Owens Valley Mining (Part 2) - Bartlett Plant - Columbia-Southern Chemical Corp - Soda Ash, Trona, & Boron

Soda Ash

Loose Soda Ash - photo from About Mechanics article on soda ash

Most of us live our lives without thinking about how many times we run across a product or interact with something that has been effected by soda ash in our daily lives.  A very good article on how Soda Ash is made can be found at chemicalaldepartment.wordpress.com - the article in part covers "The main consuming industries of soda ash are glass, detergent, laundry soap, sodium silicate, cotton yarn, dyes and dyestuff, paper board and other chemical industries."

"There are two main ways of refining sodium carbonate. Trona, a mineral that occurs in natural deposits in evaporated lake beds throughout the world, is the most common source. Some salt water also contains sodium carbonate compounds. To extract the ash, scientists usually subject the trona ore or salt water to different crushing, heating, spinning, and other techniques." quote from About Mechanics article.  Obviously the production at Bartlett is following the processing of using the lake-bed Trona as the starting point.

To give some idea of the uses of Soda Ash, here's some ratios in 1981 for the use of Soda Ash in the US is as follows from the chemicalaldepartment article:

50% Glass

18% Manufacture of Chemicals

5% Soap & Detergents

3% Pulp & Paper

3% Water & Sewage Treatment

21% Misc (including exports)

In 1981, 7544 metric kilotons were produced per year!  I'm not sure what the ratios and production in kilotons was back in the 1950s, but it gives some idea the diverse uses of Soda Ash

The chemicalaldepartment article mentions that in the US, most of the Soda Ash produced is from natural sources, including refining from naturally occurring Trona minerals.  One of the production points where Trona is harvested from the Owens Lake brine and shipped from Bartlett.  Additionally, Soda Ash, Pot Ash, and Trona mineral is also produced at the plants at Trona, Borosolvay, and West End along the dead shoreline of Searles Dry Lake, just to the south east in the next valley over from Owens Valley, where the Trona Railway ships it out by rail connection at Searles Station on the southern part of the SP's Jawbone branch.

Columbia-Southern Chemical Corporation - Bartlett, Calif.

After diving deeper into the history of the long and complex story of soda ash processing on the Owens Lake, here's a short quote for Columbia-Southern, from the wiki.

Columbia-Southern Chemical Corp wiki
"The plant perfected their sodium carbonate recovery process from the Owens Lake brine, and built the full-scale Pacific Alkali Co. soda ash plant here in 1928. In 1944, Columbia-Southern Chemical, a subsidiary of Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company, purchased the plant. The plant continued to use the old sodium carbonate recovery methods here until the plant was upgraded late in 1958 to incorporate the sesquicarbonate process, and it had three times the capacity of the old plant."

Bartlett town site, about a mile north of the Columbia-Southern plant - Tales Along El Camino Sierra group

Also check out this great website of Owens Valley History!  There's a lot of good information which I'm still trying to digest there.  One part of the website shows a map with Columbia-Southern Chemical at Bartlett, with US Hwy 395, CA Hwy 190, and the SPNG removed, suggesting this map was post-1960 vintage.  Some of the photos of Bartlett (townsite) are pretty good too, which I didn't know about until I saw the pictures... Still so much more to research!

In my previous post Jawbone Branch Part 3 - Consists & More Bartlett Research, I pulled some data from the California Division of Mines for the Columbia-Southern Chemical Corp plant at Barlett that give the following information.  In 1920 the lake level had dropped due to the aqueduct.  Some times the Owens Lake concentration of brine reached 35% within the salt crystalline solid structures - which also changed seasonally, but most of the sodium bicarbonate and sodium sulfate to supply the production of minerals crystallized out.  Some production was then shifted to "dry" salt-cake gathering of soda ash and Trona from the dried lake bed.  Into 1923 and 1924 The Inyo Chemical Company drilled brine wells, sunk into the densest part of the lake bed to concentrate up to process.   Varying concentrations and stubborn problems with filtering the bicarbonate in the carbonating towers and boron also tended to precipitate out at the same time.  By 1932 the Inyo Chem. Co. was closed down.

In 1926 the Kuhnert Syndicate built a test plant at Bartlett using brine containing 9 per cent or more sodium carbonate, which with the controlled application of flue gas with 15% carbon dioxide would force the precipitation of sodium sesquicarbonate (trona mineral) out of the brine.  This new more controlled process didn't run into the same filtering problems as ICC did two years before and the need for lime kilns used in previous processes was not needed.

Bartlett Plant from the Hwy 395 (west) side, notice same structures in the photo as below. - Ray Olsen collection

The new plant was built with 16 towers, 80ft tall by 5ft wide for the carbonation process.  The well brine was solar concentrated to create a feed brine of about 13% then heated with steam.  The remaining stock was separated in centrifuges from the precipitated trona mineral.  Some of the trona cake was then calcined in furnace, resulting in white soda ash.  Boron was also able to be drawn out of the liquid that was drawn off from the trona precipitate step.  Of interest to the operational modeling of the Bartlett plant is the detail that the solar concentration process, starting around May when the weather warmed up and usually stopped around the first of October.  If this is correct, then this only leaves about 7 months for the production of the 26,000 tons of products.

