centered on it, but let’s just say that form will have to follow function here. It helps that I’ve built enough modules that I know how all the parts are supposed to fit. I wish I had more distance to play with, but 18 feet is as much as I can go with a turnback loop at each end, in the present train room. I’m trying to lay out the track centers so that I can stick a mini-mo in there and there to add a couple of feet, if I’m ever in the position to do that.
The challenge is that even during my period of interest, the track layout changed. From the aerial photos dated 1950 to 1960, there were a lot of new tracks added, and one track actually rerouted, shifted sideways. I’d love to know why. The arrangement I’m settling on is somewhat of a compromise between the two.
RG7
After I finished working on these photos, I saw you were looking for enclosed racks. So, not what you wanted, but……[attachment=1:20gam73l]95-10 Nov 71.jpg[/attachment:20gam73l][attachment=0:20gam73l]244-13 Jul 75.jpg[/attachment:20gam73l]
WHAT was it the Engines said,
Pilots touching,—head to head
Facing on the single track,
Half a world behind each back?— Bret Harte, 1869, on the occasion of a more momentous golden spike
Not wanting to be overly melodramatic, but today I completed the main line at Module 8, at the future location of the Fall River bridge. Right now it’s a piece of flextrack held up by plywood, but I have successfully run an engine and several cars back and forth over it. There is spiked rail at each end, with the lucky circumstance that a single piece of flextrack was exactly the right length to bridge the gap.
There’s a horrible, derailment-quality hump at one end that I need to work on, by cutting into the roadbed on module 7 and lowering it for an inch or so, and I need some better gapping. But now there is 138 feet of continuous rail on the main line, plus about 60 feet of branchline that doesn’t connect, which itself needs major work. But at least it’s in place.
In other news, this week we bought another house in Wichita which may be the permanent one. It’s in a location, College Hill, where there can’t be a railroad building adjacent to the house. It’s also older than the previous one, but it was built after the Cubs won the World Series the last time. When this house was new, you could have taken the streetcar down Douglas to the MoPac station and sailed to Germany to meet the Kaiser.
So, yet another challenge…..
Watch this space.
Ron Merrick
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