Tuesday, May 28, 2024

SP Jawbone Branch (Part 49) - Spline Start for Owenyo 3rd Module Construction

Time to see some progress on the new module!

So since the last post, I've been working on getting the spline ready to build for the module and also cut out the top sheet of MDF a bit closer to the final shape, but I'll be covering some thoughts on that towards the end of this post.

Construction of the Main Track Roadbed Spline


1/4" MDF spline side plate with spacer.

I fashioned the level section of the new main track roadbed spline from extra side-frame material.  I kept these to only 6" long, as to the right of this point, the track will both go into the horizontal plane curve, and also be transitioning to a 1.25% down grade.

Three of the four spline sections.

Each piece was notched to catch the slots cut in the end-plate block back in Part 47.  This should form a very strong attachment, which is directly bolted to the #2 Module, to the left.  The next section of spline will have fingers that will fit between the straight and level splines now mounted.

Clamping the fourth spline plate.

The clamp was to hold the spline's spacers while the glue dried.  I was using another block and sighting across the top of this to see that it was level with the rest of the framework.  Some of the plates about 1/32" proud of the frame's top, which will be sanded down once the grade and transition spline pieces are built.  But it's a good solid starting point for now.

Wobbly Walls?


Shimming blocks in place for future backdrop.

I decided to tighten up the module's position against the walls.  I should say that the walls are actually quite a bit out of straight and square.  So I'm planning ahead now for the modules to be straight and with enough space for the backdrop sections to slide down the back edges.

Notch the Front Frame


I finished the notching of the front frame strips for the spline roadbed and Owenyo Trestle roadbed sheet.

I was able to take the framework outside and clamp it in place while I used the saber-saw to cut out the notch for the future spline roadbed support and the flat area for the Trestle roadbed to sit.  The cut's a little rough, but it should sort out with the notching and shiming that I may be putting into finalize the grade of the main track spline and spur.

Shortening the Module?!


After a week of having the module under construction, I have caught the corner of the module next to the door several times.  I also don't like that this end point for the module would mean the switch to the trestle is split across the module joint.

Marking right frame strip for shortening cut.

I measured to sort out a point where the track centers should be about 1.25" apart, which will be well clear of the switch frog.  This shortening cut was made with a saber-saw, as it was getting late at night, and I didn't want to make table saw noise outside.

The end-plate was popped off the short frame cut-off section.  This time I applied Elmer's Wood Glue this time and the pair of corner clamps until the new joint was dried.

Top Skin Testing


At several points during this series of construction, I was testing the fit of the top-sheet of MDF, which will make up the roadbed.

The trestle spur has 9 cars spotted on it for testing here.

At this point I started play with the grade profile, how much shimming is needed at the various points the skin crosses the structural supports.  Yes, I'll still have to account for the spline support under the skin as well, but I want to rough out how the grade profile will work out.

Better view of the end of the top skin, which will be shortened.

I'll probably set up a 1.25% grade block for my bubble-level, so that I can account for the grade on the curve, and be sure that it works out correctly. - Hopefully, I don't have to cut into the end-plate block or move it... again!


Ballast Deck Trestle?


Owenyo Trestle Jack Sims Photos - TJ Huebner collection-F

I also want to have the small ballast-deck trestle on the main track.  The drainage of which is supposed to pass under the grade section of the trestle, which will be mostly in the backdrop.  This creates a left-right offset of the details on the main track and where the trestle is positioned.

Possible Ballast-Deck Trestle positions in comparison to Dump Trestle location.

I don't really like this alignment of the trestle tangent with relation to where I can have the Deck Trestle.  I'm planning to move the west switches of Owenyo farther left, completely on Owenyo #2 Module.

The trestle spur with five "offspot" GS gondolas.

The other consideration in this pondering is how much extra length there is in the "Off-spot" portion of the spur, it's about 7 car lengths long. 

Another view of the trestle tangent and main track.

So one option is that I could cut the spur loose, and shorten the tangent along the right-wall, which would rotate the spur's alignment around the main track, pushing the trestle-wall contact point farther to the right, which I want.  It would also shorten the spur's tangent, keeping maybe only 5-6 car lengths of off-spot space.  

So.... Transfer Trestle Tangent Alignment?


This will be the view of anyone entering the room and seeing the layout for the first time.

