Saturday Night at the California Grand Palace

In my August 21 post (http://sandcrr.blogspot.com/2021/08/finally-done.html), I described the installation of the finished California Grand Palace and showed a few photographs. Since then, I have make a  video which does a bit better in displaying the details of the structure. The sound track in the video is the same as the one used in the finished saloon. I hope you enjoy "Saturday Night at the Grand Palace."

 

Finally Done!

An overall view of the saloon. The side nearest the camera and the roof will be clear acrylic so visitors can see into the structure.

 Some projects seem to last forever. My California Grand Palace saloon was one of these (http://sandcrr.blogspot.com/2021/05/a-work-in-progress.html). There was a lot of different things to do and, after adding in the electronics, a lot MORE things to do. It is now, however, ready to be installed on the railroad.

The pool table offers an interesting distraction to patrons. 
Note the spittoon and it surrounding area of "misses." No 
model spittoons were found so I had mine 3D printed.

     

The bar includes a free lunch counter. Note the beer mugs on
the bar.

As mentioned before, the building is constructed with clear acrylic plastic walls. Evergreen styrene siding is glued to the outside while wallpaper is applied on the inside. In both pieces, cutouts were made for window locations. Using my laser printer simplified this process immensely. The interior was built of styrene with Grandt Line (now San Juan Details) and Tichy trim pieces.

     One of the factors taking a great length of time was the interior detail. There's an awful lot of tables and chairs which had to be assembled and glued down, not to mention the figures. There are 98 of them, all of which had to be painted. Seated figures are a lot harder to come by, it seems, especially ones who are playing cards. I did find enough, though.

A view from the audience's perspective with the ads of local business on the curtain as was the custom in the 1800s.

     Once mounted on the railroad, the saloon will have lights plus a sound track included a featured singing. The curtain will rise and fall when needed.

     

A Work in Progress

The California Grand Palace's streetside view and main entrance.

The Oakdale trackside area has had a blank spot in it for far too long. Part of the reason it stayed vacant is because I had not yet decided what might go well in that spot. Several weeks ago, I finally reached a decision had began building a suitable structure. I wanted a large saloon with a detailed interior including a stage for entertainers. This saloon would also include a sound track. As of this point, I have completed the exterior structure of the building but the sound and detailing the interior still needs to be accomplished.

     

The Long Bar is ready for customers but standup ones only. Tables and chairs are still to be added. The stage curtain is typical of early theaters which put the advertising space to good use. The "kerosene" lamps were made from plastic beads and very small leds. 

The saloon is totally freelanced and not based on any specific structure. To be honest, real saloons were generally  built with a narrow front entrance but a long depth, just enough for the bar and a few tables. The Grand Palace has more in common with the huge edifices often seen in Hollywood western movies. It's not particularly prototypical but it is what I was looking for.

    Construction is with acrylic sides with styrene siding laminated to them. The window and door casings were cut using my laser cutter. Other parts were styrene shapes plus detail parts from Tichy and San Juan Details.

     The interior of the building has a stage with a working curtain and a number of LED lights. There's much more to do but the drinking class of Oakdale seem to be looking forward to completion. 

Engine Terminal is Now Awaiting Scenery

Still roofless, the roundhouse awaits final track testing. The pit for the coaling station is at left center. The short tracks on this side of the turntable are for MOW equipment storage, extra wheelsets, etc.

After the last few weeks, I have been working on the new Oakdale engine terminal. It has been a bit of bear to do that since there is very restricted room to work. To top that off, all the electrical has to be accessed by ducking under the railroad. When I was building the railroad, I left the fascia off until I was finished with wiring which made it an easy job. Now, the fascia is on the work area and it is not practical to remove it so I duck under.
   

Since the locomotives to be stored here will be primarily coal burners, cinders are produced and need to be dropped and carried away, hence the depressed ash pit track. In the background, Crown Flour becomes a new industrial site with probably another one to its right.

The trackwork went down easily enough except for the ashpit area which required the benchwork to be revised to accommodate the depressed track. Similar depressed areas were made for the coaling tower's coal dump.
   

Two curved turnouts allow locomotives into the yard. The box car in the background is sitting on the main line.

The power to each track is controlled by this
panel. This will help prevent overload of the
DCC system with several sound-equipped
engines all drawing current.

