May be silly to ask if a wooden tie version of the Kato Salt Lake Route track components might be available when the concrete sleeper version doesn’t seem to have reached consumers yet. If wood tie Unitrack isn’t available, what would be the feazibility of staining the concrete ties to a “wood look” for those of us with a “first generation diesel” timeframe in mind.
Ideas?
thanks.
gwgw
Fear not, wood-tie Kato Unitrack has been available for quite some time, both in HO and N scales, and in a large selection of radii. It’s very good stuff.
What era were you thinking of back-dating the Salt Lake Route to? It was a very busy railroad during the late steam/early diesel era and even supported several crack Union Pacific streamliners, especially the City Of Los Angeles, one of UP’s premier luxury trains.
Tom [:)]
Wow, Tom, your work is amazing. The Salt Lake will be a first step for me, though I’ve collected a stable of EMD and Alco first generation locos. No steam at the moment.
I would like to include a passenger station since I have a Kato UP “city” set. Perhaps about where the yard office in Dick Christian’s plan. Not sure what yard or industries would make sense in the container loading area. I’ve got enough PFE reefers to make build a train, so perhaps an stub-end iceing platform. Did I see one in one of your photos?
Thanks for you input.
Glenn
Kato´s Uni-Track system comes with molded on track bed. Concrete ties do look different from wooden ties, not only by color. If you want to change the appearance, you will have to paint each tie separately - certainly a tedious job, which won´t give you the look you are going for.
I´d suggest to change to Atlas Code 55 track with wooden ties. You get a much better looking track work and save a lot of money as well!
Wow, Tom! Love your pictures. Especially the ones around The Yuba River. Awesome looking. And I appreciate your answer to this thread. It all adds to my ideas and the info I need to keep moving on my layout.
Obviously you can put anything you want there but the real icing platorms were in LA or in Ogden UT. Reefers weren’t iced in the middle. Actually there isn’t really very much of anything in the middle other than some mines. If I were you I would forget “Caliente” and make it Las Vegas, then turn the container yard into a large team track and furniture plant into a food distributor and building supply dealer. the late 50’s early 60’s would be right at the beginning of the Las Vegas building boom so all sorts of building materials would have to be brought in, plus all the food for the town becoming a city. Don’t ice the reefers, unload them.
I’m sure if you google around for images you can find a picture of the Las Vegas train station.
Thanks for thinking out loud on this. Good advice.
Glenn
Glenn:
Thanks for the compliment. Yes, in some of the earlier photos I do have a stub-end icing dock, but I removed it later, since it really wasn’t needed on that particular portion of the route. I’m saving it for use in my projected staging yard, which would represent ‘off-scene’ Sacramento, where logically the reefers would be iced prior to eastbound movement over the Sierra.
However, there was a PFE icing dock in Las Vegas for a time on the old LA&SL during the steam era. There are photos and diagrams of it in a book called RAILROADS OF NEVADA AND EASTERN CALIFORNIA, VOL II by David Myrick. I would assume it was there for any ‘re-icing’ as needed, as the entire LA&SL ran through very hot desert from LA to Salt Lake/Ogden.
By the way, if you’re interested in the Salt Lake route, that book would definitely be worth getting hold of. It’s got some great history and photographs of the route from inception through late steam, early diesel. It could be a valuable resource.
Happy railroading! [:)]
Tom [:D]