One issue I also have with this current alignment is that the end of the Dump Trestle is pointed too much at the right wall.  It would be nice if I could have it rotated around to the right more, where I can see the southern (right) end of the trestle, more like some of the photos of the prototype.

Here's an overview of the whole module with 9 GS gondolas and an 18" radius curved backdrop mock-up.

One of the things I'm considering right now is the alignment of the trestle tangent against the rest of the layout.  I've consistently felt that it was forcing too much selective compression right at the joint between Owenyo #2 and #3 modules.  Even with the trestle hitting the backdrop and becoming a foreshortened image on the wall, the NG track behind the live stock transfer platform is really short. 

In Closing


This pretty well wraps up where the construction of the module is at this point.

In the next construction steps, I'll be working on cutting new strips of material to form the spline roadbed, make an adapter for the right end-plate for the spline, and also preparing to cut the spur roadbed and experiment with the rotational position of that spur.

Hopefully, I'll be able to get this module's frame work sorted and start working across the doorway. I'll probably need to have the main track built across the doorway with track layed and supported on the far end by the Bartlett module to actually be able to switch Owenyo.

Jason Hill


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Wednesday, May 22, 2024

Owens Valley Mining (Part 3) - Tungsten Mining Near Bishop


SP's PMT International Harvester RDFC-402 Truck - Pine Creek Mine Tungsten SP Bulletin Sept'59 Cover

I started covering individual commodities that were shipped over the Jawbone Branch before with my post on the uses for Soapstone from Zurich, and the second post on Trona, Soda Ash, and Boron from the Columbia-Southern Chemical plant at Bartlett.  I'm going to expand in this post to some of the other mining activities which were underway around Bishop, which was shipped out by SPNG at Laws and after WWII more and more by truck.

About 0.7 Miles east down the Pine Creek from the mine site is this hairpin corner. - Google Maps screen shot.

The photo above is as close as I can get Google Earth to render the same view as the SP Bulletin photo at the head of this post.  The mine is at the base of the right mountain, just around the corner of the foreground road.  The road cut into the side of the mountains at left is the Pine Creek Hiking Trail, which climbs up the valley and into the high Sierra lake country.

Here's some of the Tungsten mines and locations in the Owens Valley around Bishop and Mono Lake areas:

Pine Creek Mine


Of the many mines around Bishop, probably the largest producer of Tungsten was the Pine Creek Mine high in the mountains west of Bishop.  The Pine Creek Mine was unique among most mines in that it was started part way up the side of the mountain, just above Pine Creek.  The shaft then burrowed thousands of feet into the mountain then up several thousand feet through multiple chambers.  Finally closed down in the late 1970s with the diesel-powered excavators and movers sealed in the mine "for later" if they ever needed to reopen the mine.

Pine Creek Tungsten Mine at the wide graded area center foot of the mountain. - Google Earth screen shot.

According to Joe Dale Morris's book Slim Princess in the Sunset, 1940-1960, the Tungsten concentrate was shipped in 55 gallon drums down to Laws for loading onto the SPNG boxcars at the US Vanadium Co.  These would then be trans-loaded at Owenyo into Standard Gauge boxcars, at the transfer platforms.  So this gives me yet more "boxcar" loads to come out of Owenyo!  This makes since as there were hand-trucks at the transfer platforms, which would be perfect to move drums with.  I believe this would be a load that could be shipped in lower graded boxcars and older '37 AAR steel cars or even the old single-sheath wood cars as the steel drums would be sealed and weatherproof, not that metallic tungsten ore would care if it got wet again before processing into metallic ingots or alloyed with carbide.

I'm not sure where USVC's plant was to process the concentrate into metallic Tungsten wire for light bulbs, sold metal for Tungsten-Carbide cutting tools for machining, or by the ordnance manufactures in the manufacture of armor piercing tank penetrators, in the form of solid T-C metallic rods (before DU penetrators were developed for SABO and A-10 GAU-8 30mm armor piercing ammunition).

Tungsten Hills Mining District, West of Bishop, CA


Tungsten Hills, West Bishop - Bishop Mining District - mindat,org website screenshot

This area had multiple Tungsten mines over the years, and I don't really expect to go into much detail about each one here.  There are other websites that give more detail on each mine site.  I think it's enough here to show this above map from the MinDat website (linked below) that shows the general area west of Bishop that is being discussed.  Pine Creek Mine is west of these little 'hills' up in one of the canyons higher above the Owens Valley.

