I’m building a shelf layout around the walls of my very small study. Having worked through all the “givens and druthers”, especially around the space, I’ve come up with a design that will give me what i want:
it fits the room
continuous running for display to visitors
more than one location
some switching for real operations
loads of staging (I’ve seen dozens of comments wishing they had planned more staging but noone ever complained they put in too much)
Now I need a prototype to fit the design and give me the other things I want:
Southern Pacific rolling stock and locos (since I own a fleet already)
a port scene
dense urban scenery
set in the 1970s
a steam museum (to rationalise some not very 70s steam locos)
Schematically it is just a loop, with double-ended staging on one side, and a port, a city and “somewhere else” strung along the mainline. It winds around the room a couple of times so there are a few feet between each location.
So what’s a good prototype to fit? I’m thinking either a belt line that serviced the SP, or a port on the SP.
The ideal would be a very little port on a big SP mainline, with loads of interesting SP through traffic, and small wharf facilities near a dense (cramped) industrial/urban area (think George Selios) with some industrial sidings. The steam museum is set in an obsolete steam facilities with roundhouse, so somewhere that had one of those would be perfect.
Try Oakland, CA. Major northern California port for SP. Big roundhouse that stayed around long after diesels replaced steam. Very urbanized, but right below the Oakland hills and Niles Canyon if you want some hilly scenery. Lots of through traffic on the Oakland-San Jose connector line that ran down through the South Bay. Plenty of switching in the Oakland yards for ship-to-train traffic. You say 1970’s, if you back-date it to 1956, you could have both–interesting 1st and some 2nd generation diesels and late steam. SP was one of the last big major railroads to completely replace steam on all of its lines. Smaller steam could help out with switching duties. I like your idea, and I certainly like the railroad you’ve decided to model. Get some info for Oakland–you might try a public library that has a good selection of railroad histories, particularly SP. It might work.
Let us know how you come along, okay?
Tom [:D]
You hit the jackpot. The SP in Oakland has many of the features you are seeking.
oops twhite beat me to the post, I see …
… anyway, here’s the same recommendation.
There are a number of port areas served by the SP or small adjacent railroads. These include the Howard Terminal, Oakland Terminal Railway, Alameda Belt Line, Richmond Belt Line (joint with ATSF), and Parr / Levin Terminal. There are also dense urban areas with lots of switching.
Before they moved to Niles Canyon, the Pacific Locomotive Association had facilties and museum equipment stored near Richmond (Point Molate/Castro Point). And even after their move in '86, there was museum equipment stored in various spots around the East Bay.
Thanks for the info Tom. Much of my research will be on the web, plus I’ll buy a few books on Amazon etc. Way out here in New Zealand the libraries don’t have much on US railroads [:)].
And I guess i just like the 70s [:D] Girls in minis, a mix of old and modern architecture, Beetles (cars), Led Zep drifting out an apartment window… Especially in San Francisco [:)][:)]
I like the sound of Oakland. My reservation is I’m not sure that i will be able to do the docks justice in my tiny space. I must find out if the traffic was all intermodal by the 70s. Some small coastal freight traffic would give me an excuse for modelling a smaller dock handling that traffic.
There were a couple of Belt Lines that serviced the SP too
San Francisco Belt Line aka State Belt Line,
Alameda Belt Line (I think that’s different to the SFBL)
A couple of other ideas I’ve seen are
Central Pacific Railroad (pretend it survived into the 70s)
Rob–just dawned on me that you are in New Zealand (duh!) I’d reccommend a book by Lucius Beebe called THE CENTRAL PACIFIC AND THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROADS–I think it was published by Howell North and co. sometime in the 1960’s. It has an entire section on San Francisco and Oakland, plus a lot of photos, both historic and 1960’s contemporary. I don’t think there was a great deal of intermodal traffic back in the 1970’s, but I could be wrong.
The Central Pacific kept its own identity long after being incorporated into the Southern Pacific. In fact, clear through the 1970’s one could see work equipment lettered CP, even though the reporting marks were all SP. Some of the early cab-forward locos also had a small CP stencilled under the front windows of the cab.
As to Sacramento, the small port here was served by the Sacramento Northern RR, which was owned by the Western Pacific. When UP bought WP, they farmed the line out to a private corporation, and the port is now served by the Yolo Short Line. The primary exports were grain, rice and woodchips. The main SP Sacramento-Oakland line runs north of the port and doesn’t serve it.
I think Oakland is going to be your best bet.
Tom [:D]
Sacramento might be a winner too–in the early 1970s, Southern Pacific still maintained its R Street belt line (original locale of the first railroad in California, the Sacramento Valley RR) as well as its original B Street mainline (the western end of the Overland Route, the original transcontinental railroad) which served agricultural and other industries north of downtown. The only problem is that if you want to model the Sacramento shops and yard you’ll have a daunting task–the complex was massive and featured several large multi-track shops buildings with two transfer tables! They were busy as heck in the 1970s, too, rebuilding first-generation diesels to Seventies specs through the “GRIP” program.
As far as displayed antiques go, after 1976 the original California State Railroad Museum building was opened on the “Old Sacramento” riverfront (a historical district and tourist trap), built to resemble the old Central Pacific arcade passenger station. They featured steam engines that were certainly very 70s, if you mean the 1870s! There was also a Cab-Forward (the only one left, AC-12 no. 4264) parked in front of the Southern Pacific passenger station (by the seventies an Amtrak station.)
The Port of Sacramento was opened in the 1950s and was actually across the river from Sacramento proper, reached then and now via a 1911-vintage steel girder bridge. As twhite mentions, freight was transferred to the WP-owned Sacramento Northern.
WP and SN also ran in close proximity to SP trains in downtown Sacramento, using their “Whitney Avenue” line half a block from the R Street line.
Model Railroader have done a couple of layout plans for the Alameda Belt Line and San Francisco Belt Line, but any city of fair size in California would feature VWs and the occasional hippie if set in the Seventies–even in Sacramento (where they listened to KZAP and went to free concerts in Land Park!)
Thanks Jetrock. I love the historic significance of Sacramento - I’ll look into it more. I suspect that Oakland may still win out, as I want more grunge than touristy.
Yes I’ve got the MR and RMC belt line articles and I’ve ordered a couple of books.
Somewhere on the layout I’m going to feature the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, probably beside their VW Combie [:D]
I think Sacramento is an excellent idea.It is a small port and is also a major SP city.In the 70s the shops were still intact and SP had many branch and secondary lines in the area.
SP had two steam locomotives on display near the station,cab forward 4294 and the C.P. Huntington.This engine was built in 1863 and is a 4-2-4 with attached tender.
