Trackwork Progress on Port Costa Mainline Trackage

Ariel

UP Trackage today at Port Costa looking across the Carquinez strait to Benicia

Wow, I missed posting what I did in April. The focus for the month was mostly trackwork  on Port Costa mainline trackage. But I have been sidetracked a lot of times and there were days I just didn't feel like working on the railroad.  So much of what I do is ad hoc, spur of the moment change of focus. This is a hobby and I am not too disciplined or end focused so I change projects almost on a whim. I do have a spreadsheet with a master list of projects.  But I don't keep it up and follow it rigidly. 

I have developed a workable approach to laying the mainline and north/strait side siding track.  I had purchased a 4' x 8' sheet 1/4 inch thick sheet of polystyrene at Zap Plastics 3-4 years ago and had it cut into 2' x 4' pieces. I am going to use 6" wide pieces of it as a track base/roadbed for the mainline and the strait side siding trackage.  I have cut it into manageable lengths to allow the track to be laid, wired, ballasted working at the dining room table rather than reaching over the 32" area of the benchwork where the turntable, roundhouse building ant out buildings are located. 

Before test lay out of turnouts

Test layout of turnouts with freight cars to check clearances.

This is the overall view of the mainline with the track just laid on the plastic for working out the crossover arrangement and ramp for changing from the yard trackage height to the elevated trackage of the mainline. Note that I understand that SP standards called for a 6 inch difference in height between yard and mainline trackage but the 1/4 inch thick plastic scales to about 9 inches. The track separation should be 14-15 feet between mainline tracks. Note the ramp has been fitted. It is quite steep but short. I don't have much linear space to work with so the S curves are unavoidable if crossing to/from the yard lead trackage to the westbound main. 

Note that the sheet plastic was primed/painted with Rust-oleum and Krylon in several over sprays on the plastic sheet to prime it.  The matte clamshell color approximates the light grey tan look of the ground at Port Costa in bright sunlight. 

I have been stalled at this point since mid-April. I have had a diversion to review ballasting and seeing how this will work on top of the sheet plastic road bed. I have been working on a sample of double track with ballast and painted rail. 

The rail was glued to the painted plastic using Formula 560 Canopy Glue.  Left to dry overnight it is a very tight bond. Next came the ballast. I used Woodland Scenics walnut shell light grey on the far track and Woodland Scenics new Grey Blend on the near track. I am using Joe Fugate's recommended zip ballasting technique with Ballast Bond from Deluxe Materials diluted about 50% with 70% IPA. I apply the ballast adhesive with an eye dropper. Setting time is about 18 hours. I used the same technique on ballast between the two tracks. Fingers run inside the track tamped down the ballast and then a metal pick was used to remove stray pieces of ballast on the ties and tie plates. 

I am using the shorter Micro Engineering Code 83 rail joiners on the Peco Code 83 track with no problem. I am worried about the ballasting around in place rail joiners so I added solder to the joints. I don't have any long runs of track without power feeds and my layout is in an air conditioned very low humidity room so I am not to worried about expansion. There are going to be insulation gaps and separate feed wires around the turnouts  

The track was painted after ballast using Vallejo 70.822 German Black brown brushed on the ties and rail sides.  After the black brown dried, I brush painted the rail and tie plates with Vallejo 71.080 Model Air  Rust (AKA #29015 Freight Car Red at Micro-Mark when I bought 6 bottles about 8 years ago.)  I tend to like a dark rusty color even on mainline track. This photo was shot from the observation platform of the Redwood Empire in 2017 on a trip to LA at Vandenberg south of Surf. Those are rusty rails.

 Magnify the picture and you can faintly see the launch towers to the right of the track in the background.

After painting the rails, I cleaned them off with the 70% IPA. within a couple of hours. The upper track has a trail of Vallejo 73.817 Petrol Spills. I have also used a light brushing of dusty colored weathering powder on the ties of the rear test track. 

All this work will be done on the dining room table when my motivation comes back to finish the mainline trackage so I can get on to the ballasting of the yard trackage and building the turntable. It will get done sometime in 2021. 

Note that trips on the Redwood Empire are chronicled elsewhere in this blog. Unfortunately with Amtrak becoming highly restrictive on private car operation, the owners have put the car up for sale. It was no longer fun.  In addition Amtrak has now banned open platform riding while the train is in motion so a picture like the above is no longer legally possible.  

 

"I'm finding my thrill in modeling Tank Hill"

"I'm finding my thrill in modeling Tank Hill" with apologies to Fats Domino....