Northeast side of Bartlett Plant, showing boxcar spotted and loading doors - posted by Tales Along El Camino Sierra

I think this photo is viewing up from between the plant's spur and the SP mainline, which I believe would be behind the photographer. - Although on my layout, this dirt slope in the foreground might have to be the right-of-way.  In any case, this provides a great view of the warehouse structure that was closest to the track, which can be modeled... and also one of the furnace-processing towers close to the track (above the boxcar in this photo).  Unfortunately the large 4x4 complex of CO2 precipitating towers won't be able to be modeled, as it will be in the aisle way.

North side of Bartlett Plant - posted by Tales Along El Camino Sierra

While of more limited value for modeling purposes, this view does show the north-side view of the plant (left to right): loading warehouses, furnace CO2 flue tower?, 4x4 set of 80ft x 5ft processing towers, power house with tall black stack, large evaporating-cooling tower, and what I think are the vertical storage tanks- black color (for what I'm not sure yet).

Changes of Ownership in 1944 

Bartlett 1944 - Fairchild Aerial Survey (RR East to Left)

In 1944 the plant Pacific Alkali Company at Bartlett was sold to the Columbia-Southern Chemical Corporation, a subsidiary of Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company.  They left the plant alone until the late 1950s by which time they decided that the nearly inexhaustible supply of trona at Owens Lake was worth upgrading their plant.  The upgrades came on-line in 1958, tripling the production rates!

Map of Bartlett, Columbia-Southern Chemical plant and Cottonwood Creek. - Calif. Div. of Mines - David Coscia collection (cropped)

As a side note: There are still remains of charcoal kilns several miles south of Bartlett at Cottonwood Creek, so I'm not sure where they're getting their lime from for this process. The charcoal was probably being used for the CO2 needs of the processing of the soda ash and trona at the Bartlett facility and others in the area.

Crunching the Numbers for the Model

I've calculated the shipments based on the California Department of Mines data from 1928 production rates, which supposedly were pretty steady for the 30 years the plant was in operations.  I believe the plant operated 7 days a week (however this may have been semi-seasonally), given the furnace and CO2 production systems needed for the Soda Ash production and purification.  So if loading only on 5 days/week means that my yearly production numbers were divided by 251 days, resulting in the 12,000 tons of Soda Ash equating to 4.6 (50-ton) carloads per 5-day week.  During the same time 12,000 tons of Trona mineral was also being produced, which would lead to 4.6 (50-ton) carloads per 5-day week as well.  I think in the longer run these two 4.6 carloads/week would stack in an alternating fashion, such that one week 5 carloads of Soda Ash would ship and 4 carloads of Trona, then the next week it would reverse with 4 loads of Soda Ash and 5 loads of Trona.

The 40-tons of Boron produced for a 5-day working week (or 7 real days of production) would suggest that the weekly carload would be short loaded or they would have to delay the next carloading for an extra day or day-and-a-half to get a full 50-ton carload.  I could probably increase the apparent randomness of the loads coming out of Bartlett by shifting the Boron shipment to be when the load would actually reach the capacity for a 50-ton car, not a 40-ton car or short-loading a 50-ton car.  If the car was instead loaded and shipped every 8th day of production.

This seems to be a question of scale, and while I could see maybe up to 3x50 tons 3x week of borax... that would put the car loading out of Bartlett at more like 7 cars per trip, which seems a bit high from what the photographs of the Owenyo Local look like during the 1948-1956 era.

Bartlett plant with notes for buildings - Green line is roughly planned edge of layout. - Aug, 1947 Aerial photo set

I've re-run my calculations to convert this to realistic car loadings as follows: These yearly production rates would average of about 33 tons per day, 4.6 (50-ton) carloads per week of Trona mineral, and another 4.6 (50-ton) carloads per week of soda ash, and about 1 (40-ton) car per week of borax.

This means about 10 car loads of mineral loads out per week, or about 3-4 cars per tri-week trip just for Bartlett, which seems possible. Maybe one car in of fuel-oil to dry out the minerals.

Further Digesting the Data

My basic yearly average calculations for about 10 cars per week, of the 12,000 tons of soda ash, 12,000 tons of trona minerals, and the 2,000 tons of boron, but if it actually had to be produced in only about 7 months!  Seven months should work out to about 140 days of loading product.  This means that the 12,000 tons was being loaded at about 600 tons per week or 12 (50 ton) cars of soda ash, 12 (50 ton) cars of trona, and 2 (50 ton) cars of boron per week.  This would total about 26 carloads out per week, Spreading this between the multiple trips of the Owenyo Local per week, this should work out to about 4-5 cars per day, or 8-9 when the local was tri-weekly.  I'm not sure this would accurately represent the production rates.

