The Mill at Pino Grande

I've been waiting to build the Michigan California Lumber Co. Pino Mill for 15 years. I bought the Twin Mills Deer Creek Mill kit without the wood building materials and supplied the materials through Northeastern Scale lumber Co. I had read that this kit was based on the Pino Mill, yet designed by Brett Gallant to take his slant as a model and craftsmen kit creator on the Pino. That means its not purely prototypical, but its a beautiful set of diorama buildings..
This thing requires space. 3' x 3'!!! And sadly its space that I don't have. My plan is to build the entire kit and see what fits and what doesn't. This is how the instruction manual creates all the buildings first then lays them out in a diorama style. Its up to the builder how they fit.  Although the Placerville Branch is not finished, I've come to a juncture in my modeling that my slowly aging skill set, along with some ongoing health issues, I thought it prudent to take on this project.
So lets begin.
All the wood had to be cut and organized into bags with post it notes describing bag contents, dimensions and count of each wood type. Remembering that the wood supply box had been in the closet for over a decade, I used calipers and scale rule to verifying dimensions. I cut 17 different bags of wood totaling 1,200 pieces. They are used to build templates and guides.
There are 2 staining process.
1. bulk staining where tin foiled pans 12" in length are filled with an acrylic stain mixture and the wood is dropped in pans for 24 hours
2. the swiping method where the stain is applied to each piece individually with a brush.
In either case each piece had to be inspected and lightly sanded and prepped before staining.
Here is what the staining table looked like at random stages of the process.

This took time to get all this wood properly stained. In the upper photo you can see the plain aluminum pans I used to hold my stain.
This stain, where I let the wood lay in the stain for 24 hours, as mentioned was acrylic. The formula follows
20 oz. water
1/2 teaspoon of black India ink
1 tsp Polly Roof Brown - easily substituted. with another acrylic in this common color
1 tsp Polly oily Black - same comment as above
1 1/4 tsp of Polly Railroad Tie Brown - maybe difficult to find, I used Badgers Rail Brown in my mix
I mixed at least 40 ounces to fill each container properly and to cover the wood.

The wiped stain are solvent paints made up as a percentage of the whole
30% Floquil Roof Brown - I substituted the Floquil with Scalecoat paint across the board
10% Floquil Grime - same substitution
60% Dio-Sol - again I used Scalecoat thinner which seemed to work fine based on my results.
I let the wood dry for at minimum 24 hours out in the garage and I was lucky to have warm days to get it that part done.The process calls for a brushed on stain using a 1/2" brush followed by a wipe with paper towels that was then dried for 24 hours.
Although I have all the metal casting cleaned, filed and sitting ready for spray painted a primer base coat, I'll save  showing that when the base coat is applied
Next time I start to put the buildings together. Remember this is board on board all the way through. Not for the faint of heart.
Stay tuned.

How a model photo got me thinking about expansion of operations

This modeled photo was taken on the Placerville Branch at Folsom. The camera is aimed east toward Earl Fruit Company. I had fiddled with photo shop elements to create the clouds above the yard, but living here in California it reminded me more of fire clouds then it did of a stormy day.
That got me thinking about Southern Pacific water cars. I found that SP placed water cars around their system in areas where fire was a threat in the dry California summer.
When I attended the NMRA sponsored Roseville Model Train meet in November, I got a great deal on a handful of tank cars which I want convert to water cars. I was so anxious to try this out, that I took 4 of these newly purchased tank cars, and had them dropped off at the siding in Dugan by an Eastbound local headed up the hill. I put together a multi car car card for shipment. During the session on Friday I'll have the Dugan extra 264 return these cars. It should add a bit of a challenge for the extra out and back that works Dugan and the spurs off the siding.  Its typically unimpeded but with the added water cars will be slightly less so.  
Its been months since I tried this and it definitely adds some challenges for the extra operator on the Dugan out and back.  On my branch line model of the Placerville Branch every new idea that can come together on Ops night is a plus.

Time goes fast when your having fun!

I recently read a post in the prototype modelers group by Bernard Kempinski, who is celebrating 10 years of building his fabulous Civil War layout USMRR Aquia Line. I realized that I started the Placerville Branch a year later in 2010 and my 9th anniversary approaches. I've slowed my building pace, due to having too many projects going at once. I've found it difficult to operate the layout  once a month and build at the same time. In this case I operate, solve post operations issues, then swing back to whatever structure project I'm working on. You wouldn't think that would be much, but for me it is. Once building, I'll ignore whats needed for setting up the next operation session and as my goal date gets closer I'll postpone it simply because I'm not ready. I'm thinking the solution is that operations should be my priority and everything else should follow. I fight it because what I really enjoy doing is building, setting scenes and using the skills I've learned along the way. However sharing the layout should be the bottom line - otherwise why build it?