Scenery has always been a dark mystery to me in 65 years of model railroading. I love researching and building structures and rolling stock but modeling a setting on a layout has always been sort of a mock up to suggest the setting.  I'm now 77 years old and I guess it is time to delve into those dark arts and do a little better at setting the section of a railroad I model in a more believable/realistic scene. In the past I have considered myself a follower of minimalist impressionism or perhaps cubism and my efforts on Port Costa are still in that stage. 

In my little Port Costa world, I cannot even close accurately model the east end beyond the roundhouse and support buildings as the 2 tracks of mainline and strait ward siding curve to the left . On the east end i am taking extreme liberties with the actual track plan to start the Molocco line curving to the right instead of continuing eastwards on through the Martinez flying junction, the bridge and the branch junction at Avon for the San Ramon branch. This will in fact be just a stub crossing over and behind my workbench. If I should live so long I might create a dummy Avon and have a place for a module with the Walnut Creek depot highly compressed.  Such are the fantasies that I amuse myself with. 

Now on the west end, we have the steep hillside around which the trackage curves across from the site of the ferry piers. On the hillside just above beyond the hand car and tool sheds was the huge final Port Costa water tank. The 1920's Sanborn map I have lists it as a 175,000 gallon tank. Ron Pleis in his research found it to be a 41 foot diameter tank mounted on a timber structure that was built to fit the sharp slope (I estimate about a 40' slope angle). The road to the wooden viaduct that crossed the tracks to the old station site, ferry piers and original town of Port Costa (built on pilings out in the Carquinez strait and burning down several times) wound around the back side of the tank. The final tank was preceded by several smaller tanks that fed the steam engines and ferries in the days before the double track Carquinez strait lift bridge was built. 

This is a portion of a 1959 photo from the Contra Costa County Historical association collection enhanced as much as I can with limited photoshop skills.

The tank was not that high (I estimate about 20 feet high) just vast. It was a huge black object whose shadow prevented most photographs showing any of the wooden support structure underneath by keeping in dark shadows.  The hillside is the modeling challenge.  Compounded is fact that you cannot see the trackside slope directly on my model of Port Costa. I have some mirrors set up right now. I am also looking at mounting a remote video camera such as used on drones and home security systems. This will allow me to monitor the trackage and see my modeling efforts in direct image rather than mirror image.

I am planning to build the tank and hillside as a removable scenic module about 30 inches long and 12-15 inches wide. All structures and vertical objects on the layout must be removeable as I have not finalized and laid the mainline and other strait side trackage. As it is removable it will be constructed primarily of sheet foam. I have been out to Port Costa recently and taken photos of the hillside. One of the concrete footings for the water tank is visible. Photos from about the 1950's show more of a rocky slope than it is today covered with thicker vegetation.  I understand the hill has burned several times and the houses on the upper slope are now gone.

Currently I have a 41 scale foot cylinder of cardboard and black construction paper standing in for the tank which will be another modeling project sometime soon (like many other projects including the turntable.)

I was fortunate to remember that about 20 years ago I had purchased two 2 X 4 foot sheets of 2 inch thick very dense foam used for architectural and display models. I have played around with this material and found it very easy to cut and shape with a cheap snap off box cutter knife fully extended. It cuts beautifully smooth even at an angle and can be shaped into the contours of the slope. I also had a lot of Scenic Woodlands Styrofoam riser and flat shape material I had used on my old Padstow layout for the Padstow town bluffs above the train station and yard. They would also have been used to form the pier and quay sides had I ever gone that far with the Padstow concept.

Another Woodland Scenic product I am playing with is 10 inch wide 3 foot long strips of heavy foil material covered on one side with a fuzzy scenic coating.  These can be cut and  shaped as needed into rocky and dirt covered steep slopes. They are easily sprayed with spray can camouflage colors and will be dressed up with the usual California desiccated weed foliage. 

So the tank hill(side) game is afoot. The photos included in this longer than usual diatribel illustrate where I am with current efforts. The mirrors are obvious.

Recent Port Costa-Layout Improvements and Rolling Stock Projects

August has come and gone...and I am still in enforced hibernation with no end in sight before 2021. But I have been puttering about on the layout and other projects. 

The landscape of the layout is still somewhat impressionistic/surreal rather than realistic. But for the time I am content with that. Since the discovery of the inexpensive colored 2 mm thick foam sheet material at Michael's I have been working on what the shape and texture of this miniature world.   