Newest updated drawing with resized inside runaround and Glass Co loading spots.

However, the possibility that the track arrangement at Bartlett could have had 3 or 4 cars spotted, and ~3 car off-spots stored in the run around track. They may have had the local respot the cars on the northbound trip, or they could have had a cable or car-mover used to reposition the loaded cars into the runaround and pull the next batch of cars up.  So that would seem to suggest a maximum daily loading (between switching moves by the SP) of about 6-7 cars.

Fuel Oil?

There's also a comment about steam heating being used to drive off the water from the brine stock, so I wonder if they could continue production during the cooler months.  So it's probable that they were using fuel-oil to fire the furnace and produce the steam.  So maybe I get to split the difference a bit on the weekly production rates.  Currently I'm thinking, maybe 2/3-3/4 of the yearly production was done during the summer months, and the rest was taken care of during the winter with extra fuel oil heating and some down time for the plant for repairs and maintenance work.

Additional Annoying Evidence

I want to look at a couple of the aerial photos I found.  Thankfully these are dated and so we can do a bit of photo analysis.  I'll probably do a future deeper dive on these photos, combining the same day snap-shots with Owenyo & Lone Pine.

Aerial photo of Bartlett on Friday, 8-1-1947.

Seems there's two tank cars spotted at Bartlett's plant on this early August 1, 1947, a Friday.  The photo appears to be a late morning based on the shadows.  I'll have to cross check if 1947 was still 6-trips/week or if they'd dropped to 3-trips/week by that year.  If this photo is between the nightly trips across the branch, maybe they were loading at night, leaving the plant's spurs empty during the heat of the day?

Slightly more clear 9-10-1955 Bartlett - Aerial photo 1VJZ000060111 (North photo)

Here's a pair of photos taken on 9-10-1955 of Bartlett's plant.  It looks like there's one boxcar.  There are two new towers built over the southeast corner of the main building.  Maybe for covered hopper loading?

A bit blurry 9-10-1955 Bartlett - Aerial photo 1VJZ000060112 (South photo)

In this second photo, look at the clearly angled track-edge of the warehouse in the upper left of this photo.  The extra storage or loading silo towers could be interesting to model, but I wonder if it pushes my modeling era too late.  The 1955 date would put this past the end of 2-8-2s working on the Jawbone, and RSD-5 or SD9 would have been pulling the local.

In Closing

I'll probably aim for 3-4 cars/day for the 'summer time' rush, maybe up to 5 cars/day.  I don't really want to push to more than that, unless I find that the loading rates of the SPNG dropped off during the summer months.  If the full yearly production of Bartlett was produced only in the summer 7 months, then that would mean about 1/3 of all the traffic on the Jawbone branch would have to be going to Bartlett.  Maybe in August it did get that high, but this still seems a little high.

Once again, one of my favorite photos - SP 3237 switching at Bartlett on the Jawbone branch - Leo Barusch photo - Dani Collection

The problem is right now I don't know, but I'll continue to do research and in the end have fun letting the traffic fluctuate somewhat.  I'll probably continue to play with the shipment schedule spreadsheet and estimated production rates for Bartlett. 

One nice thing to do on a model railroad is keep the car orders from the on-line shippers from becoming too stale.  The "problems" that I'm confronted with now in my research that seem to show inconclusive results could also be taken as a silver-lined cloud, giving me license to have some flexibility in my car assignments and scheduling.

Jason Hill

Related Articles:

Owens Valley Mining (Part 1) - Owenyo Transfer & Commodities - Overview of what was transferred between the SPNG and SPSG at Owenyo.

Jawbone Branch Part 3 - Consists & More Bartlett Research - Very early concept for Bartlett from 2020, Nov 10.

SP Jawbone Branch (Part 42) - Redesigns for Little Lake and Bartlett - 2024, Mar 7 update on layout track plan to be more accurate.

Jawbone Branch (Part 44) - Soapstone - An Unexpectedly Useful Material - Really the first in depth post about mined minerals from the Owens Valley, so I could say this was really the first part of this series.

Jawbone Branch Layout Build Index - Construction of the layout postings.

SP Jawbone Branch (Part 44) - Owenyo Transfer & Commodities

I covered the basics of Soap Stone in Owens Valley Mining (Part 1), but I think the topic of Owens Valley Mining is specialized enough that the detailed dives into it should split a bit from my regular Jawbone Branch series of blog posts.

SP 3203 & SPNG 9 both working around Owenyo in Feb, 1951 - Martin Hansen collection

As I want to get more into the research of the Owens Valley Mining and what was shipped by rail.  To do this I'll be borrowing the table from Joe Dale Morris' excellent book SP Slim Princess in the Sunset 1940-1960, plus I'll be adding in the research I'm doing for the Jawbone's standard gauge line down the west side of Owens Lake and south through the greater valley towards Inyokern.

