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.

Stanislaus River Bridged!

The Stanislaus River valley is now bridged. Basswood was used to build the various pieces of the bridge.

Seen from the south end, the curved trestle is apparent. This was not in the prototype but was necessary in my model so as to fit in the allowed space.

One project which I have been wanting to accomplish but kept putting off was the long bridge over the Stanislaus River just outside of Oakdale. I had made allowances for the bridge to be almost scale length which worked out to be about 8 actual feet long, obviously a laborious task. I finally decided to do it.
   The bridge is made up of two Howe truss bridges, each 140 feet long plus long trestle approaches on either end of the bridge. Fortunately, I have a period drawing showing the basic dimensions of the bridges plus the heights of the various trestle bents. Three period pictures also exist. The details of this work is in my blog of October 28, 2014.
 

Built in 1871, the prototype bridge spanned the river until replaced in the late
1890s.

 To erect the bridge was a bit more problematic. Short pieces of rail were soldered across the rails to keep them in gauge during the next steps of the process. I then cut the plywood pieces of subroadbed which left the flex track hanging in the air. The ties were removed and the bents, now assembled with stringers and ties, were inserted beneath the rails. Similarly, the two truss bridges and piers were also put in place. I had allowed for some slop between the bents and the wood supports in the benchwork. Wood shims were inserted to accurately level and the bridge.
   Before the assembly, the bottoms of the rails were coated with Barge cement which was allowed to dry. After the bridge assembly was in place, a small iron heated the rail, melting the cement and allowing the rail to bond with the bridge.
 

The upstream side of the center bridge pier. The gap between this part and the plywood will be filled with river bed before the water surface is installed.

One of the features of this bridge is that the upstream side of the center pier has a tapered section whose purpose is to deflect brush and timber from lodging in the pier. This was present in the prototype bridge so I added it into the model.
  The prototype also had some water barrels on the bridge. The Grandt Line barrels are about the right side so those will be used. Before I can finish the scenery in this area, though, the "Elevated Drive-Way" (as an old post card is titled) must be built.

California Fast Freight Line

Two of the CFFL cars sit in Oakdale awaiting a shipment of grain. I chose to weather the cars a little heavier than normal since they would be fairly old and due for rebuilding.

As I had mentioned in my last blog post (Bridges and Boxcars), I have been working on ten resin boxcar kits. This morning, I put the finishing weathering on them. With the exception of one car, they are all lettered for the Southern Pacific and the California Fast Freight Line. The CFFL was one of many fast freight lines formed in the days following the Civil War. In those early days of railroading, shipping numerous items by rail became problematic due to transshipments due to gauge differences and other factors. The fast freight line was set up to allow shippers to group their items in cars which received expedited services. Of course, an additional fee was charged for this service.
   Merchants' Despatch was one of the first of the lines followed by the Union Line, Empire Line, Red Line, Blue Line, White Line and other colors of the spectrum. In all of these, several railroads furnished cars to the line and received income based on their participation. The CFFL included the Central and Southern Pacific, the Union Pacific, Rock Island, Milwaukee Road and the Chicago & Northwestern.
   By the late 1880s, improvements in rail service led to the disbanding of most of these lines including the CFFL. By 1891, the SP had started to rebuild their cars to include air brakes and more modern (for the time) safety appliances. This included repainting the CFFL lettering to the large circular SP herald. Of course, all of this took time and, in 1895, there were still numerous CFFL cars on the SP roster.These show up in many photos of the era, enough so that I wanted a representative number of cars on the S&C.
 

Decals for the cars were a combination of Art Griffin's CFFL set and ones using my own artwork. Griffin also has sets for the CFFL cars of the UP, C&NW and CM&StP and they are definitely worth the price. 

The cars were built from Silver Crash Car Works SP boxcars which are well-made and go together easily. Unfortunately, they are no longer available from SCCW but may be on the used market. The trucks were the swing-motion Allen trucks used by the CP and SP and still available through Shapeways. I used Reboxx wheelsets for the trucks which worked fine. The trucks are fairly fragile and do not endure much flexing to insert the wheels. They do, however, glue back together easily with CA adhesive. Couplers are Kadee 711s.
   For anyone interested in more information on the fast freight lines, see Railroad History No. 141. RRH is a publication of the Railway Locomotive & Historical Society (www.rlhs.org) and is a great railroad history magazine. That issue has an article entitled "Origin & Growth of Fast Freight Lines" by William W. Chandler. The article was initially published in 1889. John H. White's book The American Railroad Freight Car also has some good information.

