Wye wye wye

No this is not about my almost nightly conversation with my four year old daughter.  Rather this is a post about that versatile piece of track work that allows us to enter a junction from either direction or depending on the size turn a locomotive or an entire train.

 

As I was looking at the list of locations to be modeled in all three phases the theme of the wye jumped out at me. By my count at one time there were effectively 9 wyes between Colton and Tucson, 8 true wyes and 1 location that is effectively a wye. This is in addition to the balloon track and wye (junction with the Palmdale Cutoff) at the West Colton Yard which will be off the modeled portion of the layout.

 I am not sure what year the wye at Tucson was removed but from cab ride footage on Vimeo it was stated that it was removed before the early 90's.

This may not be important as like West Colton I plan to use staging  to represent the yard at Tucson and only model as far as the Tucson depot. But the depots I want to model is for another day and another blog post. 

So back to wyes, we have already discussed the wye in Yuma at great length so we will not spend too much time on it here other than a picture for reference.

Starting from the east there is a wye at Picacho AZ where the Phoenix line diverges/rejoins the Gila line. This has been more important since the UP take over as the western portion of the Phoenix line has been mothballed and for a train to get from Phoenix to Yuma such as when UP 844 was on tour the west leg of the wye sees use. However from what I can tell this is a rarity as most Phoenix trains in modern times go to Tucson and are then sorted for other destinations. Interestingly no wye was ever built at Wellton where the western portion of the Phoenix line diverges/rejoins the Gila line.

At one point there was a wye in Gila Bend and it is still visible in Google Earth images however there is no real need for this wye so it will be omitted.

Skipping Yuma the next wye is at Niland where the Calexico Branchline from El Centro joins the Sunset Route. While the west leg of this wye saw much traffic especially during the sugar beet rush, the eastern leg was used far less.

Proceeding west from Niland, CA along the Salton Sea between what was Bertram Siding and Salton Siding was the interchange with Kaiser Steel's Eagle Mountain Railroad at Ferrum. For those that don't know this spot gets its name from the Latin word for iron. At Ferrum there was a small yard for interchange of the 100 car iron ore trains and in this yard is a small wye. This area was built up due to the War effort and saw use for iron and later taconite trains until the mid 1980's. An interesting side note is that the taconite shipped from the Eagle Mountain Mine had a purplish color not the rust color that Athearn chose for the loads on their excellent models of these cars. This wye was built to turn steam locomotives used by the SP on the ore trains (as far as I can tell the Kaiser's Railroad was always dieselized) and did not see much use in the diesel era.  One time the wye did see use in the diesel era was to turn SP 4449 after completion of filming for the movie "Tough Guys" which had the final scenes filmed along the Eagle Mountain Railroad.  An interesting feature of this wye is that the tail track dead ends in a short cut this is similar to a wye on the SP Cascade line which dead ended in a short tunnel  (hey there is a prototype for everything).

Indio was the site of the next wye and although there was a very large engine facility to service steam engines here, it was built in a linear fashion like a modern diesel facility with no turntable. Due to space constraints I am trying to determine what if anything to model in Indio but most likely the wye will be omitted or only implied.

Colton has two wyes, one east of the diamonds and the final wye is only really an effective wye as the tracks at Colton crossing could be used in this fashion but to my knowledge never were.

So the biggest problem with wyes in the model form is that they eat up a ton of real estate. This can be a problem with our compressed scenes.  If we maintain our standards for switches and curves this can be even more of a problem. As modelers we can get creative to make a wye fit our space but is this really a good idea. What about reducing the radius on lesser used legs of wyes such as at junctions. The aerial photo of the wye at Picacho illustrates this perfectly. I have decided that at least one of the interchange tracks at Colton will only be implied and will end shortly after it goes out of view. But what about the other wyes?  This will be my challenge as I move on from here a Bachmann GS-4 (4-8-4) will allegedly negotiate a 24 inch curve but should it? My standards for yard trackage is 30 inch curves, which begs the question is it more beneficial to omit a wye or deviate from these standards on legs or wyes that are purely cosmetic. I guess it is truly a matter of personal preference and I will figure this out as I go along as they say it is the journey not the destination.