SPNG Shipments

SP 102856 boxcar at Spot 11, according to my spot numbering system, on SPNG Owenyo North Transfer Platform (NTP) in 1954 - owensvalleyhistory,com s-l1600_ebay01_sml

Many of the transfers at Owenyo won't be too obvious what exactly was being moved between the NG cars and loading the SG cars.  I hope to have some fun with staging figures with all the sacks, bulk, bagged, piled timber, wheelbarrowed, hand-trucked, or conveyored lading being moved.  The NG also received outside freight forwarder shipments coming in from the rest of the world to the folks on the SPNG villages and mining camps.

List of industries & commodities shipped on the SPNG - table from Joe Dale Morris's SP Slim Princess in the Sunset 1940-1960 book.

Some of the shipments obviously dropped off by the 1940s that I'm modeling, such as the silver ore and bullion shipments, while others, such as the Perlite, didn't come until a couple years after my modeling era cutoff.  Sadly most of the colorful operation of bulk oil movements by rail to Owenyo proper and transfer to the SPNG was abandoned after WWII, as the traffic using the newly upgraded US Hwy 395/6 allowed semi-trucks to haul the fuel in from Mojave and Route 66.

I'm still looking for more information about exactly how much production was shipped by each of the various industries.

Modeling Owenyo Operations

Early development car-spot numbering for my HO-scale Jawbone Branch.

By 1952 the SP was using a station number system.  Owenyo was assigned 3144, Bartlett was 3130 and Little Lake was 3089.  Mojave was 1579.  I'm not sure exactly what the numbering was based on.  It doesn't appear to be the same as the Santa Fe's system which was by straight Mile Post number.  The SP system seems semi mileage based, but with different number series, changing by division.

I will be using the station number system with additional digit at Owenyo to show spot number based on the chart I made above, which is my own fabrication.  Two small changes to the drawing need to be made.  Because the Dump Trestle is going to be shortened to only 4 cars, Spot 5 is now assigned to the Stock Transfer Platform.  The second is that the lower through track in the chart is actually the mainline, so spots 26-30 are not correct to be shown as a place to leave cars, so those spot numbers should be considered void.

Loading chart 2024-04-26, roughed in for total car capacity calculations.

The above loading chart for traffic on the Jawbone Branch is currently just a rough form for me to work out the average train size and how much traffic that will represent on the layout as a baseline.  It seems I could add a bit of traffic or adjust the car counts at Little Lake to have a bit more traffic on Day 1 and Day 5.  Probably in the form of a few extra mineral cars to Owenyo or non-peak season stock car movements.  In reality, these light spots were probably filled by traffic for Lone Pine, but as I won't be modeling Lone Pine (at least currently), I won't have to deal with that traffic. 

I'll be planning to mix up the assignment of cars at Owenyo.  The Transfer Trestle (OTT) probably was spotted and allowed the smaller NG cars to be shoved up and dumped into the standard gauge cars over a couple of days to reach full loads.  There may have also been some separation of either which exact car was shipping bulk soapstone, vs dolomite, vs talc.  It could have also been some days they had one commodity and the next trip it was something else. 

Edit 2024-04-29: There's some new info coming together for Bartlett that indicates the production was at least partly seasonal.  I'm not sure what the production fluctuation, if any, would equate to in terms of carloads being shipped and fuel being supplied by tank cars.  I'll probably adjust the number of cars in and out of the Bartlett plant, but I'll talk about this more in a future post.

More Research to Do

Owenyo Trestle - SG side - unknown calander photo - Ronald Grau collection

Perhaps that's what I'm seeing in the above photo and some aerial photos where an extra set of GS gondolas were off-spotted on the trestle lead track.  The Joe Dale Morris book includes some description of the NG's operations regarding which days of the week where the NG went and collected cars from.  This could give me more info as to which days of the week the transloading was done to the SG cars.  Still more research to do!

In Closing

Hopefully the research on the mining will make my operations on the model more realistic than just shuffling plastic boxes around.

I'm going to wrap up this first of the Owens Valley Mining series at this point.  I'm already starting Part 2 and Part 3 so I don't make each sub-topic too long of a post.

Jason Hill

Related Posts:

Owens Valley Mining (Part 1) - Soapstone - An Unexpectedly Useful Material - Really the first in depth post about mined minerals from the Owens Valley, so I could say this was really part 1 of this series.

Jawbone Branch Layout Build Index - Construction of the layout postings.

SP Jawbone Branch (Part 45) - DDC Control Planning & Engine DCC Ponderings

Time for a quick update on my electrical planning and DCC command system for the Jawbone Branch.  Until now, all testing was done with straight DC power from an MRC 1370 throttle.  I hadn't bothered to hook up the DCC system to the layout yet.

First DCC Engine at Owenyo!

