Southern Pacific Coast Line in HO


Back in post #135 I showed you photos of the staging/return loop. The plan was to not do scenery or anything back there. It was supposed to be "off site". Well, so much for that plan. One of the things missing from my layout was any excuse to run the iconic sugar beet trains. I've got three "beet racks", as they are called, but nowhere to run them to. I recently discovered plans for a sugar beet loader that were in the November, 2008 issue of Model Railroad Craftsman and that's all it took. So, where can I put a spur for one of those? Off the return loop of course!

Now understand that this loader design is based on one that stood in San Ardo, California. And there is no way I can put San Ardo anywhere near where it should be, geographically, on my layout. But I'm not the first model railroader that has moved whole towns and other features out of place just to make the railroad flow a little better. That's why my little version of San Ardo will be located more than 100 miles from where it should be, somewhere north of Watsonville. (Don't hate) :)

Here's a photo of the new spur.

NewLayout191.jpg


And here are a couple of work-in-progress photos of my scratch built beet loader.

BeetLoader41.jpg


BeetLoader40.jpg


BeetLoader42.jpg
 
truckdad said:
@2002p51
When you get those beet gondolas loaded, send them down here to the Union Sugar mill in Betteravia (still under construction). Dont expect to get them back after they are dumped! ;)

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That's awesome. In my research I was looking at Betteravia on Google Maps and Google Street View and, even though the plant has been abandoned, those two big siloes, or whatever they are, are still there. Nice job. Hope you'll show us more as you get it finished.
 
2002p51 said:
That's awesome. In my research I was looking at Betteravia on Google Maps and Google Street View and, even though the plant has been abandoned, those two big siloes, or whatever they are, are still there. Nice job. Hope you'll show us more as you get it finished.
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I'm familiar with the beet loading station that was in San Ardo, I saw it many times on my travels up and down US 101. The sugar plant is where I started my trucking career, loading liquid, bulk & sack sugar from 68-73. I was even inside one of the silos once when it was empty. They should be twice the size they are on the layout!! I'm going to need a few beet gondolas, a few covered hoppers, a couple tank cars and 2 GE 70 tonners & a GP-9 to service the mill. I'm not moving too fast on this, I have realized I am a good distance modeler. At a good distance away, my modeling looks good. ;)
 
Way back in post #58 I showed this photo:

newlayout129.jpg


This building is a Walthers kit built straight out of the box with signage I made on my computer.

A few months ago I bought this truck on eBay:
DelMonte01.jpg


On a hunch I started a search on Google Images and came up with this:

Cal-pak-10.jpg



Well, that was all I needed to start another scratch building project. That Walthers building was soon replaced with this:

DelMonte02.jpg


This is all done with Evergreen clapboard siding and styrene strip. I salvaged the doors and windows from the Walthers building. I need to add the "California Packing Corporation" lettering yet. Not sure how I'm going to do that, but I'll come up with something.
 
Here's a preliminary mock up of the town of San Ardo, California.

NewLayout194.jpg


The two story building will be a general store/gas station. I need to work a street in there somehow. May not have room for the appropriate yards for those houses. Nothing set yet.

The spur is long enough to get 6 cars under the loader.

newlayout195.jpg



So far I only have the three you see here. I'm watching eBay for more.

One of the things I learned in my research on San Ardo. (I love the research side of this hobby) is that there is/was a large oil field just outside of town. That gave me the idea of putting a few of those horse head style oil pumps along the other side of the tracks. Walthers has a nice one but it is way too expensive. One thought I have is that I may buy one and use it as a pattern to scratch build 3 or 4 more.
 
Nice work p51. The oil field was south of town and the road near the beet loader was the "old" hwy 101. I was looking on google maps for the dump siding and realized the dump station I used to see was the one south of Gilroy, CA. ( see pic) The old highway ran thru San Ardo, then north along the SP line thru San Lucas & on to King City. The new freeway bypassed these towns around 1970.
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truckdad said:
Nice work p51. The oil field was south of town and the road near the beet loader was the "old" hwy 101. I was looking on google maps for the dump siding and realized the dump station I used to see was the one south of Gilroy, CA. ( see pic) The old highway ran thru San Ardo, then north along the SP line thru San Lucas & on to King City. The new freeway bypassed these towns around 1970.
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Yea, I knew the oil field was south of the town. I've been cruising Google maps and street view a lot. But I figured since I'm moving San Ardo about 100 miles from where it should be, it's no problem to move the oil field a couple miles to just across the tracks ! :)
 