I have completed one freight car project, a Proto 2K ACF Type 21 8,000 gal. tank car for SCCX leasing with the Shell herald. The Shell refinery in Martinez was one of the major destinations for tank cars passing through the Port Costa yard. The refinery was sold to Marathon Oil (26 mpg?) and is now in the process of shutting down permanently as demand for petroleum products falls due to many factors.  It needs weathering as does much of my recent tank car fleet. The three SP O-50-13's I am building are still in the paused projects pile along with the Tangent GA 1917 8,000 tank car kit build. Oil was king in the early 1950's and my personal perspectives do not hamper modeling it. 

Another August project nearly completed is the final Port Costa freight house. The mockup has been reused as the water treatment building between the large section house and the huge water tank on the hill.  I originally thought this was only 30' in length but when I received the 1930 SP Port Costa relocation plan drawing, I realized it was a full 41' in length. I rebuilt an extended model and constructed a shingle roof. The only structural component missing is the finial which I am still agonizing about.  I decided to paint the structure and tried Vallejo Model Color 70.976 Buff (I like the Spanish name "Amarillo Caqui") as an adequate shade of Colonial Yellow for my sight. As I would lighten any version of Colonial yellow to look better under indoor lighting conditions and as most color photo's show it tended to lighten under the harsh California sun, this works for me. Also it worked straight from the bottle without any mixing. This was hand brushed and showed that this self-leveling paint again produces a finish as good as an air brush. Besides, the SP brushed on their paint. 

Similarly for the SP Light Brown Trim I used Vallejo Marron Claro 70.929 (Light Brown) again straight from the bottle.  For first version of the paint I painted all the vertical trim pieces in light brown. But a little further research and discovery of an SP 1950's painting standard that specified limited trim was to be painted made me question whether all that trim was brown. I checked and found a 1948 dated picture of the Port Costa station building that showed by then vertical trim was already painted Colonial Yellow.I therefore repainted all the trim into Colonial yellow. This also covered up a lot of wobbly brush lines on trim pieces.  

This is the Contra Costa County Historical Society photo of the freight house platform. Note the problematic tall finial at the end of the roof. 

Notice how the color of light brown doors shifts depending on whether it is seen in sun or shade in this picture.  I have a bunch of oil barrels waiting to finish this scene. Now all I need is the slightly rusty 1936 Dodge 4 door sedan to park in front of the rear freight door as shown in my CCCHS main reference photo. Unfortunately Sylvan does not make this exact model. It may have to be a 1935 Plymouth sedan.

You will notice in the background of the layout picture above two of my other August projects. I have built a mockup of the iconic Port Costa roundhouse based on the Banta Model Works kit that I have yet to build.  It still needs to be painted barn red with black trim and roof and have photocopies of the windows added.  The Banta kit is a bit intimidating and I didn't want go much longer without the other principal structure of the layout.  I have some clearance problems for engines entering the roundhouse to resolve.

When I started the roundhouse mockup I used the dimensions on the photocopies of drawings by Herman Darr kindly provided by Ron Plies when I started this project.  The drawings showed the length of the roundhouse as 75 feet whereas the Banta model is 80 feet.  I have no way of knowing which is really correct.  I went with the Banta dimensions as modifying the kit would be a nightmare and life is too short.

This 1948 picture down Port Costa Main Street of an M-6 at the side of the roundhouse got me thinking about the two IHC M-4 engines I acquired a few years back for $19.98 each. Note the large  90-R-7 tender behind the M-6. My layout view omits Main Street so I don't have to spend a fortune buying and a lifetime building all the automobiles in the picture. If you visit Port Costa all the buildings lining Main Street in the picture are still there.

One the IHC Moguls is in pieces at the moment but the other was still intact but currently inoperable as it requires DCC decoder installation.  I have not yet decided on a number but did a little repainting and it is now poised on one of the garden tracks.

The model came with a 70-R-? tender that I am rebuilding. As an alternative I found a Bachmann switcher Vanderbilt tender that may be a close stand-in to a 70-C tender.  The 70-R-? tender rebuild may wait for an Owl Mountain 3 D printed oil bunker for 90-R-7 tender conversions.  Also that grossly oversize headlight on the locomotive will have to go and the boiler front rebuilt.  This engine will only get a temporary non-sound DCC decoder as it will probably be the test bed for the LocoFi steam WiFi receiver when it becomes available.  I may re-motor the other IHC Mogul that is in pieces before it joins my plastic SP steam stud. 

Other projects are afoot as well. The mockup for the Section House and other buildings on the hill behind the station need more work as does the terrain of the area.  I have a tree kit to further forest the area.  After painting the freight house. I  need to paint the sand house in barn red with black trim and roof and make better stand-in mockups for smaller buildings. I also need to work on the unique water crane to accompany the oil crane on the engine service track....and then there is the water tank, ballasting more trackwork and the turntable... so much to do.