Bridges and Boxcars

One of the finished trusses temporarily mounted on the piers. The finished bridge will be assembled on the layout.

The last few weeks have again been hectic with traveling to various events. The annual Virginia & Truckee RR Historical Society was held in Carson City Nevada at the first of October and was great as usual. It's the only place that I know where several early railroaders, both modelers and historians, gather. If you aren't a member, take a look at their website (www.vtrrhs.org). The society has a great quarterly magazine and publishes at least one book on the V&T each year.
 

Built in 1885, the wood structure lasted until the late 1890s. This view looks
 south into Oakdale

When I finally ended up at home, I decided to start construction on the Stanislaus River Bridge. This bridge was built in 1871 and allowed the S&C to enter Oakdale. It had two 140-foot wood Howe Truss bridges and several hundred feet of approach trestle. In amongst all the other things, I started on the two Howe trusses and managed to get them finished. It was not difficult work, just tedious. I started by making a jig so that the four sides needed would match and started cutting and gluing stripwood together. Making the metal tension rods took a little bit longer.
 

Each bay of the bridge had five tension rods at the joint. Mine were made from .015 inch music wire. Grandt Line NBW
castings cored .020 inches were used for the nuts at either end of the tension rod.

When the truss bridges were done, I started on the wood piers but then ran out of wood. I ordered a huge supply and, while waiting for it, started work on some Silver Crash Car Works boxcars. These are 28-foot cars and follow a Southern Pacific prototype, just perfect for the S&C. I purchased 20 of these a few years back and am just now getting to them. These managed to get finished except for paint. I'm waiting for the trucks to come in so I can paint everything together. This was not a great setback since the wood arrived in the interim. This allowed me to finish the two piers (the third pier is trestlework).

Ten boxcars await paint. The prototype of these cars was built to handle trade for the California Fast Freight Line, a traffic
expediter arrangement between the Central Pacific, SP, Union Pacific, C&NW and Rock Island.

   The jig for the trestles has been made so I will probably start putting the bents together next. More later after the paint arrives and/or the bents get built.

More Buffalo Bill

One car, two different sides. Artwork by John Ott greatly enhanced the appearance of these cars over my earlier attempt.

As I mentioned in my post on the Buffalo Bill Advance Car 3, I had the artwork for cars 1 and 2 and wanted to build those.  Those cars were a little more problematic as they would have to be scratchbuilt. Fortunately, I had good photos of both cars and could scale dimensions from them. The first thing I learned was that the cars had different lettering on each side. That would make things more interesting on the layout since both sides of the cars can be seen from different parts on the railroad.
 

Car Number 2 with just as much colorful lettering as Number 1.

The first thing I did was scale out the cars using the wheel diameter as a standard. According to this, both cars were about 50 feet long. Coincidentally, this was the same dimension as the MDC passenger cars. I used the floor and roofs of these cars as the basis. The windows and ends were Westwood parts. For those who might not be aware, Westwood made passenger car kits around the late 1960s. They used a series of windows and doors to build up their car sides. I have a number of these parts and found what I needed among them. Evergreen styrene passenger car siding took care of the sides. The doors on Car No. 2 were built up from .020 thick styrene.
 

Prototype photos of Car Number 1.

The end beams of the platforms were cut off the MDC floor and Cal-Scale end railings installed. A "possum belly" tool carrier was installed on each car built from scribed styrene. The duckbill roof of Car 1 was an MDC part. The contours of this roof are a bit strange so I used drywall joint compound to fill in the unusual groove on the roof which was then sanded smooth.
   The lettering decals were made from the tremendous artwork developed by my friend, John Ott (www.ottgallery.com). It was adapted in the same way as Car No. 3. Trucks were from Bitter Creek Models (www.bittercreekmodels.com).
 

Prototype photos of Car Number 2.

Now I have three advance cars. How were these used on the prototype? A few weeks before the show was due to hit town, Car No. 1 was sent out with a crew who would paper the town with posters advertising the show. When the job was done, it moved on to the next town on the show's tour. Meanwhile, Car No. 2 was visiting the outlying towns close enough to the show town that residents could join excursions to see the show. Car No. 3 was held in reserve. If another, competing, show tried to play the same town, No. 3 was dispatched on the first train. They would again paper the town, stage some sort of exhibition, anything to draw attention to the Buffalo Bill show instead of the competitor. It should work for some additional car movements on my railroad. In any case, they are nice-looking cars and were fun to build!