SP 5301 is the first DCC equipped engine to be test run on the Jawbone at Owenyo on March 12, 2024.

The NCE PowerCab system, while allowing walk-around with the command station throttle, doesn't allow it to be unplugged at any time.  So my plan has always been to keep the 'hammer-head' PowerCab throttle plugged into the Mojave Yard throat area, where the heavy restaging switching will be done.

March 2024 DCC plan and cable connections.

Originally, my plan was to use a tethered throttle, such as NCE's 05 or 06 throttle to walk-around the layout for the road job around the room to Owenyo, unplugging and replugging as the train progressed. However, the challenge of rigging the phone-cable command and throttle power bus between each module and across the east doorway will be a bit of a pain, requiring more hardware and connectors.  I've talked it over with a couple of friends, one of whom offered me a 05/06 radio throttle for the road crew to use.

I didn't plan to use a radio throttle system, as the layout's not that big, however I'm now reconsidering the merits of a radio throttle in terms of the cost savings of the layout wiring and additional connections between the modules.  For the cost of the radio base station, not command station, I could jump straight to operating the layout, with only the track power bus wires through my already planned Molex Pin connectors between the modules, which will also handle the LED strip lighting for the staging yard and any under-layout lighting I need, over the workbench below Mojave mostly.

Yes, I still need to finish running the rest of the wiring for Mojave Staging Yard, lighting wiring, etc through the Molex connectors.  I was planning to do that later last year, but as I discuss in the next section, I wasn't able to do gripping, stripping wires, and crimping of cables in the later part of 2023.  So now it's mid-2024 before I'll be able to get back to the wiring again.

Time to DCC the Jawbone's Engines?

For the last six months, since my trip to Owenyo, the following my right thumb's tendon flame-up, which has made basically any modeling or machinist work exceedingly painful. I've not been doing much on the physical Jawbone Branch construction or the models.  A bit over three weeks ago, I received an injection to my thumb to try to get the swelling under control and permit better healing.  I have to wait a total of six weeks, and then see how it's doing.  But I'm hoping that in a few weeks time, I can start dipping my toe back into doing some gentle modeling work again.  

Hopefully soon I'll be able to DCC a Mike or two, like the SP 3203, so I can run them around at Owenyo!

I don't feel I really need sound, but subtle sound would be nice on the single-engine trains that will be the regular operations of the Jawbone branch.  Hopefully, I will include being able to get DCC sound chip installing and setting up of at least one or two of my Mike's for the Jawbone Branch, now that I could run them on DCC!  I've been planning to use ESU LokSound 3.5 decoders that I bought from a friend as new-old stock back in 2018.  I was also able to get some 100-ohm Bass Reflex speakers from Railmaster Hobbies to use with the older decoders (modern decoders use higher power 8-ohm speakers).

DCC Settings on the Engines

I really don't need much of the functions of the modern decoders, or the extra channels for sound.  Plus I still have the LokSound 3.5 custom sound programmer and software to map the sounds how I want them.  The v3.5 decoders were also about the first decoders that had good quality B-EMF reading of the motor so that a sound cam on the drivers or axles wasn't required. i.e. if the engine slowed or stalled, the sound of the exhausts beats would also correspondingly slow or stop. The B-EMF would also help adjust the volume of the engine's exhaust beats as the engine works upgrade or backs off to a softer volume as the engine is drifting down grade.  I don't know how much this will be noticeable on the 1.25% grades that I'm planning to use on the Jawbone, but I can always mute the exhaust only for times I really want to drift downgrade.  However, unlike operations at LMRC, the prototype sections of the Jawbone that I'm modeling are much flatter even than 1.25% grades required by the no-lex design that I'm using.  So having the engine lightly working most of the time on the prototypically nearly flat Owens Valley, would be appropriate.

I will have to see how much momentum I can stand to have in the models while doing all the switching at the various towns, I may choose to have much more acceleration momentum, so that the decoder will realize that the lag and make the starting exhaust louder.  Switching with excessive deceleration momentum on selectively compressed layouts has always been my main concern with being able to get models to stop and not just over-run the mark, shoving cars out the end of a track, etc.  Yes, I plan to have effective wheel stops/tie bumpers, etc and containment to keep cars from getting off the layout if they were to run hard into an end-of-track situation.

In Closing

I am planning to write a blog post covering the installation of DCC decoder, speaker, lighting, boiler weights, etc to the Mikes, as I've not done any DCC installs since starting this blog.  

Showing example of "tight" wheel gauge, in this case a GGD sample coach from 2017.

One of the other challenges to getting any of the steam running on the branch is that I still need to regauge the drivers and wheels for operation on the Jawbone Branch. - Many older brass models have 'tight' gauge by about 0.015" to as much as 0.025" on their wheels and drivers, which will cause issues on my properly gauged hand-layed switches, binding up on the guard rails or derailing.  Many pre-built switches on the market have extra narrow gauged guardrails which can take the narrower wheel gauges from ~30-40+ years ago.  Also with my hand issue, I've not been really wanting to do the regauging, as it is risking making my hand injury worse.  I'm sure I'll be using some wheel-puller jigs when I do get around to doing the gauging work.