One of the side projects has been the complete replacement of light bulbs over the railroad. When I first installed the lighting in 2008-9, the best bulb available was the CFL but I always thought that the light was too yellow. Your eyes adjust to it but it wasn't right. I finally found a relatively low-cast LED 100W-equivalent bulb and unscrewed and rescrewed all 75+ bulbs with these 3000°K units. The railroad looks quite a bit better. My operating crews have not seen it yet but I like it.
      The coaling tower and sand house have both been constructed as has the yard office. Now I just have to get some scenery going so I can get this area finished.

Another Turntable

With the finished turntable mounted in its pit, filler material still needs to be added in the area between the benchwork and the turntable casting. The prototype turntable was built of cast iron with its distinctive lightening holes.

Like most modelers, I have more locomotives than I really need. My choice, then, is to remove some of them from the railroad so I can operate it without stumbling over the extra motive power OR build some place to put them. My choice is to build a roundhouse in which to store all the engines I don't need but want to have anyway.

     At Oakdale, there is a space which is out of the way but is the perfect size for a small engine terminal. This area has been earmarked for such a terminal since I started building the railroad. It will allow me to have my "overflow" area and, also, to build a Model Masterpieces Colorado Midland roundhouse kit I have had for around 20 years. The first step in all of this was to locate the turntable and go from there.

     My Sellers turntable was built from a Freshwater Models kit which was out in limited edition several years ago. I had provided prototype information to the kit company and they did such a nice job on it, I had to have one. Made with a plaster pit and cast metal base, it went together rather quickly. Installing in the hole I had made was a bit more problematic. It required two people, one on top of the railroad and another beneath the benchwork to put nuts on the support bolts. My darling wife agreed to help and, as a true gentleman would, I offered her the choice of positions. Climbing underneath a built railroad and trying to start nuts with my left hand (I'm right-handed) is a bit of a challenge but, eventually, we secured the turntable and leveled it up. 

   

Lines for tracks in the roundhouse extend from the pit. The turntable is based on a 60-foot prototype which is ample for the locomotives used on the S&C.

The next job will be to assemble the eight-stall roundhouse and try to get it reasonably aligned with where I want the tracks to go. A real engine servicing area requires a coaling station, sand station, water plug and ash track as a minimum so I have to allow room for those and then assemble the appropriate structures. With the company service tracks and a new industry track I discovered, there will be four more car spots in Oakdale which should add more interest.

A Weighty Matter

Residents of Oakdale can now get weighed on East Railroad Avenue with the new penny scale outside the dry goods store and the cyclery.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a visit from Mat Thompson of Virginia, also a modeler. We got to talking and he mentioned a model company of which I had never heard. It was Mok River Models (http://mokrivermodels.com/mokrivermodels.com/Home_Page.html) in Woodbridge, California. I looked at their webpage and they have several items of interest to period modelers. I loved the 1913 Stanley Mountain Wagon but it's way too late for the S&C. I ended up buying the Penny Scale kit.
   It is not a lot to the kit. The scale body is made in one piece by 3D printing but you do have to paint several places and apply the decal for the scale face. Sidewalk scales used to be more common than they are today and many times, I have paid my penny to see my weight and, maybe, get a fortune as well. A nice addition to a street scene. Thanks, Mat, for the tip.

Another New Locomotive Arrives

The S&C's new American at the head of Train No. 6 ready to depart from Oakdale. The passenger cars are brass imports by Beaver Creek.

The local passenger trains are on the S&C are made up of brass imported cars which are very heavy. Although my smaller 4-4-0s can pull four of these cars, it's about all they can do. I wanted to come up with a slightly heavier, more modern engine which can pull a little more. My choice was the Bachmann Spectrum Richmond 4-4-0. As manufactured, it represents a loco of about 1910 where I wanted one a little older.

The tender is from the Bachmann Baldwin 4-4-0 which looks better for the time period of the railroad.

 I began my conversion by removing the stack, domes and generator. The domes were replaced with Precision Scale domes which are more of a Baldwin style. The stack was replaced with a capped stack just because I like capped stacks. All of my locos use oil headlamps so this was replaced and, of course, the dynamo was no longer needed. I swapped the original tender out with the tender from the Spectrum Baldwin 4-4-0 and removed the DCC decoder with which it was equipped. This was replaced with a Tsunami TSU-750 and a sugar cube speaker. The engine was then painted and lettered to suit the railroad's management receiving the name San Joaquin in the process. San Joaquin is the California county in which most of the railroad runs.
 

