2017 Annual Report

When I started out this post I thought about calling it the state of the layout but that seemed like too limiting a title. Thats why I am going with the annual report much like many businesses give their share holders. So here is the first ever annual report for the YPG Lines.

As we close out 2016 many milestones were accomplished even though no physical layout has been started. It has been about 2 years since I officially changed my focus from a protolanced Southern Pacific Railroad to modeling the Sunset Route. While I spent much of 2015 questioning this decision 2016 provided many to opertunities to help solidify this decision.

First and foremost Athearn announced they were rerunning the SP ore gons that were unique to this segment of railroad. In 2016 I also successfully 3d printed a preformed concrete electrical box that are located in the Yuma yard, as well as have been working to learn how to design structures for 3d printing.

The SPH&TS convention in Palm Springs was attended and much was learned about all aspects of the Yuma to Colton segment of the line.  The biggest milestone is that the critical research has been completed and track planning has begun. I have examined all the photos in the Railroad section of the Historical Society collection and have gone through 35 of 70 boxes of their entire collection looking for photos thay may show railroad. Research will continue but will focus more on aesthetics of the area versus track planning.
In 2016 I also joined the local model railroad club which has two benefits, first it has introduced me to other modelers in the community, several of which have contacts within the community which I am trying to use for research.  Second the club is in the process of designing a layout based on Yuma Arizona set 20 years earlier than my era.  This has meant that I have been able to give the other member research I have uncovered in exchange for other information that they might have.

During 2016 I appeared twice on Model Rail Radio which allowed me to not only publicize my efforts, but to reach out to other modelers and bounce some track plan and layout design ideas off of them.

The final milestone for 2016 was the layout went from being a concept to having a name and getting its own Facebook page.  The Southern Pacific YPG Lines was chosen to represent the areas being modeled. This layout will model the Yuma, Phoenix and Gila Subdivisions of the Southern Pacific so YPG for short. I felt this was more descriptive than calling it the Sunset Route because the modeled area will only be a small section of the sunset route and to call it a division would be a misnomer as the modeled areas include parts of two division, the Tucson Division and the Los Angelos Division (or depending on the year San Joaquin Division) and not a whole division.  This need for a name came about because the Facebook page I created for the layout needed a strong name that invoked images of a class 1 railroad that was simpler than the title of this blog.

So where is the railroad headed in 2017?

The railroad was always intended to be built using the TOMA approach(even before MRH coined that term) and be built in phases with phase 1 being the Yuma area, phase 2 being the line from Colton to Araz, and Phase 3 being the Phoenix and Gila subs with the idea being that these last two parallel subdivisions could be added later as a second deck.

In 2017 I plan to finalize the track plan for phase 1 as well as start design work on phase 2 and 3.  I am hoping to be able to start construction on phase 1 before the summer as it will be miserably hot and using power tools outside is not an enjoyable process.

 I plan to finish the design work on a structure for my father's layout and possibly start construction on it so that he can display it at the 2018 GNRHS convention which is being held in my hometown.  This structure is being worked on in a as time is available capacity and mainly serves as something to shift gears to when the YPG lines frustrates me to the point I need a break.

I am hoping to acquire the needed kits to build the Salt Creek Bridge along the Salton Sea and have that done in time for the 2017 SPH&TS Convention in Sonoma as I won my lodging and convention registration at the Palm Springs convention.

I also plan on starting on a locomotive model and posibly having that ready for the SPH&TS convention as well.

I plan to attempt to add a blog entry atleast once a month. Which is certainly more regularly than I have before.

So how do I plan to get there?

I am going to try and stick to the 15 minutes a day on the hobby and also use part of one of my nights off.  Smaller projects or parts of projects can be accomplished in the 15 minutes with longer projects and design work being reserved for the night off.

 All in all these seem like managable goals and hopefully will be easily obtained with other goals being picked up along the way. Overall the state of the railroad is good and we are a lot further along than we were two years ago.

