Southern Pacific Coast Line in HO


Small world! I grew up in Goleta just north of Santa Barbara and remember the endless parade of sugar beet trains on their way to the Spreckles plant just south of Salinas. I currently live in Atascadero and have since 1970 and I am completely familiar with the area you are modeling. It would be nice if you could squeeze in a couple feet of the coast between Goleta and Santa Maria. This is untouched coastline for 40 miles.
 
Coastal areas are indeed a very good idea, i am already looking for space to expand my layout so that i can include some :).

Looking forward to see your progress, the SP depot turned out great, congratulations on your work!
 
Since I'm still waiting for some turnouts and other stuff I ordered to arrive I've been busying myself with some other projects.

This is the Walthers State Line Farm Supply building that I kept from the old layout. It's now a garage. I found most of the signage on the web.

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Yes sir Alan. I was fortunate enough to have operated on John Allens layout while I was on temporary instructor duty at Mare Island while I was in the Navy. He had a few mirrors on the layout and sure made it look a lot larger than it really was. It was the first time I had seen this and it blew my mind.
 
I was finally able to get my hands on a Walthers REA Transfer Warehouse and I turned it into this. The Juillard-Cockcroft wholesale grocer is an actual business that was near the SP yard in San Luis Obispo. I cut open some of the roll-up doors, built a shadow box type of partial interior, and added a few workers in an attempt to make this place look like it was busy.

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Small world! I grew up in Goleta just north of Santa Barbara and remember the endless parade of sugar beet trains on their way to the Spreckles plant just south of Salinas. I currently live in Atascadero and have since 1970 and I am completely familiar with the area you are modeling. It would be nice if you could squeeze in a couple feet of the coast between Goleta and Santa Maria. This is untouched coastline for 40 miles.

Don't forget the sugar beet plant on the Santa Maria Valley RR. They connected w/ SP at Guadalupe.
 
I'll echo Rico's comment, great build. I too have this structure in its abbreviated low-relief (background building) form and like you guys, cut the doors and added a floor. I haven't yet added figures or other details and your build has given me the inspiration to go back and complete it.

Willie
 
We have ballast! Haven't been making much progress lately due to real life and being an actual adult and all that! But tonight I was able to get about 4 feet of track ballasted. 99% of the track work is done and trains have been running pretty reliably so far and I have been anxious to start on some scenery. This isn't much progress but it does represent a milestone and the beginning of the next phase.

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Well, as usual I rarely spend any time working on the layout over the spring and summer. Just too many other things to do. But no the weather is turning and the leaves are changing I've got the bug to work on trains again. So, I made a little progress and started on some of the scenery.

I've made a small, compact, TOFC facility and the scene with the auto repair garage that you saw previously.

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First of all let me apologize for it being over a year since my last update. As usual it was things like real life that got in the way plus the fact that, as I've mentioned before, I don't really work on the layout very much, if at all during the spring and summer months. So I'm happy to report that there really has been a lot of progress since our last conversation so lets get right into it.

The San Luis Obispo area has been almost completed. I say almost because the depot is still the art board mock-up it has been from the beginning. The big thing holding back progress on that is the unique windows and doors. Almost sure that no commercially available casting will work and I will probably have to produce them from scratch.

Here are some photos:

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