Tungsten Hills, West Bishop, Bishop Mining District (Tungsten Hills Mining District)

Huntley Industrial Minerals Incorporated Tungsten Mine:


"The Huntley Industrial Minerals Incorporated Tungsten Mine is located in close proximity to Bishop, California. This mining site has a significant historical background, being part of the renowned Deep Creek-Tungsten Hills Mining District"... Short excerpt from the first paragraph on the website: https://thediggings.com/mines/usgs10035156

The Diggings website (above) shows this specific site was originally mined from 1937-1939 by Tungsten City Milling Company and then according to the link from Western Mining History's website (below), the tailings were reworked for Garnets in 1944-1945 by Huntley Industrial Minerals Inc..  So seems that was exhausted by my modeling era mostly, but another example of these smaller mines chipping away at something of value out in the Owens Valley.

Additional website: https://westernmininghistory.com/mine-detail/10035156/
"CONCENTRATE PRODUCED AVG. 72% WO3; 1944-1945 200,000 TONS OF TAILINGS WERE REWORKED AVG. 56% GARNET AND .4% WO3"

Nothing really shows at the coordinates today... they note that the N-W coords might not be accurate for the mines or that all traces were razed before modern photography was done.

Huntley #4 - Standard Industrial Minerals


I might not put this mine in the "Owens Valley" category, but more in the Long Valley mining area, north of Bishop and south of Mono Lake.  I'm putting it in here because it was another Huntley Minerals operation.

Huntley #4 - Standard Industrial Mineral - Google Earth screen shot looking South East towards Crowley Lake.

North-west of Crowley Lake, south of Mono Lake, 
https://thediggings.com/mines/camc53443

37.6947°N 118.8724°W - These coordinates show as tine foreground pin marker, but I would think the mine was actually the large white scar on the side of the opposing mountain side!

In Closing


Loading SP boxcars at the transfer dock at Owenyo, with more cars scattered around on the siding and main track.

As a machinist, I certainly have worked with plenty of tungsten-carbide machine tools for mills and lathes over the years.  So in some ways it's fitting that I'll get to model the trans-loading of tungsten at Owenyo!

Jason Hill

Related Articles:


Owens Valley Mining (Part 1) - Soapstone - An Unexpectedly Useful Material
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SP Jawbone Branch (Part 48) - Continuing Owenyo 3rd Module Construction

While I've not done a "huge" progress, but at least I should document what's changed since the last post in Part 47.  I made some progress since the last post, which I didn't get to photograph, so I'll start by catching up.

Doesn't look like much, but there's more to this post than it looks!

One of the problems of getting this module started was even getting "something"... anything there to start working from.  I used a couple scraps to build the front frame during the last post, just so that I can now start building the complicated front frame and not have the rest of the frame flopping around.

Let There Be Gussets!


Gussets were glued into the end-plate joints with Owenyo #2 Module.

This gusset ended up getting a bit more glue that expanded out than I expected.  This was a repair after the bonding of the front doubler frame clamps twisted and popped this joint. - Oops.  So now it's bonded back with some extra glue.  I'll do a little filing work on the front to ensure the front fascia curved piece will fit flush with the inner frame piece seen here.

The rear end-plate gusset in place.

I also built one of these small gussets for the rear frame joint too.

Notes from the CAD Computer...


One of the nice things about drawing the whole layout in the computer, at least as a rough plan, is that in the complicated areas, I can go measure the computer's drawing for specific measurements that I need to build the modules.  

Notes from my CAD file on this module.

In this case, I was measuring out where the notches would need to be for the future main track spline to go across the front frame strips, and also where the skin of MDF sheet would form the road bed for the Owenyo Trestle to sit.  The 26.44" measurement was for the centerline of the track, which I'll be needing soon enough as I layout the spline.

I also made some notes about other dimensions I'll be needing, such as the 6" note on the left end of the main track.  That's to note the distance of flat track work before the vertical transition to the grade starts.  The depth of the spline should be adjustable, but I made notes of the height at the front frame, where it crosses over and also the height of the bottom of the top skin at the same place (about 1/16" below the datum plan of the left end-plate's top).

Do That Carpentry Stuff Again!


Right wall frame stripe inner doubler in place and lap-joint for end-plate.