Photo's in this blog have been reduced in size to help anyone with low bandwidth read the blog. Clicking on the photo will show the full size. 

July Port Costa Station Area Mockup Progress

This is the current status of the mockup of the Port Costa station, water tank and water treatment building area of the layout. The area is on the side of a hill rising sharply from the track level.  Basically it is the western half of the layout.  I have spent a lot of time in  detail analyzing of the photos in the Robinson and Crane Arcadia Port Costa book. I had no clear 1940's-50's images of the water treatment building behind the station. I originally was going to copy Ron Pries version from his Port Costa module.  This time I looked closely at older 1905 photo's before the station was moved after the 1930 bridge over Carquinez strait. They showed a lot of the building that was never pictured in later photos. It was apparently one building not two separate buildings.  The water treatment building was not razed until after the station. The smaller structure behind it was destroyed in 1962 by burning as a practice for the local fire department.

The ground cover is an inexpensive 2 mm thick foam material I found at Micheal's craft store. I have been playing around trying to get the ground elevations right. It is all a work in progress.

I have added two JTT Live Oaks to the tree canopy that surround the water tank and area west of the water treatment building. I need to find a better small tree to go at the east end of the water treatment building.

The freight house building has been completed except for the roof which is a mockup in the above picture. The final roof is waiting for me to buy, build or design and 3D print the distinctive finials for the end of the roof.  The extended overhang over the open freight platform is correct. I found this photo in the CCCHS collection which shows the overhang and finial:

I have a bunch of oil drums painted up to go on the platform towards the final 

Like the sand house behind in the overall mockup picture, it needs to be primed and painted.

Jason Hill's recent blog on company freight https://nightowlmodeler.blogspot.com/2020/07/modeling-sp-supply-trains-part-3-boxcars.html has reminded me that the freight house at Port Costa was probably used primarily for company freight in the 1950's. Also the building at the end of the track in front of the station and freight house would have been a receiving platform and storehouse for materials used in locomotive maintenance in the roundhouse. 

I have a ton of freight car kits that I want to complete or build. The tank car and caboose projects are lagging. I also have the LocoFi F7 ABBA experiment awaiting further work. And Jason has indicated the Owl Mountain conversion parts for the Bachmann 2-8-0 are coming soon so more work ahead.  My currently active Bachmann 2-8-0 is disguised as an early transplant of an SSW locomotive with a fictional number. I have another dismantle Bachmann 2-8-0 ready to receive the new cylinders and drive rods, dome modifications and all else to make it into a close to a C-11 foobie.  I have two IHC 2-6-90's  also awaiting conversion into usable SP steam locomotives. 

It is certainly keeping me well amused and out of bars, restaurants and generally off the streets in these dangerous pandemic and pestilent times.  

Another July 2020 Update

I am having some problems with the LocoFi and WiFi setup so letting it rest for a week. I may need to get an inexpensive Amazon Fire tablet to connect only with the 2.4 GHZ band on my dual band router to resolve configuration issues and progress. The loco does show up on my house WiFi network map when powered by my NCE PowerCab on the programming track.

In the meantime I have been mocking up scenery around the depot and freight house.  (And I have completed the freight house build but am now concerned that either size is incorrect or the side freight doors are incorrectly placed.) I completed a mockup of the water treatment building behind the freight house and used the old freight house mockup to stand in place for the building to the west of the water treatment building.

The cardboard mockup is at the center left of the picture. It's dimensions have been estimated from one 1956 photo from the hill to the east of Port Costa and the Ron Plies pictures including his model. The raised cupola on the building should be only 3 feet above the sloped roof. The old mockup of the freight station is behind. The small fruited tree was the only one I had in my collection and is a complete stand-in. 

Another development is the tan ground cover that is the beginning of the scenic treatment of the layout.  This is a new idea of mine that started when I was making a test track to see how Joe Fugate of MRH's Zip Ballast method could be used for track buried in the dirt up to the top of the ties. All of Port Costa's yard has the track buried level with the ground except the SP main lines in the background.  This is what I published in MRH.  (https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/magazine/mrh2020-07/zip-ballasting?page=2) 

I have managed to assemble the components and try this on a short test track.  As the majority of the trackage on my little layout is sidings and yards.  The top of the ties are level with the surrounding ground area.  To simulate this, the track is first glued to Woodland Scenics HO roadbed foam sheet.  In the past, when I was using Code 100 track, I could use the N scale version of the roadbed foam to bring the surrounding ground level up to the top of the ties. However, this is Peco Code 83 flex track and the ties are only 2 mm high. I found a 2 mm thick foam sheet product Creatology at a Michael's Craft store. It neatly comes up to the tie level and even comes in a tan color shown above on the left and takes acrylic craft paint shown on the right.  The Woodland Scenics Foam Glue was used to attach the scenic foam to the roadbed layer.