Jason Hill

Related Articles:

Jawbone Branch Engine Roster - All the engines I plan to one day have available for operations on the Jawbone Branch.

Modeling SP 3266 (Part 1) - History and Fixing Frame Damage - Starting work on my 3266 conversion by fixing some broken frame solder joints.

Modeling SP 3266 (Part 2) - More History & Installing Clam-Shell Smoke Stack - Time to refit the 3266 to have the clam-shell smoke deflecting stack.

Modeling SP 3266 (Part 3) New Drawbar Mount for Athearn-Genesis 120-C-6 Tender - Time to catch my 3266 up and modify the tender mounting on the A-G tender. - I stopped short of doing the DCC installation and doing the rest of the fitting of the boiler weights, speaker, etc in the boiler.

Modeling SP 3237 (Part 1) - Ex-Arizona Eastern Mk-4 - First look at the SP 3237 from a Sunset Models engine.  Clam-shell stack conversion, regauging the wheels, and DCC will be the next steps on this engine.

Owens Valley Mining (Part 1) - Soapstone - An Unexpectedly Useful Material

The SPNG, originally the C&C, was built to move the mined and dry lake gathered minerals from the distant Inyo mountains and the Owens valley to market.  After the turn of the century, the SP standard gauge line was built to support the construction of the California Aqueduct, and once connected to Owenyo, provided a southward shipment path for the products of the SPNG to market.  Once the SPNG's northern connection over Montgomery Pass was abandoned in 1937, the standard gauge transfer at Owenyo was the only connection left.

Owens Valley, looking east at the Inyo Mountains

In this post, I want to look a little closer at one of the minerals that was shipped by Narrow Gauge rail to Owenyo, then loaded into Standard Gauge cars, and sent out to the larger world beyond Mojave.  While at the surface, most of the line's later loads were all white powder or solid chunk forms of 'stuff' which looked very much alike, there actually where about a dozen different minerals being worked.

SPNG 227 - low-side gondolas with bulk soapstone - owenyo_05_1940a_006_sml - owensvalleyhistory,com

In this view we see multiple low-side NG gondolas of bulk soapstone being unloaded by hand and wheelbarrow into standard gauge boxcars.  I'll be covering some of the other commodities in future dedicated posts.

But, What is Soapstone?

Several companies shipped soapstone and talc in several forms.  This explains why soapstone is seen on the Jawbone Branch moving in multiple types of freight cars, coming in on the Narrow Gauge to Owenyo in flat-bottomed gondola/flatcars, then moved over to bulk loading in Standard Gauge boxcars with chunks of 4-8" and finer pieces.  Specifically, I'm going to be looking at the soapstone which was loaded on a truck-ramp at Zurich, along with talc and soda ash... all white minerals which look similar, wonderful!  To be clear, talc does made up a large portion of soapstone, and some companies shipped the 'soapstone' deposits out to be used for its talc content, while others were intending to use the soapstone for it's unique qualities.

Soapstone samples - image from Wikipedia page, linked below.

The websites where I looked up Soapstone, it has a density of 2,980 kg/m³!  From this I am able to calculate how much weight we're usually seeing in the NG flat-bottomed gons, which were piled with soapstone, probably to capacity of 15-20 tons.  I can also figure how much they might be able to fit into a typical 40ft boxcar. 

Soapstone is useful for many products and consumable uses, including: marking pencils for metal which will be welded, multi-purpose carving for sculptures, high and wet area structural uses - such as - counter-tops, stoves, etc.  The Soapstone is a high concentration source of talc, with some silica and traces of CaO or Al2O3 mixed in.

By the mid-1950s, the SP Transfer Dock crews had a small forklift with a front-end bucket in place of the regular fork tines, to drop the loads of soapstone into piles in the boxcars.  Some comments on photos of the transfer trestle also report that soapstone was being moved in NG gondolas, then dumped into the SG gondolas at the trestle.

Boxcars or Gondolas?

SP 102856 post-war B-50-28 boxcar SPNG Owenyo Transfer Dock 1954, loading with 100 pound bags of Gypsum. - owensvalleyhistory,com s-l1600_ebay01_sml (Cropped)

A load in a 40ft AAR boxcar, 48in high of soapstone works out to about 48 tons.  The photo of SP 102856 has a half-height load of 100 pound bags, which would appear to be a full weight load as well.

 Seems that would be rather hard to put into a car with just the forklift bucket.  But it works out about right for a GS gondola piling to average about 4 feet high would be about right, as the cars had 5 foot high sides.

In Closing

SP boxcars of various classes are switched at Owenyo to load and move all the materials to and from the SPNG.