 Notes were also made for vertical alignment off the underside of the top skin at the left end of the Owenyo #3 Module, which I'm taking as my vertical datum zero point.  The main track will loose 0.65" by the far end of the module along the right wall.  So I built into the final extension of the right wall frame strip that it will drop 0.65".

End Plate for the door-crossing module was bonded in place.

The end-plate of 1/2" MDF was also bonded in place with the corner squares on top and bottom while I was also bonding the inner doubler strip in place.  Many clamps were used in the bonding of that strip.  I ended up doing this outside and just at dusk, so I didn't get any good photos of the process. - So these after the fact in-place photos will have to do.

I'm using the spare scrap of MDF as a spacer for the future sky backdrop.

Also since the last post, I attached a bracket to the right wall, just in front of the window.  This allows me to work on the module framework in-place and add pieces without the whole module twisting or flexing, like I have been dreading for 9+ months on this module.  I took special care to be sure that the module will sit level on the bracket, so that as I lay in the grade transition and spline work the grade will be the correct 1.25% when its in place.

Notes on the rough front frame.

So from left to right my notes are as follows: ~2" of straight strip, which will be doubled by the front curved fascia strip for the first ~2".  Then until 6.75" the temporary front strip will be the only piece there.  Past the 6.75" point, the front fascia strip will be far enough away that I can switch to a doubler on the front side.  The horizontal pencil mark is for the lowest notch for the main track spline and the bottom of the skin sheet for where the trestle will sit.

Center section of the front frame scrap bits.

The butt-splice joint was made between the two scrap pieces at an angle.  The heavy pencil marks will show the future cut-out section for the main track spline and the trestle pit track.  The trick is that this only leaves about 3/8" left of the scrap front frame to bear all the weight of the future module.  The doubler will be offset vertically to keep more structure below this notched area.

The right end can step back up for the last 11.5".

The right inner frame is also lowered by 0.65", so my doubling front frame will use this extra height on the bottom to form the glued joint.

Two clamps temporarily holding the front frame doubler in place.

The pencil mark on the center notch area shows me where I need to cut away material.  I took this piece off and cut the 1/4" deep notch on the table saw.  

All Clamped Up


Awe clampit!

With the notch done, I brought it back, applied the Gorilla Glue, and then all the grip clamps I could get my hands on!  The twist of this much off-center weight of the clamps became a challenge, so I supported the tail of one of the larger clamps with a piece of 3/4" plywood.

End view of the clamps in place.

The 1/4" MDF strips can try to swell as the Gorilla Glue cures, so I added a sister blocks from a couple of the spare 1/2" MDF end plates, that I cut the other day, as horizontal keepers.  As these were not glued, just held in place by the clamps until the glue dried, and then removed.

Front doubler strip in place with notch.

The front frame is now about half done.  I still need to take the saber-saw and finish the shape of the notch in the original front frame strip.  One point I should make here is that the extra 1/4" below the rest of the frames is to match the end plate at the right end of the Module #3, so that they should be able to sit flat on a folding table, as I'm planning to be able to take the modules on the road if I want in the future.  So having the modules be able to sit flat with only minimal shimming is ideal.

Top Skin Check



I've been placing the "top skin" of 1/4" MDF back and forth to sit on the module or remove it to work on the sub-structure as needed.  I may end up cutting it up more, removing the sections that will need only the scenery foam and allow for slight changes to the alignment of the dump trestle positioning, once the main track and spline support is built.

In Closing


I've noticed as I'm starting to work around the corner that I'll probably need to look in to building the next section of LED lighting and mount it to the ceiling leading over towards the Bartlett corner of the room.

The right end of the skin seems to have a slight error... oops?!

But of the more present concerns I'm having now is that the switch to the dump trestle will be almost perfectly split across the module joint with the door section, which is certainly NOT ideal.  I may decide to shorten the whole module and move the joint back behind the heels of the frog far enough to be safe from messing with the switch's alignment.  If I do that, then I'll have to cut off the nicely glued end-plate and cut notches in the right-wall doubler to again allow the plate to fit inside of the outer frame, and then have the same lapped joint I did before, but a few inches shorter.

Jason Hill

Related Articles:


Jawbone Branch Layout Build Index - Master list of previous blog posts on my Jawbone layout.


