New Turntable at Stockton Wharf

The Stockton Wharf turntable serves two tracks plus the lead. A small figure at one end of the table acts as a reference market for alignment. The two bright metal T-nuts support the motor assembly. This entire area will eventually be scenicked as a marsh.

The turntable at Stockton Wharf is fairly far away from the view of the operator and, as such, the rails have been difficult to align. A step stool and a mirror have been the best tools so far and those are a bit crude. The best solution would have been an indexing system like that made by New York Railway Supply but I thought that was a bit pricey for just three tracks to the turntable. Finally, I have found a lower cost system which seems to solve the problem.

 

A stepper motor is supported by a piece of aluminum and two lengths of all-thread rod hung by the T-nuts in the photo above. A machined coupling connects the turntable shaft with the motor shaft. The long rod extending from the coupling is an index to zero the table's initial position with the sensor at the left of the support bar.

 Last year I found a video on the internet which showed a small system being developed by a Scottish electronics company. I followed up with the company who then produced a circuit board kit which can be programmed by the user. The product is limited in that only six positions can be programmed. This means that two positions are used just to turn an engine (one for each end of the table). It's only good for those end-of-the-line turning situations with few or no tracks. I only used four positions for the Stockton table to serve a lead and two roundhouse tracks. 

 

A simple controller handles the position. The button and knobs along the bottom
are for programming. 

A system was duly bought and assembled (it's a kit), the additional parts (motor, switches, etc.) purchased and the mechanical end designed and built. Once it is installed, it is easy to program and can be reprogrammed just as easily. The motor used is a stepper motor which means that the hardware retains the motor's position so it always returns to the same place. The nice part is that it works. My only criticism is that the table's lowest rotational speed is too fast for my taste. I've spoken to the company and they said they would lower the speed. I'm now awaiting a new board to see how that works.

A Small Plaster Store

The store in its approximate location at Burnett's. The Crown Mills sign was taken from the side of another store in Fillmore, California.

The last few days I've been working on a C. C. Crow kit which I had picked up many years ago at a swap meet. It appealed to me because I distinctly remember the prototype which inspired the kit. It was an 1850s building located in Shingle Springs, California. I had been by it many times and had photographed in the 1980s. The Crow kit is not an exact replica as he admits patterning the kit by memory but it's pretty close.
 

I had no names of actual businesses in Burnett's so I named the store after a friend of mine who is an excellent modeler.

It is a plaster kit which is easy to work with but there is a chance of the seams showing in the stone work. I used heavily thinned colors to stain the walls after sealing them with clear spray. After the assembly, I added some signs and posters to advertise some of products sold by this small country store. The posters were found on the internet and just printed on photo paper which gives a slight glossy finish which hopefully looks like porcelain.
   The cigar store Indian in the photo was from a now-forgotten line of figures while the scale is the one discussed in my last post (http://sandcrr.blogspot.com/2015/04/a-weighty-matter.html). Since then I found that the kit was missing the legend above the dial advertising your "Exact Weight - One Cent." I added that and sent a photo to the manufacturer who agreed to add the decal to his kit.
 

The Shingle Springs building in the 1980s.

The shop doors and second story door was also an addition made by cutting down some Grandt Line doors.
   The only disappointment was when I learned that the prototype had been torn down a few years ago. It's interesting that there is always enough money to bulldoze a building and cart off the stone but never enough money to repair it.

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.

Burnett's Station

A station plat book maintained by the railroad's superintendent supplied the details above.

On the north side of the Stanislaus River lies the small community of Burnett's. During the era of my S&C Railroad, there was a siding with a grain warehouse and a corral. The main wagon road to Oakdale crossed the tracks here heading upstream to the county bridge. Later on, when the wheat farms were being broken down into smaller ranches for produce and fruit, there was reportedly a small factory for making the crates used in the field.

 

The Dakin map shows sizes and building construction.

 The earliest record of the arrangement of buildings appears in a notebook of station plats maintained in the 1874-1888 period. I copied the information and developed my own sketch for modeling purposes. Later on, I discovered the Dakin maps showing several of the warehouses along the S&C. The Burnett's map show additional building details which will aid in its construction. 

