Southern Pacific Coast Line in HO


Not that it matters, but I like what you did with the area, where the Sunkist plant used to be. I like the cold storage/warehouse, as its not too, too, small, given the height, but doesn't have a large footprint, either.

If you end up not using the Sunkist mockup, you could probably sell it, and somebody'd buy it. I've seen worse 'finished' models than that.
 
Thanks for the comment. The footprint of the warehouse was heavily influenced by the track running around behind it. It's not very noticeable but the building isn't square. Left side wall is almost an inch shorter than the right side for track clearance back there.
 
Finally, after almost three years of looking at the cardboard mock up of the San Luis Obispo depot, I have built the replacement.

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It's not 100% accurate, I know, but it's close enough to give the look that I want. This version is also made mostly of art board. The windows and doors are made from Evergreen strips and sheet. The spanish tile roof is from Plastistruct. The most noticeable thing missing is the "San Luis Obispo" lettering above the doors and on the ends. Just don't have the decals or dry transfers or whatever would work for that. This brings the total of scratch built buildings on the layout to 20.
 
This should come as no surprise to most of you but the internet really can be a very useful modeling tool. The other day I was cruising around the web looking at photos when I came across this:

Cinderella02.jpg

I had to add this to my layout. I downloaded it, ran it though Photoshop to make it large enough and turned it into this:

newlayout151.jpg


I printed the photo on plain paper (not glossy photo paper) and glued the main building to art board and cut it out. The face of the loading dock is cut from a second print of the same photo. Strategic cutting and pasting of another print provided the windows and brickwork for the end of the building. That great looking raisin box was most likely just painted on the real building but I couldn't resit making it stand out. I cut it from another print, glued it to more art board trimmed and glued to the building giving it some raised relief. And just like that I've got an interesting building and another customer for Watsonville switch job to work.
 
This should come as no surprise to most of you but the internet really can be a very useful modeling tool. The other day I was cruising around the web looking at photos when I came across this:

View attachment 41987
I had to add this to my layout. I downloaded it, ran it though Photoshop to make it large enough and turned it into this:

View attachment 41986

I printed the photo on plain paper (not glossy photo paper) and glued the main building to art board and cut it out. The face of the loading dock is cut from a second print of the same photo. Strategic cutting and pasting of another print provided the windows and brickwork for the end of the building. That great looking raisin box was most likely just painted on the real building but I couldn't resit making it stand out. I cut it from another print, glued it to more art board trimmed and glued to the building giving it some raised relief. And just like that I've got an interesting building and another customer for Watsonville switch job to work.

I really like that!
 
I wanted to add a more industrial "atmosphere" to this end of the layout so I bought a Walthers Plastic Pellet Transfer Facility. I'm not calling it that, it really is just some generic industry along the side of the tracks. It's not rail served and the idea is that there is much more to this industry just off the layout. It's really is just more scenery.

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From the very beginning this part of the layout was intended to be open staging/fiddle yard and I never had any intention of adding any scenery. But now that the scenery is sneaking farther and farther down toward the staging yard, I may decide to fully scenic at least the one track closest to the edge of the layout. I may replace the current code 100 track with code 70 to look more like yard track. We'll see how far this goes. :)
 
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I like to create small scenes like this one around the layout. At one time the oil well pump (or whatever those are called) could be seen all over LA. This one I've had for decades. It's made of cast white metal and I can't remember what kit this was. The chain link fence is from a Walthers kit. And if you look carefully you can see a guy in there doing some work on the pump. His truck is a Mini Metals '60 Ford and the logo on the door is an actual oil field service company logo than I found on the internet.
 
I like the pump jack scene. Which reminds me I have a working model of one somewhere.

Did you know the size of the pump jack corresponds to the depth of the oil well? One of the otherwise useless bits of knowledge I maintained from my 6 months of working in the oil field when I was a lot less wise.
 
Since this staging yard is slowly becoming more like a regular freight yard I decided it needed a yard office so I scratch built this.

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Not sure why I put in all those windows and doors because this is all you can see from the aisle.

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And the color is not this intense in person. It's weird because the foundation is gray not blue like it looks here.

Then I scratch built this minimal engine service area.

newlayout158.jpg


It's all made from Evergreen strips and shapes except for the ladder which came from a Walthers kit.
 
For the yard building, on my layout it will always be seen from the side away from the track. I do have a mirror I can move around to admire my handiwork. Note these buildings are mockups for my slowly emerging Port Costa 1952-54 layout. The yellow on the long office building is just Frog Tape with Tichy castings glued on. The actual use of the mirror is for soldering track leads on the non-viewing side of the track.
View mockup with mirror.jpg

The track at this stage looks so toylike but locations are not yet that final that I can begin ballasting. Note dummy for turntable at right.

A note for your future scratch SP Coast and Western division structures. The most common siding was novelty pattern not clapboard. And the trim brown used for windows and other architectural details is a light brown that looked a different color depending on the sunlight. I bright daylight is was almost a muddy brown color but appeared much darker in shadow. The red building is red because it is a sand and tool house engine service department structure which were painted either black of barn red in the steam era. It was an early mockup which did not have correct dimensions.
 
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A note for your future scratch SP Coast and Western division structures. The most common siding was novelty pattern not clapboard.

I used the clapboard siding because I wanted to knock out a quick yard office as a fun little project and the Evergreen clapboard was what I had on hand. I have some SP structures on another part of the layout that are American Model Builders kits and have the correct siding and colors.
 
I spent the last two days making and installing a lighting valance.

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It's difficult to really show the effect this has on the appearance of the layout with just cell phone photos but trust me, the change is dramatic. The layout looks more like a finished diorama now. All for the cost of a single sheet of masonite and a few 1 x 2s. :)
 



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