From this 2010

to this 2019

My latest build is taking awhile, but it is coming along. My vision is, "I would pack as many buildings and scenes as possible into the Upper Placerville." Call it structure scenery if you will. In any event I'm using South River Modelworks' Robinson Electric as one of those buildings. Its a multilevel structure with 4 separate buildings in the mix. I've completed the larger building and its here

and here

More next time - right after this Fridays Op session. I'm printing out clearance and train order cards right now.

The Station at Diamond Springs

Diamond Springs looking West
Photo by unknown - used with permission CSRM

Diamond Springs looking East
Photo by unknown - used with permission CSRM

The station at Diamond Springs was built in the end of the 19th century.  The photos above however were taken well into the 20th century. Radio antennas appear on the roof and the west facing door is now locked and boarded. I really enjoyed building this station and researching the footprint and approximate measurements. It was a good exercise in learning something about approximating structure lengths, widths, and heights using structure components. Essentially using one known element, in this case windows, to estimate the measurements of the building. I had asked for some help on the subject on the Prototype modelers group, and Jack Burgess got me in touch with Henry Bender, considered by most the expert on all things SP stations. He gave me the exact measurements  along with a PDF of an article written in 2015 on the Placerville Branch. I realized that those who are good at research, know exactly where to go to get the best value for their time invested. In this case Henry used valuation maps to list information specifics for every station along the branch.
The modeled station was built from wood sheet provided by Mt. Albert. The windows and doors are from Tichy.
Here are a few photos of the results.

WB 2-8-0 running light downhill past Diamond Springs

before basic scenery is added

making sense of Folsom Part 2 - the industries

During a period of research on rail served industries on the Placerville branch I discovered a piece on the SP Yahoo groups site written by Wendell Hoffman in October of 2007. It  contained a summary of  industries served by SP's  Placerville Branch throughout the branches history. Below is the track work drawing of Folsom and Latrobe on the layout. My trackage have trains entering from two directions on the same side of town. To your left and moving eastward toward Latrobe, then at the switch toward Elvas Tower (staging) moving westward. It means that all trains are turned in the yard at Folsom. The yard guy on operations days gets to figure out which direction, once turned, a train continues. In this case its pretty easy to do. West bounds come downgrade off the branch. They enter Folsom, turn and after the yard gets finished with any cuts or adds, head outbound toward Elvas Tower - staging. The prototype had the well known wye outside of town, at Folsom Junction. The Wye is still there. The model has a turntable on the western end of town. That's how we turn our loco's here.

track plan Folsom and Latrobe
drawn by Tom Ebert and 3rd planit

The prototype yard in Folsom existed in the late 1800's under CP control and was moved to Sacramento when SP took over. I obtained the track or station plan for Folsom from CSRM.  station plan Folsom. 
At the time of the drawing the plans shows the station at Folsom. Folsom station. The third and last. It still exist.
On the model, several of the on line industries existed in Folsom, but there are two which are entirely made up, like Campbell Storage named after a fellow Auburn modeler and layout owner, or Folsom Auto Warehouse which has a sliver of reality attached to it.  I was sitting at the research table of the Folsom Historical society, reading old 1930's newspapers, trying to get the "flavor of the place", when I came across some Folsom Chevrolet newspaper advertisements. The paper was dated in the late 20's, or early 30's. It got me thinking how automobiles were transport to Folsom then. The roads weren't that good, so I imagined that automobiles were brought by train. Presently a flat represents the spot where cars and parts are off loaded. I plan on removing it one day and simply have an open field, with a small ramped shipping deck and of course lots of 30 something autos.  
There is one not yet active project for Folsom. I'm going to convert my 90' Walther's TT to push button operation. This will be a plus for operations. The yards track power and TT are in the same power district. And shorts in the yard reek havoc with the DCC turntable. The push button operation is simple and is not affected by DCC shorts. 

more on Folsom next time

making sense of Folsom part 1

Folsom was the center of CP operations in the late 1800's. There were yard facilities, warehouses for CP freight transferred to horse drawn wagons bound for towns farther up the hill. There were repair shops for both cars and locomotives.