I found the Ballast Bond works okay.  I am not ecstatic yet.  It takes some manicuring after it dries to get stray ballast under control (I am using WS nutshell N scale ballast and the tan matches closely the Creatology tan foam sheet.) The Proses/Bachmann ballast spreader may work okay for mainlines and was fine for the initial layer of ballast but I found it flimsy and difficult to control as the lever is only good for on/off not volume of ballast  control. 

I couldn't find a clear squeeze bottle like Joe used around the house so I mixed small amounts of the Ballast Bond with 91% IPA in the small white container (from a TSA pack at Target). For application I tried the three tools to the right. The middle tool was good for the initial flooding of the glue/IPA solution. I used the Monoject tool at the bottom for follow up and a second application of ballast after the first had dried to level up and fill in to the Creatology foam.  I did find some cratering if I used any tiny amount of force to expel the glue/IPA mixture onto the ballast.  The tiny glue applicator required too much force expelling the glue/IPA mixture causing it to go where I didn't want it. 

For adding additional ballast to bring the level to match the ground foam, I used the small TSA container with black top.  It allowed me to just add a few grains to fill in.  

The small plastic tray under the experiment was used to catch loose ballast after a 2 hour drying period.

he ground area of the yard area I model looks more like the grayed yellowish acrylic paint to the right in a bright California sun. I live in and model a sunburnt land where lighter bright colors contrast with the dark green of coastal oaks.  The ballast should be that color too. Ties in the yard trackage need to be weathered to a light silvered gray as well.

Your mileage may vary (YMMV) but this has been my initial experience with the zip ballasting. I am looking forward to Joe's article on a cheap method of making scale ballast with the right colors. 

FYI: the Creatology foam sheet is 12" X 18" for 99 cents a piece at Michael's.  It is flexible so will adapt to terrain if needed.

Joe Fugate's Zip Ballast video can be seen here: https://trainmasters.tv/programs/zip-ballasting-demo

I bought 5 sheets of the Creatology foam and started to use the rest of the sheet cut up for the ballast experiment as the start of a ground cover for the layout. As the text above shows I am going to paint the tan a much lighter sand color to represent the look of the ground cover at Port Costa in the usual bright California sun. 

 

It's July 2020 Already

I have been deep in multiple projects over the last two months and not said much about anything on this blog. 

Fine tuning of the track locations has recently become more pressing as I need to get the track finalized. The major plan is not changing, just moving track a few millimetres here and there.  

The picture is from my 780 P resolution  zoom camera mounted on my tripod looking across past the final version of the freight house just completed but not painted. 2870, an ex SSW locomotive sits in what will be one of the two roundhouse stalls. Beyond are mockups of the engine service outbuildings and a grounded wood sided passenger coach-baggage. At far right are buildings representing the small company stores warehouse at the end of the freight house track. Lumber is stacked there for pickup by a local lumber consignee.  

Nothing is really completed.  The garden tracks from the turntable and other trackage need to be buried in the ground. The freight station needs painting and the platform needs to be completed. The tree is from the old Padstow layout stationmaster's garden that was never completed. 

But the view represents a milestone of sorts as about a year ago I completed the benchwork. 

I am now in the midst of a technical project to set up a LocoFi WiFi controlled F7 A-B-A set that will run on the east-west SP main through Port Costa. There are a bunch of continuing tank car projects including the 3 SP O-50-13's I started a few months ago, A new Tangent tank car kit and acquisition of several additional tank cars that would used to service the Shell, Associated-Tidewater and Unocal refineries nearby.

I have been in a lot of zoom meetings and video conventions which take up time but also give me lots of new ideas. 

What Have I done under Shelter in Place for April

During the shelter in place, I have worked at times on the Port Costa layout making some progress but still not finalizing the most important issue: the finalization and  siting of the turntable. 

The mock-ups and preliminary siting of all outbuildings behind the roundhouse (I keep wanting to call it the engine shed) have taken some of the time. This is the current as of the end of April 2020 view of the illustration board structures with photocopy windows pasted on.

I don't have positive identification for most of the buildings.  The first building behind the roundhouse with a cupola was definitely the blacksmith shop. The cupola would be over the forge to vent the heat and gases. The row of buildings behind are parts storage and mess facilities including the grounded boxcar and what I believe was a clerestory combine. I am using a MDC Palace combine shell for the grounded car. It is 78' long and from what I would guess from photos should be shorter.  A grounded double sheathed 36 foot box car is also in the collection. One of the photos indicates it had windows cut in it similar to a work car. This is currently represented by an Accurail 36 foot 14 xx series car.