Happy rails and see you in 2017

Morgan

Change is here

So incase people haven't noticed I have fallen way behind on updating this blog. That does not mean that progress has halted but to the contrary there has been lots of progress made on the research front, however nothing that I have felt merited a full blow blog post. So with that in mind I have created a Facebook page for the layout as I find Facebook easier to make quick posts on. That does not mean the blog is going away but rather that I will attempt to update it more regularly with a meaningful post instead of letting it slip by the wayside, and all posts that are more fitting to Facebook such as the "shut up and take my money" ones that seem to follow every other months Athearn announcements.  Also wile the blog name will stay the same I felt the layout deserved a more railroad like name. I decided on the Southern Pacific YPG Lines. No it isnt named after the Yuma Proving grounds but rather to reflect that the layout will represent the Yuma, Phoenix and Gila Subdivisions of the Southern Pacific. While Yuma will remain the focus I have decided that operationally including Beaumont Hill was a good Idea. So if all goes according to plan the visible layout will start at Colton Tower and end at the Tucson depot. I am trying to figure out how to best include the three subdivisions and have perhaps settled on a two deck design but thats for another post. So on that note like us on Facebook @SouthernPacificYPGLines.

Speed bumps in the road

In July I started laying out the Yuma main yard using Fast Tracks templates on cardboard in order to create templates for future modules. Starting from 16th Street and working north I successfully completed the yard throat including the grain spur and scale track.  Progress however came to a screeching halt when I began trying to connect the "Old Yard" area to the newer "Main Yard" the first hiccup is when the mainline was relocated in the twenties it was placed on a fill due to persistent flooding in the area.  I know it sounds funny as one would not think flooding would be a problem in Arizona, however we must remember this was in the years before Hoover Dam was constructed so aside from the very small (in comparison) Laguna Dam just north of town the river was for all intents and purposes still wild.  So because of this fill the "Main Yard" in some places is about 15 feet higher than the "Old Yard" so this grade must be accommodated.  second the yards being slightly off parallel to each other means that they join at an interesting angle which must be taken into account when laying out the modules.  The industry tracks in turn go off from the "Old Yard" tracks at differing angles which also compounds planning for uniform modules. Since I am trying to keep the modules no more than30 inches wide and6 feet long this is proving problematic. The solution I have come up with to minimize problems is to simplify the "Old Yard" and eliminate some of the industries and their corresponding tracks. Which leads us to the final problem; a very large industry called Southwest Ice and Cold Storage.  when the line was relocated instead of building a new ice plant the railroad just ran the tracks down the other side of the facility.  So before the "Old Yard" tracks can return to paralleling the "Main Yard" they must first create enough space that this facility can fit between the two yards.  The measurements I had made the building seem too large to build with out significant compression and even then it would take up a large chunk of a 6 foot by 30 inch module.  Thankfully this impasse lead to a return to the local archives where I learned that the facility had had a significant fire in 1959 and therefore no longer matched the information on the Sanborn map in the period I model which is roughly two decades later.  Also some of the functions of the original plant had been moved to a second facility closer to the depot.  The problem is both of these facilities were long gone by the time I got to Yuma.  Thankfully Google Earth has both a historic photos function as well as a measurement function. these rough measurements were used and yielded a more manageable building.  hopefully in the next couple weeks I can develop a 3d model of the facility in Sketchup and track planning can resume.

So much going on.

It has been a while since I have updated this so I figured a quick update was needed.  Progress on the layout planning ground to a screeching halt for a variety of reasons first and foremost that I had to travel to attend a wedding.  The big hurdle right now is that I have to figure out how to effectively compress the Southwestern Ice and Cold Storage facility with out losing its aesthetics. This facility sat right between the old yard and the new yard and determining its size for the layout is crucial to determining the size and location of other industries and tracks.  That's not to say I haven't been doing work in the hobby, in the interim I have been helping my dad with a few projects for his layout.  He models the Great Northern circa 1955 so when ever I get frustrated with my layout, his projects are a nice change of pace.  On another note I had the privilege of going on Model Rail Radio and discussing my layout ideas with Tom Barbalet.  You can find that episode by following the link here: http://www.modelrailradio.com/archive.html#122.  If you aren't already listening to this fine podcast I cant recommend it enough, along with A Modelers Life and The Model Railcast Show.  Sorry for the short post but as I said there is so much going on right now.

