Modeling Latrobe, Flonellis, east and west

One of the reasons I chose to model the Placerville Branch was due to its close proximity to home. I've spent some time driving by and over the branch, walking its trackage and recently riding the Sacramento and Placerville Rr from the very east end of Folsom up to Latrobe.

Site of the Latrobe Station 

Latrobe Station
CSRM used with permission

The new Latrobe station in or around 1914. The track directly in front of the station curves to the right toward the main and was most likely the freight siding for cars loading and unloading at the long freight pier connected to the station. Typically these were stub ended, but I cannot tell from the photo. The freight pier has a wooden dolly parked near its far end as well as, what appear to be stacks of filled burlap bags. The track to the far right curves to the left and is probably the Latrobe siding. A velocipede sits between the main (center) and the siding on the right. The station appears brand new and is painted 2 shades of what I assume is colonial yellow as was a standard in 1907. I can only imagine 7 years later that it was still standard.This is close to a  SP  station CS Common Standard #11. If you know otherwise, please let me know, but I am mostly suspicious about the wall paint colors I've described. Could they have been brown? Lastly there is no date on the back of this photo, so its not clear when it was taken, however I understand that the original station burned ( the one captured below top  right) in 1914 and that the station above was built to replace it until it was shut down in 1924.

Upper & lower right Latrobe Station pre 1914
Upper & Lower left Simas hotel 

I wanted to understand what Latrobe might have looked like in the early part of the last century. I wanted to capture in miniature - not in a precise or prototypical way, but in a way that sets a stage for what a very small foothill town might have looked like in those days. There were  2 scheduled passenger trains that stopped at Latrobe until the late 1930's. McKeen Car 45, headed EB at 4.30am, then again WB at 7.36am. I have no data as to passenger service before the McKeen car era. I do have some poorly scanned photos which show horse drawn wagons as well as early automobiles lined up at the station waiting for passengers. So more scheduled passenger trains previous to 1931 may have been the norm. I've taken a look at several of the train sheets in the 1930's and the crew names were always the same. I suppose the engineer and conductor were not about to allow anyone else to fill these positions. Times were hard in America during that time period and good jobs were not so easy to come by. Lastly note the upper right photograph that a train order board is sticking out over the roof. Next time I'll write of other influences I took from these and other Latrobe scenes and how I used various freight services provided by the railroad and some imagining to come up with my modeling scenes of Latrobe. Next time!

east Latrobe scene on the Placerville Branch

Electronics

The electronic/electrical work on the Placerville Branch was installed as the bench and trackwork went into place. I've owned early digitraxx and now NCE systems. I prefer NCE, Since the Placerville Branch is 1. dark territory and 2. a smaller railroad, I think I'm set with NCE and its advanced consisting capabilities, along with decoder programming help from Decoder Pro 3. Area electrical blocks as part of short management were created by gapping and isolating trackage into 5 blocks. When operating, I don't care for electrical shorts shutting down large sections of Rr, so I broke the Placerville branch into 5 separate electronic zones each fed with a TTX circuit breaker.  #12 ga wire was utilized for the primary buss. I used solid 26 gauge wire tips soldered to code 73 visible track and the Atlas code 83 track in staging.  The 26 ga. was in turn soldered to 16 ga stranded which in turned were fastened to the buss with suitcase connectors. Its been up for couple of years now and some issues during  ops session have come up. A loose wire to a ckt. bkr. shut down upper Placerville at the end of one session. Improperly chained circuit breakers, which in turn weren't isolated at track level, caused delayed control issues and random shut downs that would last for several seconds. As much as I didn't want these trouble occurring on the Pville branch, they have. I think I've worked through most of them now. Contrary to what many modelers think is proper, I power my frogs for polarity so that my small engines  - which is what we have here on the Placerville Branch, glide across turnouts. I utilized 2 types of switch machines; Tortoise machines throughout Folsom yard and Blue Point manual machines everywhere else.
That is until recently. I've started replacing blue points with Tortoise. Reason? I don't think you can beat the stall power of a switch motor - the points are driven into the stock rail and stay there. Additionally the Tortoise is a bit more forgiving in terms of mechanical alignment. I've learned that unless the blue point is in perfect alignment I can't get proper point closure. Switch wiring is pretty basic for either machine. Tortoises have one motor side going to12vdc ground, while the other motor side is wired through a spdt switch, one side of the switch is wired for pos. 12vdc, the other for neg 12vdc. You flip the switch the Tortoise drives one way or the other. I wire the frog by utilizing a pair of switches on either machine to flop correct power back and forth between stock rails and the frog. This is one way to prevent locomotives from entering the switch against the points and derailing. It creates a short and stops the loco. Of course if you back into the switch with a long string of cars leading the way, all bets are off.
Lastly I was encouraged  to bridge the gap at the points with fine #30 gauge wire. I did this for the first 40 switches or so, but ran into trouble when using blue point manual switch machines. The fine wire or my questionable soldering would pressure the point in one direction opposite to the desired switch throw direction and I wouldn't get full point closure. Eventually many switches wired with the fine #30 wire were taken out. Not the switch, just the wire. I may have point electrical contact issues going forward, but so far so good.
Layout lighting is a combination of overhead parallel 3' T8 daylight 32 watt fluorescents. These run the entire length of the layout directly over the upper deck and it provides good light for operators. I know this because no one complains.
On the lower deck I use CFL 65 and 75 watt daylight bulbs. Recently, I'd thought I'd try some Home Depot LED bulbs, however I didn't like the color of these and the CREE LED daylight, which I prefer are prohibitively expensive.  A railroading buddy, gave me strings of led surface mounted white lights which softly and yet effectively light up staging under the penninsula.
Lastly my staging area is driven by the NCE throttle macros which drive the switch machines into proper alignment depending on the track chosen and whether its an inbound or outbound train.
Thats it. I'll start writing about the modeling, the structures, the towns and building out the Placerville branch next time out.
My wiring is very basic, because it doesn't need to be anything else. No detection, no signalling, excepted for a couple of planned TO boards going up at 2 locations. You can't control my turnouts with DCC except in staging so all my wiring consists of the buss, the track feeders, 12vdc turnout and frog control.