On the far right is the small freight shed with loading platform at the end of the track going in front of what I think was an SP company freight facility. This is an old wood kit I had from the 1980's layout at my house in San Francisco. The lumber stacks are from Owl Mountain and give the siding some purpose.

The two small outbuildings in colonial yellow to the left are sections houses standing in for the barn red buildings for what I think is the lubricant storage shed and further back the control and pump house for the bunker fuel sump represented by a piece of grey cardboard at the moment.  There was a short siding behind it for unloading SP tank cars with bunker oil and later diesel fuel. 

The track in the background curves the wrong way as it should run parallel to the EB/WB Western Division main towards Martinez. Part of my space compromise is that this represents the start of the Mococo line or the San Ramon branch.  It will extend as a staging track over my workbench for now.

This is the freight station with mock-ups for the freight station and freight house. The turntable has been re-sited and trackage reconfigured. The sand house has not had any more work since I replaced the end walls to give the roof a more correct pitch. 

I have purchased  a LifeLike gas storage tank as it had the largest diameter of any readily available tanks to represent the water tank peeking through the trees on the left and visible on the hill if you enlarge in the mirror image behind.  It is being held together by duck tape at the moment. The tank is however only 35 feet in diameter, not the prototype's 41 feet in diameter. It looks ok to me as when I mocked up the full size tank it looked a little out of place. 

That's all for now. I will try to do a little more and finish the immediate in progress projects on my work bench including a Lasercraft rebuild C-30-1 caboose with rectangular cupola, the 3 O-50-13 tank cars, some new Owl Mountain F-50 flats and whatever else meets my fancy.

Going Nowhere Fast at Port Costa

I have no deadlines on the Port Costa layout and I just work on whatever catches my fancy at the moment.

The last couple of days I have been thinking about tank cars.  Port Costa was the engine terminal for servicing the series of refineries along the south shore of the Carquinez straits in the 1940's and 1950's. The small yard would have been used to sort and block deliveries of some of the empty tank cars to the Martinez refineries to the east as well as cars for the C&H sugar refinery at Crockett to the west. Loads would have been attached directly to pick-up freights westbound to Oakland or eastbound to rest of the SP world via the bridge at Martinez or the line to Tracy.  

Before the Ozol yard was built between Port Costa and Martinez the other small local yards were just east of Martinez station at Mococo where the SP mainline had a flyover junction climbing to the Benicia Bridge and the line to Tracy, Avon (Avon Calling?) with the San Ramon branch and then Port Chicago for the military sealift command.  

Anyway I rounded up all of my operable tank cars and put them on the layout for an inventory picture. 

Most are still undecorated foobies dating back to the 1970's or later. Only one is an SP Athearn O-50-13 with the dome not yet modified.  I need to acquire 2-3 more and fix the domes, brakes and walkways at least. Others include ancient Varney 10,000 gallon cars from the early 1980's that have Champ UTLX and GATX decals, Life Like Hong Kong clones of the Varney cars and a bashed Tyco car. I acquired 4 of the Walther's 2011 NMRA Convention insulated tank cars, one Tangent an some unidentified other tanks.  I would expect most tank cars at Port Costa would be UTLX to service the Union Oil refinery in Martinez. SP cars would not predominate and one would be used to deliver bunker oil to the heated sump storage facility behind the round house.  Ron Plies modeled this very well in his version of Port Costa.  I don't have the room in my more condensed version to do it the same justice but I will suggest the presence.  Interesting, but I understand coal was used for roundhouse steam generation up until the end of steam not the bunker oil which was used just for fueling locomotives.  

One of the slow downs is my desire to improve the trackage particularly at the west end of the turntable. I am experimenting with building a left-right pair of Central Valley #5 code 70 turnouts replace the Peco Code 83 wyes I currently have in place. This would allow a better replication of the actual track configuration. 

 CV Templates for revised configuration which will change both turntable approach and track in front of station. 

I am a little bit daunted by the CV turnouts and waiting for supplies to replace the plastic frogs and improve my soldering kit.  In all my 60+ years of model railroading I have never successfully built a turnout from kit or scratch. I want this trackage in Code 70 to emphasize the difference with the mainline. If the CV turnouts don't work out , I am looking at a pair of Micro Engineering yard turnouts for this trackage. 