The engineer, appropriately attired with a derby hat and 20-past-8 mustache appears competent enough with a husky fireman keeping up the steam. The engine crew is from Musket Miniatures.

Overall, the conversion was not too bad. The loco comes apart easily and is readily modified as long as one is willing to do a bit of filing and drilling here and there.

Water Tanks and Park

An engineer's view of the new water tank and windmill at the Oakdale depot.

In my scenicking work at Oakdale, I had left the last eight inches on so next to the aisle for last so I wouldn't be continually undoing my work. I've finally gotten to the point where I have been able to work on this area.

The small engine facility here needed a refueling and watering ability so I built one of the typical CP/SP enclosed water tanks along with a small shed
for the storage of firewood. A windmill was also built to pump water into the tank.
   The spout on the tank was a Grandt Line product while the windmill itself was built from an etched-brass kit formerly made by Sheepscot Models. The vane lettering was taken from a period Fairbanks-Morse Eclipse windmill of the turn-of-the-century.
 

Railroad Park just south of the water tank. Wood posts keep errant wagons from encroaching on the park.

 Adjacent to the prototype water tank at Oakdale was a small park. I have not yet been able to locate photos of this park but railroad drawings seem to indicate just some trees and a large expanse of grass. My version also contains a number of paths and flower bushes to add some interest.

   Last night, I painted about ten new figures for the railroad. I find that figure painting is very relaxing for me and I use mostly Preiser old-time figures.   The gentleman on the left is standing slightly away from the  rest of the traveling public since he is reading a rather racy periodical of the time, the Police Gazette. You could always identify the Gazette since it was printed on pink paper to make it stand out.

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.

Soda Pop Comes to Oakdale

Open for business! The small building to the right is the factory and offices while the building on the left is the warehouse.

Thirsty Oakdale citizens can now rejoice as the A. W. Moulton Soda Works is now open for business! In small town throughout the country during the nineteenth century, soda manufacturing was as ubiquitous as the brewery. Although the standard drink for men was beer or whiskey, the younger set, and the teetotalers, needed refreshment as well. The carbonation process was simple and many of these soda plants lasted into the 1930s until the competition from Coca Cola, Pepsi and other big manufacturers put them out of business.
 

Barrels of sulfuric acid and limestone as well as flats of finished pop are stored on the loading dock.

 The Moulton works lasted into the 1890s after which the building disappeared from maps, presumably from fire. The Oakdale Soda Works filled the vacuum shortly thereafter and lasted in the 20th century. While I had building dimensions from both railroad and insurance map sources, there were no photos available so the Moulton works is the right size but not necessarily the right appearance. The prototype was rail-served and provides opportunities for shipping in quantities of limestone, sulfuric acid (yes, those were was part of the process) and glass bottles. Cases of delicious soda, pop, or just coke, depending on what you want to call it, would be the outbound products.
 

Although the main part of the building faces the railroad spur, the building is at the end of a peninsula and can be seen from both sides. This would be the street side with a road that will eventually run in from of the factory.

The end of the building proclaims some of the products offered by Moulton. The
double doors open onto a small stable for the horse which pulls the delivery wagon
(yet to be built).

The building is constructed of styrene with Minuteman Scale Models shingles and rolled roofing. The lettering was printed on an Alps printer from my artwork. The barrels, bottle flats and bottles are from Preiser.

J Street Buildings

These new structures are all patterned after Oakdale businesses of the 1880s-90s.

J street was the southernmost street in Oakdale and there really weren't many business down there. The railroad, however, had a gap which just had to be filled. I delved into my supply of kits and came up with a couple of good ones. They are all patterned after businesses that were in Oakdale during the 1880s and 1890s. The first structure, the Tuolumne Cheap Cash store was covered before in my post of August 12, 2012. The next in line is Barkis's Dry Goods and Grocery store. The lettering was copied from a photo of the prototype structure and the building did indeed have the fancy Old English style font. That business and the adjacent Hubbell's Sample Room were from Main Street Heritage kits. The final structure is a Woodland Scenics building which translated into a Chinese laundry.

