I have a American Model Builders laserkit of a Santa Fe style one story depot with bay, Kit #707 and I would like to know if they were common in So. Cal and if they would still exist today. Any help would be most welcome [:)]
Jools,
Perhaps The Santa Fe Railway Historical & Modeling Society can answer your question. Their URL is:
http://www.atsfrr.com/
Perhaps they can also answer your concrete ties query. TTFN.
Bob
NMRA Life 0543
I looked through one of my favorite books, Duke and Kistler’s Santa Fe: Steel Rails through California but didn’t see any standard depots similar to AMB’s kit in California.
Santa Fe in the Lone Star State showed dozens of standard frame depots in Texas.
I also have computer reference files on some 2000 named places on the Santa Fe where I file photos, track diagrams, scale drawings etc, by place, set up alphabetically by town names. I have been a member of Santa Fe modeling group(s) and have all their magazines since the 1960s, all catalogued, and MR back into the 50s. All Santa Fe material referenced.
I used my “Microsoft Word” search function to hunt for the letter combination “stand” as in “standard depot”. Stopped after searching 15 of the 30 location files. Found lots of references to standard frame depots in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, none in California.
If I say there weren’t any, maybe somebody will try to prove me wrong and give you the information you are looking for…
But I am not being very encouraging.
I have been told that Victorville Depot was very similar, anyone know any different?
From the looks of this picture http://www.wemweb.com/railroad-stations/ref48.html, it looks similar.
Try this link: http://www.wemweb.com/railroad-stations/ as it has links to a lot of ATSF station pictures along the route of the Super Chief.
Andre
Santa Fe Railway Historical & Modeling Society was mentioned earlier,
http://www.atsfrr.org/
They have some information but much of it is filed by author’s name and you have to look through all these names instead of being able to search by subject or locality.
But there is also Russell Crump’s EASTERN ARCHIVES at www.atsfry.com
Notice that it is a dot-com where the Society’s address is a dot-org.
I checked it out and didn’t find many pix of California depots. And what I found were Southern California gingerbread style, not standard depots. But Eastern Archives is worth knowing.
I found a picture of Amboy depot, is that a closer match than Victorville?
THE reference book for Santa Fe depots in Southern California is “Coast Line Depots, Los Angeles Division,” by Gustafson and Serpico. Unfortunately, it shows few if any Santa Fe standard depots. Most of the frame depots on the LA Division were built by a predecessor line, the California Southern, to its own designs. As those buildings were altered or modernized in later years, they tended to be unique and definitely non-standard.
The Victorville depot is pictured in “Coast Lines Depots,” and it was quite unlike the AMB kit. There were differences in proportions, roof pitch, and bay window design.
Modeling the Santa Fe in Southern California calls for a lot of scratchbuilding, although Showcase Miniatures has announced a laser kit for the one-of-a-kind Summit depot.
So long,
Andy