The Sand-house at Port Costa Part 1

I have become fascinated with the sand house/tool shed on the western approach track to the Port Costa turntable. Over the last few weeks I have been working on a representation in plastic. I do not have plans or even dimensions so I am working with estimations from some high resolution photo's provided by Bob Morris. I have estimated the basic dimensions as 35 foot length and 20 foot width. 

Photo from Bob Morris (photobob@snowcrest.net)

Note the water crane, sand lines and oil crane between the turntable approach and the engine service tracks.

The sand house/tool shed is a huge sandbox covered with the upper shed where I am guessing the sand pumping mechanism is housed to deliver it through overhead pipes to the west turntable approach track in front of the shed and the servicing track which is next track to the north. 

These are progress pix as of 2020-01-03 of the components of the sand box which are being built separately to allow better painting and easier rebuilding as I make mistakes.

This is how they go together without gluing.

The board and batten shed structure that fits atop the sandbox will be next.  I have estimated the height of the shed wall atop the sandbox as 10 feet and the apex of the end walls as 13.5 feet. 

If anyone has better information on dimensions please let me know at smadanek44g.com

Steam Power on my Port Costa Layout - Epistle 1

Port Costa was one of the final outposts of steam on the Southern Pacific and the small 2-8-0 consolidations and 2-6-0 moguls lasted well into 1956. This is one of the primary reasons I chose this location to model. 

But good HO SP consolidation models are not easy for me to come by. New ones are very rare and cost over $1000. I am reluctant to buy older models I will have to paint and wire for DCC.   I was fortunate to find the locomotive numbered 2575 in a private sale at a reasonable price.  It is a Sunset model that had been professionally painted, DCC installed along with a Tsunami sound system.  I am not too keen on the sound and as I now have to wear a hearing aid in one ear and the other ear almost profoundly deaf, it is not my highest priority. It doesn't sound right so I resort to F8 to silence the locomotive.  The tender is still unlettered and after researching the C-9 series in "Southern Pacific Consolidation 2-8-0. Pictorial Album Series Volume 1"  I decided to renumber it 2568 as the running boards on that engine matched the model with a high step. 2575 had a lower stepped running board at the front running around the cylinder pipe. I would like the new C-9 or 10's to have Vanderbilt tenders. Interesting enough I spotted 2568 in an 1950 photo of Port Costa with a whaleback tender.

The Bachmann heavy Baldwin consolidation is an interesting story. I understand Bachmann based this 1990's model on an Illinois Central 1920's Baldwin prototype. There was a plan a while ago for Owl Mountain to produce 3 D printed slanted cylinders, valve gear and domes to match the common SP locomotive style which unfortunately did not go anywhere. I then found a picture of a series of Cotton Belt 2-8-0's transferred to the Coast and Western Division in 1956 to use up their remaining boiler time before being scrapped. These it turns out were almost identical to the Bachmann model with similar dome shape and positioning, cylinders and valve gear. The tenders were similar but with different heavier tender trucks. They were numbered 2861-67 on the Pacific Lines but lasted a only a few months before scrapping.  I had given the Bachmann model the open number 2870 and a fictional background as one of a pair of Oregon lumber company locomotives acquired by the SP in the late 1940's. I planned to add 2869 later. They were fictionally assigned class C-13, a class vacated by scrapped 19th century consolidations by the 1950's.  

But suppose 2869 and 2870 were purchased by the SP from the SSW/Cotton Belt about 1950 during their early dieselization for the specific purpose of adding muscle to the helpers needed to move very heavy eastbound trains up the grade east of Martinez to the Carquinez Strait/Benicia bridge and still fit on the turntable at Port Costa.  A not entirely implausible fiction. I no longer need to do the surgery. I am looking for a good deal on another soundless but DCC wired Bachmann Baldwin heavy 2-8-0. 

Both 2870 and 2568 need to be fitted with a keep alive so they can navigate Peco electrofrog turnouts without having to wire the turnout frog. The diesel switchers work fine through these turnouts. Oh for that glorious day to come of bluetooth/wifi dead rail and no reliance on track wiring for power or control.

I could do with at least 2-3 more C-9 and/or C-10 locomotives to populate the Port Costa ready tracks and roundhouse.  And I would love to add a pair of M-6 moguls (or an M-6 and M-9) to represent the engines used on the San Ramon branch line based at Port Costa. The station at Walnut Creek is still in my long range planning .

I have a pair of IHC 2-6-0's that are sort of representations of M-4's. But to my knowledge the M-4's were based at Fairfield and worked the very light Calistoga branch along with local switching.  The IHC moguls will take a lot of work to make into good robust working models. I had just started on one of them just before the ceiling collapse in February 2019 took my office/train room and caused me to scrap my old Padstow layout.  I had just worked a bit on a shorty Vanderbilt tender built from a  Bachmann sort of UP like switch engine before the deluge.