Adventures in 3d printing

So today I finally recieved my long awaited package from Shapeways. The model is an HO scale Southern Pacific preformed concrete relay and baterry shed.  Needless to say I was amazed at how the model turned out however there are a few things I now know I need to tweek in the drawing. Some of these could be solved by working more on the kit form of the model however after seeing the size of the final model a kit may just border on insanity. For one thing the smoke jack is half the size it needs to be because I missread the common standard drawing I was working from. Secondly the door and window trim does not show up very well when drawn to true scale. This causes the door to blend into the model. That said i think this model might still be salvagable. There are two of these sheds near Prison Hill in the Yuma main yard both are in derelict condition and one has been moved from the location it was in during the period I am modeling. The photos I have seen on the internet and elsewhere show that even in the 80's one of these sheds had already had the smoke jack removed, so modeling this shed could solve the problem of the undersized smoke jack and prhaps the other details can be painted on. I have included some photos for reference of both the model and the prototype as well as the drawings I was working from.

 Drawings from Southern Pacific Common Standard Book volume 5

The model:

The prototype:

Shut up and take my money!!!

To say I am excited about Athearn's most recent announcement is an understatement. 


http://www.athearn.com/newsletter/052716/01_Genesis_GP40P-2_052716.pdf


I have always been a fan of the Bicentennial units and this was the last one I needed to complete the trio.  Also considering that the other two units were released by Athearn and Bowser respectively about the same time this announcement has been a long time coming.  This is also one of the units I asked Shane about a couple years ago at the Worlds Greatest Hobby Show in San Diego (here's hoping for DD35s and SDP40Fs will be coming soon). 


Now the sad part is that since I have decided to model the Sunset Route this locomotive will most likely become a shelf queen as the GP40P-2s like the SDP45s were usually held in captive service for the commutes in the Bay Area and when they did venture out in freight service it was usually only over Donner Pass or to Los Angeles on a Saturday so that they could return to the Bay Area on Sunday to resume commuter service on Monday.  So the likelihood that this locomotive would make an appearance in Yuma is low however if there are things I have learned in this hobby is never say never and there is a prototype for everything. So if anybody has any photographic evidence that these locomotives ever ventured to Yuma please contact me and share.  Since these were the reserve power for the business train it is possible they made a run in that capacity.


On another note I realize this blog seems a bit neglected which I hope to rectify in the future.  I recently returned from a two and a half week road trip across the southern United States and yes some railroad sites did make the itinerary but more on that another time.

Final closure on the status of the Somerton Branch?

So the other day I was driving by and noticed a Union Pacific work crew working in the area where the Somerton Branch begins.  For those not completely familiar with the layout of the tracks at the (railroad) west end of Yuma for the last few years there have been three tracks in the area of the passenger platform and the old yard office. At the end of the platform there was a crossover between the track closest to the yard office (true west) and the middle track.  After this crossover the closest track became the Somerton Branch and the middle and far tracks merge to cross the bridge.  A return visit today once again yielded a work crew in the area but in one spot where there should have been a crossover and three tracks there were only two tracks. It appears that after nearly three decades of not being used by the railroad and an embargo on the line the Union Pacific has decided to finally officially abandon the line (which has been unofficially abandoned since the tourist Yuma Valley Railroad ceased operations) and severed its link to the mainline.  While this is not a complete surprise as there are many segments of this branch that have been removed for road improvements further down the line but most of these were south of the power plant and desalinization plant  which both seemed to maintain rail spurs although if I recall correctly the line into the desalinization plant was cut the last time I drove by the area taking that industry offline. An interesting side note is that the desalinization plant was constructed well after the time period that most people give for SP ceasing operations on the Somerton Branch.  This is also an interesting move because when the Arizona Department of Transportation repaved Fourth Avenue a year or so ago they were required to replace the tracks crossing Fourth Avenue albeit with abandoned signs under the cross bucks.  One would think if the line was truly abandoned and was going to be severed from the mainline this unnecessary time and expense would not have been taken.  So it appears that the Somerton Branch is now officially history however as this is a key area in my planned phase one of construction I will be making repeated visits and keeping an eye on this.  below are some photos taken today unfortunately as far as cell phone photos go they are pretty bad lighting wise.  they are also taken from the opposite perspective that I had described the tracks from earlier.

A UP maintenance truck sits were the crossover used to be.  Interestingly a prototype for my current modeling project also appears in this photo.

The shadows make it hard to see, but the rail for Somerton branch end about the rear tire of the truck.