SP Jawbone Branch (Part 35) - Cutting Out Owenyo #3 Module - Last post on Owenyo #3 from 2022, on Aug 30!  Wow, that seems like such a long time ago.
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Thursday, May 16, 2024

SP Jawbone Branch (Part 47) - Owenyo 3rd Module Construction

In the last couple posts I've been researching and pondering the finalized design for the modeling of Bartlett.  However the next step in construction really is building the frame for the Owenyo #3 module.  I've called this module Owenyo #3 in previous posts, as I was numbering the modules from the east-end of the branch.  This module is required to start working out the door-crossing removable module.  So eventually I'll need to get the other end of the removable section sorted out, and that will require Bartlett.  Those steps are still a little way down the road.

Constructing Owenyo #3 Module


Owenyo #3 Module CAD Test Assembly with OTT - 2024-01-28 with rough plan for the foam scenery.

I've been working out structural design for several months, really since almost 9 months ago, how I will be building this module.  This week, I finally started construction of the framing for the west of the three Owenyo modules.  For the back right corner of the module, which will go into the corner of the room, I lapped the two layers of 1/4" MDF, so that neither had a full butt-joint into the other frame strip.  When construction is complete, I can also glue in a section of MDF gusset or 2x2 to support the corner.

View from above, higher than normal viewing angle, but to show rough planning of the structure.

The other challenge is that I want to model a small culvert (bridge) just about the same place that the curve spiral is and the vertical easement into the 1.25% grade is.  That's really too much to ask the sheet of 1/4" MDF to do cleanly and smoothly with just riser supports.

So for this module, I'll be switching over to "spline" roadbed construction, but retaining the top cover piece of roadbed.  I believe that the spline-construction will allow me to 'sculpt' in the vertical transition to the grade and the curve, which is also going to have to be twisting in shear so that the rails are still cross-level after going through the nearly 90 degree corner, and establishing the 1.25% grade.

The underside of the planned structure - wire frame to show shapes without the shading.

The underside rendering of the design shows where the complexity comes it.  The spline roadbed will have to notch, or 'hop' over the front frame rail.  There will also have to be some fancy spline and grade work under the spur rolling over and forming the curve to align with the Owenyo Transfer Trestle structure.  For sake of my sanity in the CAD program, I only made the CAD drawing for the critical and weird parts of the construction.  I'm sure I'll be putting in more diagonal "web" bracing and stuff under there as well.

Cut & Glue Time!


This is the rear corner with the 1/2" plate (at right) abutting to the west end of the Owenyo #2 module section.

I'm returning to the previous method of using Gorilla Glue to bond the MDF sections together.  This is an expanding epoxy-type construction adhesive.  It requires clamping and holding the pieces until they dry.  I'm using the 90-degree corner clamps to hold the angles correctly.  In the later construction steps I'll be putting in corner gussets to support the joints, and when the module's done there will be foam scenery filling most of the internal area of the module.

This is the interior joint of the front frame member bonding to the right outer frame member, forming a T-corner, against the wall. - Top view

The structure is made up of a mostly standard frame-work like my previous four modules have used.  As this will be the first corner module, plus the transition to a 1/25% down grade, I'm having to work out the supporting structure, and keeping it square.  Every time you build a section or module and induce a warp or twist into the pieces that make it up, that piece will try, in return, twist the rest of the structure until the whole structure finds an equilibrium.  So all of that will have to be planned into the design, while at the same time correctly allowing the track supporting roadbed to twist and change to the grade, while on a 48" radius curve.

Back right corner, two layers of 1/4" MDF lapped and glued.

This back corner will also have to be secured vertically to the rear support bracket of the staging yard, while I still plan to have another bracket between the window and the door supporting the right wing of the corner module, I'd rather have it extra secure.  I also did the same thing, attaching the Owenyo #1 module to the wall, because of the weight of the extra supports and the cantilevered wye that can be attached.

The completed T-joint forming the front strip (left) and the right wall (right) - This is the bottom view.

This completes the basic four cornered 'box' frame which will be supported from below, as on the other Owenyo modules, and fit over the top of the Mojave staging yard below.

Always Planning Ahead


The frame of the new module is still rather fragile, without even any cross-members.

On the east end of Owenyo #3, I'm adding these small 1/4" MDF gussets to support the corner.

The final front strip will lap over the outside of the heavy 1/2" MDF mating plate to the Owenyo #2 module.  I can't really fit that strip, as it will be forming the front fascia of the whole module, curving and changing grade and also forming the terrain profile.  So I'd rather wait until much closer to the end of construction to install that piece.