The second floor of the Barkis building is occupied by the Barkis family plus a single lady, Lotta Kerr who is a dressmaker. Yes, Miss Kerr was a dressmaker in Oakdale.

The two signs on the porch posts advertise Boca Beer, a very popular California brew in the 1890s which was sold by Mr. Hubbell. The Chinese characters do proclaim the building a laundry. They came from a sheet of Chinese signs which  wording I had verified by a Chinese gentleman with whom I worked.

   In the nineteenth century, another euphenism for a bar was a sample room. The name, I suppose, added some gentility to the occupation. There is a photo in my collection of Mr. Hubbell standing outside of his establishment adjacent to two Boca Beer signs similar to those on the model. The laundry is freelanced.

A Dempster windmill pumps water to the small tank which supplies the needs of the residents on this block.

Since windmills show up everywhere in photos and on insurance maps, I had to add a few. This one was built from a Vista kit to which I added the Dempster lettering based on the prototype Dempster mills. My research has led me to looking into windmill manufacturers. They all had their own colorful designs with their names painted on the vane. The railroad will include a number of different manufacturers as I continue to build them.
   More oak trees need to be made and planted. That will be the next project. After all, there was a reason the town was named Oakdale.

Stanislaus Milling & Faire Coal

From left to right, the mill is made of the boiler house, mill building and warehouse. Stanislaus flour was popular in the area. See my post of August 6, 2012 for a picture of one of their advertising signs.

Two prototype businesses in Oakdale were A. Faire who was a coal dealer and the Stanislaus Milling and Power Company. In reality, Faire was at the south end of Oakdale while Stanislaus was at the north end. To fit everything in on the model, I made some compromises and moved the industries around.

The Faire coal yard is across C Street from the Stanislaus Mill.

 I did not have any information on Faire beyond knowing of his existence so his coal yard is completely freelanced based on other photos I had of nineteenth century coal yards. On the other hand, I had two photos of Stanislaus, one from each side. Of course, the higher resolution shot was on the side that faced away from the aisle. With the help of insurance maps, though, I was able to build a full-size model of the company and fit it in on the siding.

 The Stanislaus building is entirely constructed of styrene except for the roof which is Campbell's corrugated aluminum. This was correct according to the photos and insurance map. Although corrugated iron was just beginning to be widely used, it had been around in California since the 1870s when the Central Pacific started making it in their Sacramento shops. Building the structure in three pieces (warehouse, mill and boiler room) made it a bit easier to put together and certainly to carry around.
 

The coal yard consists of piles of various grades of coal, a small coal shed and an office adjacent to the scale.

 Faire's coal yard did not have much to do. I had a Walthers stock yard shelter left over from the stock yard project. I put a fourth wall on the building along with some loading doors and it looked just like some coal sheds I had photographed in Massachusetts. Some Walthers fencing around the property and an office building made by someone I have forgotten completed the scene or so I thought. I looked closer at one of my photos and saw a small sign on the office noting the manufacturer of the scale.

Mr. Faire waves goodbye to one of his customers after checking his weight
on the Howe Scale. Although you can't see it in this photo, the Howe sign
is posted next to the office door.

Of course! Coal was sold by the ton and there had to be some means of weighing the wagons before and after loading. Now, what does a nineteenth century wagon scale look like? Some internet research yielded several photos including ads with dimensions. I opted for a Howe Scale measuring 8x14 feet and built that up with some scribed wood and styrene. The actual scale mechanism would be in the office so it is not seen. I found out that a great number of them were outside in waterproof boxes which would make a great model for the future.
   When I started scenicking the scene, it became obvious that more structures, residential this time, were needed. The north end of Oakdale was sparsely settled with few dwellings so I am copying that on the model. It also saves on structure building time. The two smaller homes were built from Grandt Line kits and the larger building was also kit-built but I don't recall whose. It was constructed quite a while ago and was just waiting for a place to be sited.

Living across from a coal yard is not the best location in the world but neither
is the house the best. Even small houses had a modicum of decoration in the
1890s.

Another not-so-prime location but small houses were the norm at this end

of town.

The milling superintendent's house is across E. Railroad Avenue from the
mill so it's an easy commute to work.

 There's one more signature structure to be done: the Mouton Soda Company. There was actually soda water and soft drinks made here and the building was rail-served.