Plaster, Cardboard, Painting and a Couple of Cabooses

Since the ground around the real Farmington is pretty flat, there is not much to put on a backdrop so I contented myself with low rolling hills and distant mountains. The Sculptamold will eventually be painted and covered with dirt.

After some family activities which occupied about a week of time which could have been spent on the railroad, I finally got back to it this week.It seems that all of the necessary buildings for Farmington have been constructed and so it was necessary to get on with the scenery. Cork sheets helped to build up the structures so they would be even with the roadbed. Sculptamold was then used to even out some of sharp edges created by chunks of plywood and cork. When covered with dirt and vegetation, the landscape will look fairly realistic. Cardboard strips were laid down to mark where roads will eventually reside. When the Sculptamold is dry, it will be painted the same bland color the rest of the area is painted.
     This morning, I went down to the basement to see what I could do about a backdrop. I have never made claims to being an artist and I only aspire to my backdrops providing the suggestion that there is something beyond the railroad. They don't have to be perfect. After all, I hope the visitors are looking at the trains and structures more than the backdrop. In any case, I managed to get the job done and am reasonably satisfied with the work.
   

Farmington is at the end of an aisle behind the photographer, or will be. Now it's strung out all along the railroad. Once the scenery is done here, there will be a long stretch of track with no unscenicked sections.

After deciding where each structure was going to be placed, I removed them and stacked them on other parts of the railroad. I had no idea that they would take up as much space as they do.
     A few weeks ago, I had finished a grain warehouse but wanted rolled roofing to complete the project. My normal supplier was suffering, as everyone else is, with being confined to his house. It took a few weeks to get the material but it was finished this week and that structure is now ready for placement.
   

Two S&I cabooses awaiting a train for Ione. Now all I have to do is get a couple of working locomotives.

While waiting for roofing and things to dry, I took a quick break and built up a couple of narrow gauge caboose kits for the Stockton & Ione. These were Grandt Line C&S kits I had had for a while. One of them was built per the kit with a cupola. The other I decided to represent as an old car which had yet to be fitted for a cupola. Both were readily assembled even though some of the kit parts are very tiny.
     At least the world situation has allowed me to get some work done and clutter up the railroad while I do it.

Coal Gondolas on the Stockton & Ione

Ten new coal gondolas sit on tracks next to the storage bins of the mine. The mine structure was salvaged from my former layout and will eventually be incorporated into the railroad.

Recently, I was looking through the Shapeways website and found some HOn3 low-side gondolas (https://www.shapeways.com/product/2QVG8295Z/hon3-25-foot-gondola-2-planks-high?optionId=43338423) for a reasonable price. I ordered a couple, liked them and ordered some more for a total of ten cars. I added truss rods from fishing line, a brake wheel and trucks. Now I have cars to carry the coal from the mines at Ione City to Holden.
      The finish on the cars are a little rough but this works on cars which are supposed to have been beat up due to the load they were carrying. The weight is a little low but there is not much room for more weight anywhere. I am still working on that problem.

Switch Engine for the S&I

A combination of 3D printed boiler/cab on a HOn30 mechanism produced this nice little switch engine for the yard at Holden. The track sliders can be seen between the drivers. They will eventually be painted. to hide them.

Although my narrow gauge feeder, the Stockton & Ione is not yet ready for operation, I ran across a blog post about a fellow who used an HOn30 Japanese mechanism and a 3D printed body to build a light Porter 0-4-0T. I purchased the chassis and the body parts and built up one of these little locos. I weighted the boiler and tank with tungsten putty and installed a Soundtraxx mobile decoder (I wanted sound but there is just no place I could find to put a speaker).
   

The Ione can easily pull two cars plus a little more. 

There were a few problems to overcome, however. The first was that the wheels were gauged for HOn30. I first thought about replacing the 2mm axles with longer shafts but found that I could simply pull out the wheels on the existing axles to HOn3 gauge. The second major problem is electrical pickup. The chassis comes with wipers on all four wheels which is just not enough. I added some track sliders between the drivers and that helped quite a bit but the engine still stalls every now and then. The more I run the engine, the better it runs so it might just need some more running.
     Overall, the performance is very good. The engine can pull 2 cars with ease and a third one on level track, just about what the prototype would be expected to do. It does run very well with the mobile decoder and some momentum built in.

On to Ione!

Soon-to-be Engine No. 2 of the Stockton & Ione RR arrives opposite downtown Ione City. The real S&I No. 2 was an
0-6-4T while this engine is modeled after the DSP&P's 2-6-6Ts.

From the Amador Times:
Late Monday night, rails of the Stockton & Ione line finally reached our bustling city and the shrieking of railroad whistles filled the night air. Our railroad connection to Stockton and the outside world has arrived.