Before I glued up the rest of the frame, I cut these slots for the future spline roadbed to mount to the end plate.

I'm planning to build the spline roadbed out of multiple pieces of 1/4" strips, so I made a set of 1/4" slots in the end plate for the spline ends to lock into.  Then I should be able to bend the strips into the desired spline shape with a couple other pieces to hold the shape I want.  There'll be a fairly short straight section, before the transition to the curve.  That should allow the bond between the splines and the end plate to be strong.

Mocking Up in Place


At this point I realized that the room is about 1/4" out of square at the long-wall window joint, so it introduces about 1/8" skew into this module's frame, which while annoying, isn't going to be a problem if I glue up the rest of the diagonals to hold it in this alignment.  Notice the clamp at the front edge of the mating plates at left.

For now an extra 3/4" plywood bracket arm is clamped to the right frame strip.

The clamp at the right side here is to help hold the module level and in proper position to start building the rest of the diagonal supports into.  

In Closing - For Now...


The outer framework over Mojave staging yard mocked up.

I think I'll leave the blog post at this point for now, and when I post on this again, hopefully I'll have more of the frame's diagonal supports and outer frame around the corner with the 0.65" grade change by the end of the module worked into it.

Jason Hill

Related Articles:


Jawbone Branch Layout Build Index - Master list of previous blog posts on my Jawbone layout.

SP Jawbone Branch (Part 46) - Printing Full-size Bartlett Template - Previous post in the series...

SP Jawbone Branch (Part 35) - Cutting Out Owenyo #3 Module - Last post on Owenyo #3 from 2022, on Aug 30!  Wow, that seems like such a long time ago.
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Saturday, May 11, 2024

SP Jawbone Branch (Part 46) - Printing Full-size Bartlett Template

So I've been looking at the Bartlett plant in more detail, working on the selective compression ratios, researching traffic patterns, looking at all the photos I can get my hands on for a couple of months now.  I covered more of the Bartlett Plant research in a new deep dive series: Owens Valley Mining (Part 2) - Bartlett Plant - Columbia-Southern Chemical Corp - Soda Ash, Trona, & Boron, but now it's time to come back to what am I going to do with the model of Bartlett, and how am I going to progress with building it?

Revised Bartlett track plan from 2024-05-05 with the inner tracks rotated about 5deg CW.

One of the minor changes I made since earlier this year, was the possibility of just rotating the plant's tracks about 5 degrees clock-wise to create the curve between the main track switch and the west (south) run around switch.  This requires moving the main track switch a bit more to the right on the track plan.

A Paper Layout?


Who wants a Bartlett puzzle?  That's a lot of pieces to jig-saw together!

The next step was to take a screen-print of the current drawing (unfortunately not the rotated version) and slice it up into 26 images that could be printed on standard 8.5x11 sheets, then taped together.  I want to get a feel for how big this is, how the switching will be, how the elevation of the modules will come into play with the size of the warehouse, which is between me and the loading spur.

Paper Bartlett plan layed out on foam over Owenyo modules.  It's big and a different shape, so hard to get a feel for in this spot.

In some ways the life-size print out is showing me how much 'extra' space that my CAD drawing 'baked' into the design.  I allowed 'rounding up' of certain measurements, length of runaround, placement of road, etc to be "worked out later" and "It'll go about there somewhere" because of all the selective compression that I'm dealing with.  For example with the more careful measurements of the photos, the tail spur at Bartlett, where I believe the loading was done, is actually more like 7 cars long with at least one extra car length of tail beyond (north) of the warehouse.  I've currently got the plan to handle about 4 cars past the headblock of the north runaround switch.

Oddly, the prototype photos don't back up this much traffic (which I cover in Owens Valley Mining (Part 2) - Bartlett Plant - Columbia-Southern Chemical Corp - Soda Ash, Trona, & Boron blog post).  I'm still not sure why that is... if the dates that the aerial photos were taken really were just dumb luck to not have picked up the boxcars being on-spot for loading, and the plant was shut down for work, it certainly is odd.

Extra 3237 West rolls to a stop at Bartlett with a string of GS gondolas from Owenyo.