This is a California Tank House. They were a common site in citrus orchards in California from the 1920's into the '40's. They were mostly gone by the late '50's early '60's that my layout is set in but ever since I saw the plans for one in an article in the September 2018 issue of Model Railroader magazine, I've wanted to build one. Finally got around to it>

newlayout196.jpg


Scratch built from Evergreen mostly with stairs left over from some other kit and the windmill blades from a Woodland Scenics kit. This brings the total number of scratch built structures on my layout to 22. (Ignore the pink mountain in the background)
 
Update on San Ardo. If you look up the page a little where I posted the photo of the tentative plan for San Ardo you'll see I was thinking about representing the town with a couple houses, etc. Not going to happen. Just wasn't enough room there to make it look right. Then I realized it would've been on the wrong side of the tracks and nobody wants to live there. :) So the plan now is to make the scene just like a diorama with the beet loader the main character. There was 14" of plywood between the spur track and where the backdrop would mount and that's a lot of space to fill with scenery materials. So I cut that down to just 7" which you can see in this photo:

newlayout197.jpg


Also, remember that I never planned on having scenery on this part of the layout so there is no roadbed under the tracks. The main line should be higher than the other two tracks. I still wanted to make a visual difference between the spur, the main track, and the passing siding. Instead of regular ballast on the spur I used the same "dirt" as the rest of the area to depict light rail just laid on the ground. I used black ballast in between the rails on the main because all of the SP main lines I saw when I lived in California were dark with grease and oil from the trains. Then the passing siding got a regular ballast treatment. If you look closely you can see that I also weathered the ties on the siding and the spur indicating that these two tracks would receive a little less maintenance than the main. More scenery work to follow including a back drop that just has some low brown hills in the distance which is what I see when I look at this area on Google Street View.
 
Haven't made much progress the last few days. Just lots of other stuff needing to get done. I did fix up this truck. It's a Mini Metals '55 Chevy stake bed truck. I cut the stake bed off and scratch built the dump bed out of Evergreen styrene.

newlayout199.jpg


And I went ahead and popped for Walthers $30.00 oil well pump! It's a nice kit but way overpriced in my opinion. Anyway, when I look at the oil field near San Ardo on Google satellite view, there is piping running all over the place. I figured since this thing is pumping oil up from the well, it need to go somewhere so, I used some of Walthers piping kit parts and did what you see in the photo. Disclaimer: I have no clue about the oil industry or how any of this stuff works so don't be too critical. :) More scenery and ground cover to some in this area.

newlayout200.jpg
 
2002p51 said:
Haven't made much progress the last few days. Just lots of other stuff needing to get done. I did fix up this truck. It's a Mini Metals '55 Chevy stake bed truck. I cut the stake bed off and scratch built the dump bed out of Evergreen styrene.

View attachment 140033

And I went ahead and popped for Walthers $30.00 oil well pump! It's a nice kit but way overpriced in my opinion. Anyway, when I look at the oil field near San Ardo on Google satellite view, there is piping running all over the place. I figured since this thing is pumping oil up from the well, it need to go somewhere so, I used some of Walthers piping kit parts and did what you see in the photo. Disclaimer: I have no clue about the oil industry or how any of this stuff works so don't be too critical. :) More scenery and ground cover to some in this area.

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I really like the way the truck turned out. The sugar beets are recognizable, which should be taken as a big complement in ho scale.

The only critical thing I can say about the pump jack is I think the cable would be perfectly vertical. I think all the pipes around the well casing were buried before the pump jack went up too

When fracking, there was a manifold at the wellhead and that is where the water and slurry were pumped in. These were always removed after fracking.

Nice work!
 
logandsawman said:
I really like the way the truck turned out. The sugar beets are recognizable, which should be taken as a big complement in ho scale.

The only critical thing I can say about the pump jack is I think the cable would be perfectly vertical. I think all the pipes around the well casing were buried before the pump jack went up too

When fracking, there was a manifold at the wellhead and that is where the water and slurry were pumped in. These were always removed after fracking.

Nice work!
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Yep, I knew the cable should be vertical. I glued the beam to the fulcrum a little too far back and it's too late to fix it. Thanks for the kind words about the truck.

I've spent a lot of time looking at the San Ardo oil field on Google satellite view and there seems to be piping running all over the place. Some of it is under ground, some above. Some looks like it's coming from the well heads. Like I said earlier, I have no idea what I'm looking at. I just want to make this scene look plausible. :)
 
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