The only other SP steam power that may yet grace the turntable at Port Costa is a pair of MDC 4-6-0's that represent T-28 locomotives. I built these in the early 1980's and spent a lot of time removing cast on details and replacing them with brass castings. They never worked very well and will need a complete new approach to the chassis, drivers and everything else to bring them up to any level of working on a DCC layout.

Structure Mockups

I like to mock up structures long before I get around to doing the detail buildings.  Sometimes it is a long time before I will get around to the detail construction but I really want something to give me a location and size.

So two important structures other than the roundhouse that I needed to visualize are the freight station and the enormous water tower/tank that loomed over the station and section house. Ron Pleis article in RMC indicated the water tank was 45 feet in diameter. However it was on a low wood platform (not steel) only about 14 feet high as it was also up a bit  on the slope of the hill to the west of downtown Port Costa.  The mock up is just some cardboard bent to form a 45 foot diameter tank. I covered it badly with black duct tape as it was on hand to give it the right coloration. It's mounted on blocks of wood and granite counter samples to approximate the height. I don't know if I will model the water treatment building(s?) behind the section house on some sort of angle where the very square corner of the two sections of the layout now join.

The backside of the freight station (the freight house is the smaller building next door) does not show up in most pictures of the station area. There was one tantalizing view from an angle in Ron's RMC article. Ron attributes the picture to Bob Morris, but Bob has indicated to me that he does not have that picture.  Because my layout is viewed looking north over the Carquinez Straits the backside of the station building will be highly visible. Anyway I analyzed that picture for window and door locations and made an assumption that the windows and doors were the same size as on the well documented track side. The mockup below is some cardboard covered with yellow frog masking tape with unpainted Tichy doors and windows tacked to it in the locations I guessed at. The freight door is scratch built and a test bed for SP freight freight house trim brown. The small 4 pane window is too large and will be replaced. 

Note: I recently found a picture of the backside of the station building on the Contra Costa County Historical website.  The backside of the building visible above will change shortly.

Quiet Please, Camera, Action

Just a brief note to say that last night an #1474, an Alco S-4 traversed 13 feet of track on the Port Costa layout. The wiring is somewhat temporary as is the track at the west end. But it is now a real operating model railroad.

First trackage tentatively fixed down and away we go....

The Port Costa Engine house kit from Banta arrived on Thursday (10/24/2019).  I immediately opened the box and found the sub floor for the engine house and started really planning the trackage. Three days later this is the result:

This is looking westward towards Oakland from the east end of the layout. If you are at all familiar with the SP at Port Costa you will hopefully recognize the scene with the track to McNear's warehouse to the left, the open tracks, the round house tracks and east turntable approach track. Beyond to the right are the engine service track, two Port Costa yard tracks, the eastbound main, the westbound main and I plan one last siding to the north next to the wall.  I will probably permanently park a string of completed SP boxcar kits against the wall to cover up the unseen waters edge edge of Carquinez straits

This is an SP rough drawing of the track plan for installation of a new water crane to show you what I am aiming towards.

I have added the crossover turnouts to not shown on the plan and the orientation of the east end turnouts to access the fictional beginning of the San Ramon Valley branch line just to the right of Port Costa instead of 10 miles further east at Avon on the Mococo line.  Just got to do what ya got to do when you have no space and want to somehow attach a model of the Type 18 Walnut Creek depot somewhere on the tiny layout. I haven't redrawn my overall plan to you can go back a few posts to see what I intend. 

The crossovers are intended to allow a westbound train off the branch to enter the westbound main. The SP would never have contemplated a double or single slip turnout for a location like this.

I also finally received a set of ordered Tichy windows that will closely match the size of the freight station office building. Previous sets made the distances between windows too close. 

Photo from Bob Morris collection

Ignore the numbers on the side of the building photo, I was trying to calculate the height by the number of pieces of siding.  The windows are shown against a cardboard mockup of the 16 foot tall 85 foot long building.  

The freight door is scratch built as I could not find the correct one in anyone's catalog of plastic moldings. The 8 pane windows were Tichy 8028 27x62 single double hung, 8064 59x64 double double hung. and 8070 59x64 double double hung with some windows open to give it variety.  The small 4 pane window probably for a bathroom needs to be replaced with one about half that size.  I will now have to mock up the rear side of the building which is not well documented. 

Saturday morning I had a delightful 1 hour phone conversation with Ron Pleis who built the July-August 2000 RMC featured version of Port Costa. Learned a lot. I have a lot more research to do.