A couple of the photos in Joe Dale Morris's book on the Jawbone shows that most of the cars at the docks around the 1950s era were being loaded with the bucket forklift into the boxcars with the newer 7ft door boxcars (including foreign cars).  This might help explain why the sudden increase in B-50-28,29,30,31,33s showed up after the mid-1950s at Owenyo.  This would make since as using the bucket-forklift would be easier to maneuver into the car and dump the soapstone than the older 6ft door cars.

Jason Hill

Related Articles:

Jawbone Branch Index Page - Overview list of all my blog posts about the Jawbone Branch project.

SP Jawbone Branch (Part 43) - Testing Track Painting

I started writing this post in mid-October'23, but am getting around to posting it in March 2024, after a couple other posts about the research trip to Owenyo, work developing 3d prints of the structures, & redesign/reconsidering several aspects post - Parts 39-42 actually.  So any out of temporal statements made here compared to Parts 39-42 should be taken into account.

Time to return to the Owenyo Wye.

I've not done much on the Jawbone Branch during the last year.  A very severe winter, some health issues, and then a very busy summer with work at OwlMtModels has kept me from doing much on the layout itself. 

Well, I got the NC car done before I worked much more on the layout.

My freight car fleet has grown a bit with some wonderful additions (Rapido X-3 tankcars, Tangent B-50-28/31 boxcars, and finally getting decals and finishing touches on my NC&StL Fowler boxcar), but all that doesn't help get the layout itself done, but maybe I can pivot the "new model" energy into getting a photo diorama going on the wye-tail at least! - (Yes this post was written 6 months ago already... remember when this car was newly finished?  Yeah, that long ago!)

A Time to Color!

I still need to wire the track and build the connectors to tie the wye-tail module into the rest of the layout, but I couldn't wait any longer to see what some tie-color would look like on this section.  The basic painting of the ties will allow me to get one module at least with some scenery and finishing on it.  Maybe I can put up the white-board as a backdrop and shoot some nice model photos against this soon!

Not much has happened since this photo in March of 2021... - Until now!

I decided to try misting some Krylon 'Almond' color spray paint enamel onto the Wye Tail module and see how that looks. 

Masking the switch point joiners.

I masked off the rail joiners for the switch points, as I've not installed them yet, and don't want any paint getting down into them.  Remember to watch out for how touchy the Krylon spray nozzles are... they're pretty much "ON" or "OFF", and they have higher pressure than typical Tamiya spray cans.  

Wye tail with the Almond color dusted on.

This results in a high-pressure blast of paint which can basically be 'dusted' on to the tops of the ties.  It's a pretty narrow cone of paint too, so be sure to be 2-3 feet back when you fire the paint-hose!

Wye switch and curved sections misted with Almond.

The Almond color is a good starting point I think for the sandy valley bottom around Owenyo.  The ties will need some washes and treatment to look like ties that have been down in the muddy-silty ground of Owenyo for 10-30 years, washed over a few times by some flash flood, and half-burried.  Then I'll be putting in the rest of the ground cover (mud/ballast).

Close-up of the Almond on the track.  It acts as a good primer for doing additional weathering effects.

Over this, I'll be airbrushing some metallic (gray steel) color onto the sides of the rail.  This will probably be a dark gray-rail brown color from low angle, as the desert air doesn't tend to rust steel very much, but the very occasional, but driving rain, tends to splatter mud up onto the sides of the rails.  So a final dusting of the near almond color will probably be needed to finish blending everything together.

In Closing

March 2024: I'm really starting to reconsider using the Krylon paint as it is still very easy to get it too heavy.  I'll probably end up using finer grade airbrush paints instead, but in similar sandy colors and then work my way up to other weathering colors. 

Notice the patches of lighter color around the dump trestle and the nearly white area around the talc conveyor loader.  The other very white areas are 'salt flats' which trap water until it evaporates.

Also looking at color photos of Owenyo, there's noticeable changes in the ground colors, especially around the loading structures and 'down wind' from them.  In some cases 'down wind' seems to be more a function of radius than a vector.

Owenyo Module #3 CAD model with "pink foam" scenery contours roughed in.

2024-03 Comment: Well, obviously I've still not done more on this... yet, but I probably will within a couple months and get into constructing the next modules.  Mid-March Note; Hopefully I'll find out what they say about my hand injury from November.  So hopefully soon I'll be back to being able to build benchwork again!

Jason Hill

Related Articles:

Jawbone Branch Index Page - Overview list of all my blog posts about the Jawbone Branch project.

SP Jawbone Branch (Part 42) - Redesigns for Little Lake and Bartlett

SP 3237 Bartlett on the Jawbone branch - Leo Barusch photo, my collection

Time to come back and address some research issues and selective compression of Bartlett into my planned layout space.

Track Chart Research

Bartlett - SP ValMap (RR East to Right)

I'm unsure of the date for the SP company ValMap shown here, but I think it's later than 1960, as it agrees with the SPINS map for Bartlett with two stub spurs off one main track switch on the west end.