  My model of Burnett's will include both the grain warehouse and the crate/box factory along with the corral. There was no agent at Burnett's but the drawings show some sort of waiting shelter along with a small building for freight. The absence of photos requires me to freelance everything but all will be in accordance with similar buildings.

 

The Golden State Box Company. The ground around the building will obviously have to be reworked to properly settle the building. Peeling paint and fading signs show that regular maintenance is not a priority with the proprietors.

 My first structure is the box factory. I had a Walthers "Shed on Piles" which seemed to be about right. I wanted the factory to be an older building, possibly a former grain warehouse, which was cheaply whitewashed a few years ago and not repainted. I achieved this effect by painting the structure with a light gray primer followed by white. A small wire brush was used to remove random sections of the paint to allow the gray to show through. The stock roof was covered with Minuteman Scale Models rolled roofing and a small loading dock was added.

An overall view of the Burnett's area shows the future locations of the structures. The temporary signs are used to identify switching locations during operating sessions.

Wagon Bridge Completed!

The completed County bridge over the Stanislaus with a Moraga Springs Northern fruit train passing over the railroad bridge. In the distance is the small hamlet of Burnett's.

The new iron wagon bridge across the Stanislaus River has finally been completed. The bridge was constructed entirely from Evergreen styrene sheets and shapes. At the same time, the scenery around the river area was completed. The river is depicted in a low-water stage. California could suffer droughts for several years and the water level would drop.

Although the river is down, a young couple still finds it attractive enough for
boating.

Then, the snow pack in the Sierras would deepen due to a heavy winter and then the river would rise almost to the bottom of the trusses. I have photos of the bridges in both states, quite a difference in the water levels.

    

The spindly trusses were made from styrene angle,flat stock and round rod.

    A couple of sandbars were put in the river with their attendant buildup of grasses and driftwood. The water itself was made by pouring Magic Water into the river area. Along with the river valley, I built a road going from the new bridge back to Oakdale and scenicked the countryside between the two areas.

   The trees in the scene were made using sagebrush armatures covered with Woodland Scenics polyfiber and sprinkling on a mix of various leaf colors. Before I left California several years ago, I took a trip to Nevada to gather the sagebrush. Upon returning home, I found that the same sagebrush grew within a few miles from my house. Fortunately, I was going to Nevada anyway for a Virginia & Truckee Historical Society meeting.

Looking back from the bridge, Oakdale is just on the other side of the backdrop.

    

County Bridge Under Construction

This photograph was taken in 1888 when the bridge was five years old. This view looks south across the river into Oakdale. Enough detail could be obtained from this view to reasonably scale the model.

In 1883, the supervisors of Stanislaus County decided to spend $14,739 for a new iron bridge across the Stanislaus River just north of Oakdale. It was a spindly structure but apparently carried wagon, then auto traffic across the river well into the 20th century. Since the bridge is just upstream from the S&C railroad bridge, I felt that it had to be included in my model.
 

With the piers in place, the river valley can now be scenicked. The road runs along the top of the right-hand hill toward the bridge. In the left distance, bridge approaches will take the road just to the right of the freight cars spotted on the siding.

 Since I only had one good picture of the bridge, I had to estimate the dimensions and adjust them for the room I had on the railroad. The final length of each truss ended up at 76 scale feet and the roadway is 16 scale feet wide. Styrene shapes coupled with Central Valley bridge girders were used in the construction.
 

The cardboard hill had to be extended a bit to shape it properly for the bridge. Plaster cloth needs to be applied yet along with the rest of the scenery. The roadway also has to be attached to the top deck of the bridge.

The prototype supports for the bridge consisted of iron cassion piers filled with concrete. According to bridge pictures I found on line, these caissons were formed of sheet iron riveted into tubular sections running about four feet long. These were then riveted together to form the length of the pier needed. Sheets of iron were placed between the piers for stability and to prevent debris from catching on the piers. These were also formed of styrene parts. Archer rivet decals were used for the rivets and Bragdon weathering powder give the piers a slightly rusty appearance.
   Obviously, the bridge is not yet completed but enough is done so that the river valley can be scenicked. Once that is done, the bridge approaches will be built and everything installed.