Given that I think the production rates could have been as high as 7-8 cars per respot by the SP, having the spotting positions being more like 4-5 cars is reasonable.  Then the out-bound Mojave trip respotting could make since on the way to Lone Pine and Owenyo, with 3 cars or even more spotted in the run around allowing the north bound train to respot the whole warehouse each day.

Paper & Foam Core Warehouse?


In the past I've used foam core or foam-board to make structure mock-ups. So it's always handy to have some on-hand!

My next step is to draw a mock-up of the warehouse loading building, which I can put on the full-sized printed footprint of Bartlett.  I want to put them up at the planned height of the future Bartlett station and see how I'll do being able to switch the plant, lines of sight, views of the plant, etc.  I don't want to build it and then realize that I can't see anything, it is too awkward to reach around the warehouse to switch it, etc.  I think there will be some possible solutions to that, but I want to see if they'll work before starting to actually cut any roadbed.

Here's an aerial photo of Bartlett dated 9-10-1955... Look at the large silo casting the shadow at center. 

Once I've answered the questions, I'll consider foam-core mock-up of the warehouse until I can build a scratch-built proper model for it.  There's still questions about exactly which configuration I'll build. 

Bartlett warehouse on 3-7-1954, notice there's no large silo mid-photograph yet.

The 1954 version with no large silos, or maybe the 1955 version where large silos were put near the mid-southern end of the warehouse... I think possibly to load covered hoppers, as the plant was starting to be upgraded for the 1958 tripling of production rates.  Unfortunately, I still don't know much about the timeline of how that happened and what exactly was done when.

Covered Hoppers at Bartlett?


I don't have many other uses on the Jawbone Branch for the covered hoppers I do own.  So it might be fun to have a reason to run a couple of them up to Bartlett if I have the ability to load them there.  I believe most of the cars I own would have been in cement service at Monolith for cement or for North American Potash and Chemical leasing service out of Trona and West End, which is not the part of the Jawbone Branch I'm modeling!

American Potash & Chemical Corp owned the plants at Trona and West End during the 1950s, but I doubt this car would have come to Bartlett to be loaded.  This PS-2 is a little too new for me with 1-55 built date.

If there was covered hopper traffic to Bartlett, I'm not sure if they'd have been general leasing covered hoppers from SHPX, GACX or NAHX reporting marks, or if SP cars could have been supplied, although I think most of those were used by other companies involved with shipping cement, etc. and a company like Columbia-Southern Chemical, a division of Pittsburgh Plate Glass would have been using a leased fleet of cars assigned just for their use.  See Tony Thompson's blogs on leased covered hoppers: "Updating the car fleet plan: covered hoppers" or "Small project: repurposing a covered hopper"

One advantage of using covered hoppers would be that they could carry bulk product and 70-tons at a time, in less spur length than standard 40ft boxcars, which could only take 40-50 tons at full loading.  One problem with this theory is that I have no photographic evidence of covered hoppers before ~1958 at Bartlett or even the Owenyo Branch north of Searles, which is more than four years after my cutoff date.

I dive a bit deeper into the NAHX covered hoppers in my NightOwlModeler blog post: NAHX Leased Covered Hoppers - Pullman PS-2 & Greenville Prototype.  In short, I decided that the Kadee PS-2 pushes too late compared to my 1954 cutoff year.  Also the American Potash & Chemical Corp really isn't related positively in the Owens Valley soda ash processing plants, I believe they were more competitors from the Searles Valley.  So unless there was an NAHX or other leasing company sample covered hopper was sent over for mechanical considerations of how they would load one in the Bartlett's 1955-58 upgrades, but I don't see them being a regular car that could show up daily or even weekly.

In Closing


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

I'm still looking forward to replicating this photo on my layout.  I was able to pick up an F&C XM-1 boxcar kit, and will be looking into kitbashing it to be a Seaboard boxcar, as in this photo.  I think this shot is also evidence that the SP was at least respotting Bartlett on the way north, and then doing most of the work on the way back to Mojave.

Paper full-size printout of Bartlett track plan with an Owenyo Local lead west with SP 3237 and some cars in the Bartlett Plant.

So there's still much to do, but at least I'm nailing down the large silo and several other aspects of what the Bartlett model will consist of.  It seems clear that the addition of the large silo would have been visually interesting to have in the foreground of the complex, it wasn't built until at least sometime in mid-1954 or 1955, which really puts it beyond my modeling era.  At least I won't have to deal with building covered hoppers!

Jason Hill



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