Type 22 station sitting at the center of the action
Photo Tom Ebert

Another shot of yard switcher 1307 working a cut
of  PFE's now iced and ready for delivery up the hill
Photo Tom Ebert

Eventually this was sold off to the Southern Pacific which moved its operation center to Sacramento.  I had planned for Folsom to contain a yard with trackage into town. It seemed ludicrous not have a yard for the Placerville Branch, where trains could be built and broken down. The yard at Folsom then is a work of fiction, based on the ancient yard of the Central Pacific. It was created so that I could fill a yard master position and provides a pivot point for all trains coming and leaving the Placerville Branch. The  point to point design of the Placerville Branch has Folsom being the western end of the modeled portion of the layout and Camino at the eastern terminus. There was a small turntable built by the CP at the original Folsom yard. Today its been unearthed, preserved and is part of a park just below Sutter Street. The Folsom wye came later when it was found that the 85' McKeen passenger car would not fit. So a wye was built so all power, no matter the size could turn at Folsom. Trains entered Folsom WB or EB ran down the wye and perform switching duties as needed, The cars going west could be left on the wye  be picked up  later by trains headed back down the hill. SP did not take anything unnecessarily up the 2% grade to  Placerville . Set outs up hill, pick ups down hill was the rule .It wasn't too long, probably in the late 40's that one train a day handled traffic on the branch save for the fruit rush where a 2-8-0 or two would handle extra traffic as needed. More next time

Switcher 0-8-8 performs switching duties east of Folsom Station
Photo by Tom Ebert

Pulling cars for Earl fruit at Folsom Photo Tom Ebert

 

Latrobe ramblings

I want to complete several of the thoughts posted last time regarding the model work at Latrobe, the rail serve industries on the Placerville Branch, and why I chose them. I've been thinking about this post over the past day or so, trying to compose my modeling rationale. In other words what’s my goal in modeling the Placerville Branch.
I'm not is a strict prototype modeler obviously and that's not to say I don't respect that option. As I move along in this process of building my layout I aspire to that goal. It maybe that “I’ll get there,” one day, and perhaps not. What gives me the greatest satisfaction is creating scenes that will burn in the viewers memory. I think my creative abilities are a barrier to following the prototype. I’m getting to the point in this process where how it looks to me as a modeler is more important  then a carbon copy of a photo I have. A friend once jokingly called me an impressionistic modeler. And that maybe it. I think my version of the Placerville Branch will always have signature scenes designed and built to capture the flavor of the Branch, just not exactly.
I do like to think that I'm ratcheting downward and bearing down to the prototype, but I'm not a stickler for it. I'm not a rivet counter. I am often amazed at the modelers who scratch builds everything on their layout to match their chosen prototype. I don't see how they do it and still have time for the rest of their lives. Perhaps their secret is that modeling is the rest of their lives - I don't know.
I had a vision of what I thought Latrobe would look like 2 years before I built it out. I drew lines on the bare plywood that essentially marked where the town would go and how it would look. Of course it changed over time,  and understanding what fits and what doesn't will cause these changes to occur. My last post showed the areas track work,  and I suppose if I had followed the prototype I would have had a station, perhaps a livestock pen with stock car ramps. I've never seen any photo's or station plans of rail served livestock pens at Latrobe, but when I drive out there I do see lots of pens in the area and close to the old line. So I use my imagination, and think, "what might have been," or "whats reasonable to assume." As is shown on the previous post, I positioned my Latrobe station on the main line. On the prototype photo in the last posting their is nothing except a line of trees and a field behind where the old station stood. I didn’t do that, instead choosing to build the town of Latrobe in front of the main and siding with plenty of vertical space to switch the industries in or near Latrobe. Here are some photo’s of the this part of the Placerville Branch

Amador Copper above Latrobe photo Tom Ebert

Latrobe Livestock photo Tom Ebert

Latrobe Livestock photo Tom Ebert

Latrobe photo Tom Ebert

Latrobe detail photo by Jeff Aley

Latrobe freight house looking toward Amador Copper Photo by Jeff Aley

Close up Latrobe Freight Photo by Jeff Aley

Latrobe Freight looking west. The yellow building is the Latrobe Hotel

                                    Photo by Jeff Aley

Latrobe Livestock photo Jeff Aley

Latrobe EB mogul through town photo Jeff Aley

Unless otherwise noted these photo's were taken with an IPhone 8.