Bartlett MP 509,02 - SPINS Chart - David Coscia collection (RR East to Right)

The SP SPINS charts show track arrangements for the computerized system that the SP developed in the 1970s.

Aerial Photo Research

Bartlett 1944 - Fairchild Aerial Survey (RR East to Left)

I've found several aerial photos of Bartlett, but the 1947 and 1955 sets didn't have the contrast to really show what was going on... probably due to the blowing dust in the Owens Valley the days that the photos were taken.  However, this 1944 photo more clearly shows what the plant and track arrangement was at Bartlett.

Modern Bartlett Aerial - Zoomed on main building - BingMaps with scale

The plant was upgraded in 1960 with new buildings.  I still need to do more research on what exact structures will be included in my version for the Jawbone Branch.  It seems the changes were mostly the new tanks have been added around the basic building.  A few structures remain today, owned by some artists who are experimenting with optics and sound unique to the desolate location.

The Model Track Plan Evolves

Original CAD drawing for my planned model of Bartlett. 2021-02-03 - REV-C

Originally I roughed out the plan for Bartlett to put the switch right at the corner of the bookcase and would only be a single spur.  The plant structure would be placed parallel to the edge of the layout.

Early March 2024 revisions for the CAD track plan to include the double-ended runaround.

I wanted to see if I could fill out Bartlett to be more in line with the 1944 aerial photo's arrangement of tracks and structures.  In this drawing, I've moved the main track switch to the right farther, creating more space in the inside of the curve for the track and scenery expansion.

Newest updated drawing with resized inside runaround and Glass Co loading spots.

I've been wanting to get a more detailed drawing made with the road crossing, and the 'inside' runaround.  Sadly this version is gobbling up more of the space across the front of the bookcase, reducing the length between the Bartlett switch and the Little Lake East switch.  The space shown for the Southern Columbia Glass Co. is just a rough guess at this point, as I've not gone into detailed breakdown of what the warehouse and plant looked like during the 1944-1955 era.  I'll probably have room for a couple of out-buildings along the road and to the right of the road.

I may still come back and do another pass of revisions for Bartlett trying to shift the inside runaround to the left a bit more and get more of the S-curve between the west switch of the runaround and the main track switch.  Drawing switches accurately is somewhat tricky, and it's much easier to lay them out in real life on the layout itself.  So these track plans are more 'rough calculations' of what I can fit, and I always plan them to be conservative on what I can expect to put in the space. 

Redesign Considerations for Little Lake

This was one of my track plans for Little Lake from 2021-02-03 - REV-C

Originally I planned to model Linnie with the lumber mill, but research found out that it was not built back in the era I want to model.  So I changed this corner of the layout to be Little Lake, with this being the original concept.

It's still not exactly what I want, regarding the exact arrangement of the scenic elements of Little Lake... So I've been considering changing it again.

This is the current March 6, 2024 plan, which still will probably have another round of changes.

I like the original position of the MW spur a bit better coming off in the middle of the curve, or even the current "Optional" location of the spur.  Also the West Switch I think needs to move farther down the wall where the door is.

I am also leaning towards moving the company village and MW Spur to the right some, which would keep it out from behind the book case.  The bookcases rise above track level of the layout in this area, and provide a view-block between the Bartlett and Little Lake scenes, but I also want to keep the operational part of the scene from being on top of the desk, which would make switching and viewing the Company Village more difficult.

1944 Aerial photo from Fairchild Aerial Survey.

I may tend to straighten out the curve by the Truck Dump a bit more and bring the Dump away from the wall enough to have more of the Highway in the modeled space.  I may end up pulling the right corner curve out a bit more, possibly making more of the whole scene on a large radius curve to make more room for the village and buildings.  This would also allow me to make the little tangent of track under the "high rock bluffs" between the depot and the company village area.  One counter issue is that I can't push the West Switch too far along the door, as the staging yard switch work needs to start somewhere on the curve in the SW corner of the room, and the ladder of the yard will take a sizable amount of space up off the west wall of the room, and reducing the door module's tangent even more might be problematic.

Little Lake - Jawbone Branch - 2022-06-15 REV-E

Basically the area of Little Lake is still pretty fluid, as I've not been too happy and have concerns about how well I'll be able to pull off the compression and viewing angle of the village.

In Closing

Little Lake - Jennifer Dinsmore collection

This is roughly the view that I'm hoping to achieve with the model of Little Lake.  I have the feeling that I'll continue to keep massaging this part of the layout design right up until I start mocking it up and start construction.  The features of the room, like the desk and the book cases on top of it providing the view block, I really like.  Some of the other details that I want, I think will still need some more pushing and moving around to give me the same 'warm fuzzy feelings'.

Jason Hill

Related Articles:

Jawbone Branch Index Page - Overview list of all my blog posts about the Jawbone Branch project.