Another way to put would be that I spent a couple of days finishing the trackwork from what I've been calling Forbe's Crossing to Ione. There's still no wiring; I'm working out any inaccuracies in the turnouts and I had to get things cleaned up for Prairie Rail 2014 which is occurring in Kansas City this weekend. Prairie Rail is an invitational bi-annual model railroad operations weekend. This coming February 21-23, about 120 model railroaders from all over the country are converging on the Kansas City area, each to spend time operating on four of the 29 model railroads participating in the event.
   The S&C will be hosting two three-hour operating sessions during the weekend as will the other model railroads. We've done this before and it's a lot of fun meeting folks from out of state and getting to know them.
   Not all of the work you see in the photos was done in the two days I mention, however. The four turnouts, two of which are 3-ways, were built several weeks ago and were just waiting to be installed. After Prairie Rail is over and I catch up on some of the things around the house that I have been putting off until after Prairie Rail, I can get back and get the track wired. After that, I will have to get serious about getting some locomotives built or modified.

Looking north at the small Ione yard. A diamond has to be built so that the industrial sidings can access a couple of businesses but most of the area will be the townsite.

Stockton & Ione Railroad - Track Reaches Forbes Crossing

A Stockton & Ione work train pushes flat cars with track-laying supplies near the new depot. The Amador Coal Company is at the left.

Stockton Daily Independent - August 20, 1875
In a flurry of activity, track crews of the narrow-gauge Stockton & Ione Railroad laid track from its junction with the Stockton & Copperopolis to Forbes Crossing. Officials of the railroad expect that trains will be running to Ione City by September.

    Well, the above is not really from the Stockton Daily Independent but it shows that some work has been done and engines have been run over the track, after a fashion anyway. There is no wiring as yet but jumper cords do wonders. As a short feeder line for the S&C, the S&I won't be much of a railroad but more of a switching line. Forbes Crossing will be a small town with a coal mine run by Amador Coal and served by the railroad. A short team track will be the only other track there. The reason for this new construction is that the National Narrow Gauge Convention is coming to Kansas City this September and the Stockton & Copperopolis has been asked to be on the layout tours. I figured that there should be some narrow gauge trains running even if there are not very many.

The S&I leaves 3-rail track at the far right, passes through "Forbes Crossing" and will continue to the left.

Looking from the junction, the whole of "Forbes Crossing" is seen. The team track is at the right with the Amador Coal-to-be building at the rear.

    The mine structure used to represent a silver mine on my previous layout and it will be repurposed into the needed coal mine including a new "Amador Coal" sign. The small depot was at Forbes Crossing on the old layout as well and the town may or may not be renamed as well. When I started this project, I did not think that many of the old buildings would be usable on this railroad but, so far, I have managed to reuse several of them much to my enjoyment.
   The track construction is the same as on the main railroad, foam insulating tape with flex track glued to it with silicon caulk. Code 55 is used for the main lines and code 40 for the sidings. The turnouts are all code 55 built from Fast Tracks jigs.
 

The traveling photographer disembarked from the noon Peters train to capture the image of an 1887 Benz newly-arrived in the neighborhood.

Like most photographers, Mr. Ball uses an 8x10 inch wet-plate camera on which to capture his images. These plates must be developed in the photographer's wagon within a few minutes following their exposure.

On another note, I finished painting a couple of small figures so I put them to use on the railroad.

This elderly woman was painted by grand-daughter Jessica, 7 years old. It was her first foray into figure painting.

It's lunchtime and, before making his deliveries, one of the workers decides to entertain his friends on someone else's piano.

New Boxcars for the Stockton & Ione

New boxcars for the Stockton & Ione are patterned after 1880s Denver & Rio Grande prototypes. The red barrels are on a building behind the cars.

The HOn3 Rail Line boxcar kit has been around for a while and it is a good representation of a 30-foot later period D&RGW car. I wanted to try to see if I could easily modify it to represent an early 25-foot car of 10-ton capacity. To do this, I cut the car at the door opening and glued the two halves together with some reinforcing strips inside. This gave me the necessary length. Using a fine razor saw, I removed the roof running boards. Some .020 thick styrene with .060 scribing applied right over the Murphy roof gave me the earlier wood plank roof. A .010 x .080 strip was applied for a new fascia and cut flush with the car ends. New doors were made from .020 scribed styrene and the door hardware from the kit used to "hang" it.
 

The lettering was varied slightly with the arth to a give a little variety to the cars.

