Wagons and More Wagons

 

Two Buffalo Brewing Company wagons are loaded for delivery to the brewery in Sacramento. The lettering and buffalo logo was made from photos of  the prototype wagons. The flat car is a 30-foot scratchbuilt flat with 3D printed trucks.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine asked me to print some decals for him for a structure he was building. He wanted a sign for the building plus a sign to fit a Jordan wagon. I did it for him but it got me thinking about some wagons I wanted to build. In the down times waiting for paint to dry on the San Andreas (http://sandcrr.blogspot.com/2020/10/another-new-locomotive-for-s.html), I worked up the artwork for a few wagons for the Stockton area. Of the six wagons, four were lettered for the Buffalo Brewery, a Sacramento establishment popular in my era. In addition, I made up art for two Stockton-based companies.

     

The Stockton Home Bakery was a going concern at the turn of the century and will continue to be on my railroad.

All of the wagons were built from Jordan Delivery Wagons, both the Light and Standard versions. Two of the finished wagons were destined as loads from the Henderson Wagon Factory in Stockton and went on a flat. The others will occupy the streets of Stockton when I get to the point where there are streets in Stockton.

   

Another Buffalo wagon, this one delivers ice cut from the high Sierras and store in insulated warehouses for summer use. Crown flour was a common brand in the 1800s and its factory will fit into a small area in Stockton.

 Like all projects, it expanded with more paint-drying time involved in two-tone paint schemes but I like the results and that is the best measure in my mind. Jordan kits are getting scarce and prices are high but, fortunately, there are other companies picking up the slack with laser-cut or 3D printed kits. Berkshire Valley Models have several horse-drawn vehicles in both HO and O scale including drivers and horses.

    

Another New Locomotive for the S&C

 

The new locomotive San Andreas sits on the Duck Creek Trestle shortly after arrival.

The past couple of months have been somewhat hectic around the house with little time to work on railroad projects. I have, however, (finally) completed a new locomotive. It is a brass import of unknown manufacture and represents the early class of moguls purchased by the Virginia & Truckee Railroad. Manufactured by Baldwin between 1870 and 1873, the V&T received six identical engines each named for a county or city in the Comstock area. This engine specifically is a model of the first of the run of moguls, the Virginia. 

     I maintained the look of the prototype including the paint colors but lettered it for the Stockton & Copperopolis as its Number 20, the San Andreas. San Andreas is a small town in the Mother Lode country of California and its citizens would naturally take the S&C for their travels. I installed a Tsunami2-Steam 2 decoder and it makes the engine perform very nicely. What it will be doing I have not yet decided but it will undoubtedly be pulling freight of some sort.

     There may be some who question the shiny newness of my locos. In fact, in my period, when specific engineers were assigned to specific locos, they took a great deal of care of them. This not only applied to passenger engines but freight as well. The following clip from a period newspaper shows what I am talking about.

May 22, 1873 - Gold Hill News

A Handsome Locomotive. - The locomotive Esmeralda, attached to a heavy freight train en route for Virginia, to-day halted for a breathing spell at the railroad depot, Gold Hill. With her brasses well burnished and her head lights decorated with wild flowers, she looked as handsome as could be. We don't wonder that Engineer Johnny Elkins is proud of her.

The Esmeralda was one of the sister engines to my engine and was assigned to pull freight trains. My engines, however, don't have the wild flowers. Maybe there's room for more detail?