 The earlier boxcars had short end platforms for the carmen to stand upon. I glued .060 x .124 strips with scribed siding to represent those. The nut-bolt-washer representations for the grab iron bolts were removed with a razor blade except for two on the end for the new grab irons. The floor was similarly shortened and reglued. Fishing line truss rods and Grandt turnbuckles were used. The brake cylinder was only applied to one car as I figured this little narrow gauge line would be slow in putting brakes on everything.
   

Compared to the 1875 S&I prototype cars, the D&RG freelanced cars are much more graceful.

   The cars were painted boxcar red and decals based on D&RG lettering schemes were applied. The finished car is not an exact model of the prototype but close enough for the Stockton & Ione.

Bridges, Narrow Gauge and Building Flats

The last month has again been a hectic one. I had a spurt of energy that resulted in progress in three areas on the railroad. The first was my entrance to staging at the south end of Oakdale. It just went around a corner and into very visible staging tracks. I wanted to hide those a bit and give the illusion that the tracks were actually going somewhere. To that end, I set up a low view block and painted it a sky blue color. This shielded the bulk of the tracks but then I constructed some building flats that straddled the track and gives the impression that the trains are going between the buildings as they leave town.
 

The original tracks leaving Oakdale show cars lined up on supposedly hidden trackage.

The view block extends back to the opening in the wall for the staging tracks. The foreground area will eventually

be filled up with a roundhouse and turntable.

The finished flats with authentic Oakdale industries. Why doesn't the S&C have sidings to these plants? They were

served by the Santa Fe when it came to town around the turn of the century. Oh, well. They have interesting names.

   The second area of work centered around the future narrow gauge Stockton & Ione branch. I had to build a ramp for a quilt show in which my wife is involved so I designed it short enough so that there was enough plywood left over to provided benchwork for the S&I. While waiting for paint to dry on the background flats, I attached some supports, cut the plywood and temporarily installed it along the intended route of the line. Then I came to a pause when I realized the track layout I wanted was not really practical in the area I had.
 

The S&I takes off near the swinging gate on the right and proceeds over the sink toward the left. There will be a passing
siding near the right side of the photo.

After crossing the sink, the line reaches Ione City with its coal mine and depot.

Just past Ione will be the turntable and a small engine house. It will be a short run but should add some interest.

While I was mulling over the solution to that little problem, I decided to do some basic scenery around the Stanislaus River crossing. I started cutting cardboard strips and filling in the river valley with an outline. The model trestle will not be quite as long as the prototype (it will be two bents shorter) but it will a respectable length with approach trestling and two deck Howe truss bridges over the river itself. Just upstream of the railroad bridge will be a road bridge which I think looks really neat.
 

The prototype bridge at low water. This photo was taken from the road bridge. Oakdale is to the left.

Looking toward Oakdale, the light wood blocks will support the trestle bents. The temporary track support in the middle is about where the pier between the two deck trusses will be. The road bridge will be to the left of the railroad bridge.

Built in 1888, this bridge lasted well into the 20th century. I'm planning on using Central Valley bridge parts to make the structure.

I'm not sure how long my momentum will be kept up but I'm pleased with the progress I have made in a relatively short time.

Some Progress Made on Stockton & Ione

The new Stockton & Ione locomotive is now in the yard at Holden.

Although the narrow gauge Stockton & Ione Railroad is not a major part of the S&C project, I would like to make some progress on that part of the layout. Last month, when my wife and I were in Durango, Colorado, I visited Soundtraxx where they showed me their new quasi-1890s locomotive. It's based on their C-19 locos but somewhat backdated with a diamond stack, era-correct smokebox cover and Russian iron boiler jacket. It's not truly correct but they have been testing the waters for older equipment and have found the market receptive. It's really a nice smooth-running engine with a lot of possibilities so I bought one for the S&I.
   My plans for the loco are to shorten the smokebox, remove the dynamo, relocate the air pump and tender air cylinder. I may possibly add an older cab and more rivet detail on the stack. The S&I only had two locos in its short life and neither were 2-8-0s but neither did it get all the way to Ione.

Using this and another original Mason drawing should help recreate the S&I locomotive Amador.

 Speaking of S&I locos, I also managed to locate two original drawings for the S&I engine Amador. It was an 0-6-4T Mason bogie. This was a great find as I don't have any photos of this loco as the Amador and the boiler is a bit different than what I thought it would be.
 

Code 40 and 55 flex track is being amassed adjacent to the almost-abandoned S&I grade east of Holden. 

   The National Narrow Gauge Convention is going to be here in Kansas City in 2014 and the committee asked to have my railroad on the layout tours. I agreed and decided that I should get at least some operating narrow gauge on the layout so, as the Stockton Daily Independent said "Rails and ties are being stockpiled at the S&I junction switch east of Holden. It looks like the narrow gauge project may still have some life in it."