New Researching Tid-bits!
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| Sample of the CSRM Owenyo Station Map 1"=100ft scale drawing I found! |
This drawing is one of the standard "Station Maps" in the "ValMap" style, which has historically been exceptionally useful for researching and building models of the shown infrastructure of the areas shown.
Specifically one of the best drawings I found was '-Station Plan of- OWENYO (Owenyo Branch) Inyo Co. California, Scale 1"=100' dated 11-15-1948. Revised 11-06-1950, 6-15-1951, and 2-5-1954. A couple of notes on the drawing are noted from a set of "Proposed Sanitary Facilities from Aug 24, 1957 as well.
Specifically one of the best drawings I found was '-Station Plan of- OWENYO (Owenyo Branch) Inyo Co. California, Scale 1"=100' dated 11-15-1948. Revised 11-06-1950, 6-15-1951, and 2-5-1954. A couple of notes on the drawing are noted from a set of "Proposed Sanitary Facilities from Aug 24, 1957 as well.
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| CAD model in progress for Owenyo in "full" HO-scale based on new research! |
Among the useful tid-bits I found so far in this drawing include:
1. Water Tower is shown as 20,000 Gal. Wat.Tk. 14.75ft x 16.0ft Diameter Tank (on Timber Tower 17.0ft high) G.M.O. 43651 11-10-1950
I guess I need to go back through my drawings from Part 57, when I made the mock-up for the water tower. Now I can revise it and get it much more accurate... and also judge how close my estimations were.
I guess I need to go back through my drawings from Part 57, when I made the mock-up for the water tower. Now I can revise it and get it much more accurate... and also judge how close my estimations were.
2. I found that there was an storage shed and an ice house in the nook between the road and western (southern) curve of the wye, away from the main track next to the water tower and pump house.
3. Most of the Company Houses inside the wye are shown as constructed from car-bodies, nominally 34ft long and 27ft wide. I'll have to play around with the "building blocks" of the car bodies to see how those would be worked into a gabled house design. The drawing shows several of these houses with add-on sheds and lean-to's, and also fence lines.
Of the seven company houses inside the wye, they were as follow north to south. Four Company Houses, followed by the Carman's House, then the Lineman's House, and then the Agent's House.
The loose building centered out in the middle of the wye is shown for Trainmen... I'm not sure if that was the Trainmen's washrooms or if that was a bunk-house for the train crews.
4. I found out there was a small Post Office opposite the T-intersection of the road next to the water tank.
5. Oddly the Cistern that I found in the field a couple years ago is right in the middle of the street.
6. There are WAY more out-buildings than I figured before from the aerial photos. Now it's pretty clear the dimensions of these structures, so there's way more info that I dreamed of getting. What's interesting is that the company housing carbodies were on SP property, but the outbuildings, such as garages, sheds, etc were on the other side of the property lines, sitting on City of Los Angeles land.
7. Steam Lines were still in place from the Oil Pump House to the elevated eastern wye leg (north end of town). The lines had three steam columns to work the transloading to the NG tank cars in the pit. The SG track is listed as elevated by 4ft and the NG track is depressed by 4ft.
8. The transfer deck platforms between the SG and NG tracks are specified more accurately, so I'll need to go through them and check if they'll still fit on the layout.
A Disturbing Revelation
Sadly, I'm now starting to reconsider my choice of compressing the wye to use 26" Radius curves. The main issue is how I really can't have the company housing inside the wye. If I resize the wye, nearly doubling the size to something on the order of 44 to 48" Radius, it will still be nearly 1/2 the full sized one, but it would put the west switch (south end) of the wye correctly aligned with the road and platforms.
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| Looks like my layout needs "wye enlargement therapy." |
Oddly, I'm actually mostly ok with this idea. I've already torn up the switch that would need to move to relay it in Code 70. It would require me completely rebuilding the Wye Tail module. The equilateral wye switch on the west tail was a little tight, this would allow me to use a more standard No.7 Frog switch. I could also extend the tail of the wye long enough to turn an engine and two 60ft passenger cars on the wye, which would be nice for operations. Also I'm considering selective compression to the buildings in and around the wye to keep them from being 'too large' for larger, but still compressed size of the wye.
I'm also considering alternate track arrangements for Bartlett, which will make the layout more fun and visually appealing to look at.
Other Drawings
Several other drawings I found were for various proposed Engine House arrangements for Owenyo. One was one that was going to be placed over near the old NG turntable and car shop facilities. The other concept was to place a SG Engine House inside the SG wye. While I don't plan to build any of these alternate designs into my model of Oweyno, but it is very interesting to consider what the SP Operation and Engineering Departments were thinking to write up a blog post about these drawings.
What About Bartlett?
In other digging, I was able to find a 1927 drawing from the Clark Chemical Company at Bartlett. If I recall, this was one of the test plants that was built to pilot the development of the product from the Owens Lake. However, given the history of this plant and the shape of their spurs, I won't be modeling this complex.
The size of the plant was much bigger than the Southern Columbia Plate Glass Company complex, which lasted into the 1950s, and was rebuilt into the plant that exists in it's abandoned form today.
The size of the plant was much bigger than the Southern Columbia Plate Glass Company complex, which lasted into the 1950s, and was rebuilt into the plant that exists in it's abandoned form today.
No Little Lake?
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| Little Lake Depot Station 1940 ucla_little lake08_sml - Owens Valley History,com |
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find anything really useful for the SP facilities at Little Lake, outside of the photos I've seen before of the Little Lake station. I think I came across another copy of the same station picture as was posted on the OwensValleyHistory.com website from the UCLA collection
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Jawbone Branch Engineering Vellum
I did find a large pack of vellum engineering data pack for the "Lone Pine Branch", which included the line all the way to Owenyo.
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| This is the title block from the vellum engineering pack for the "Lone Pine Branch" from 1953. CSRM colleciton |
This set of drawings shows the grade profile of the route, including the natural lay of the land and the roadbed grade. The top-view shows data for the X-Y curve and tangent data. Bridges and culverts are listed on this map. It's nice to see a complete set of this sort of information.
I also found a set of drawings for the Owens River Bridge, including the Concrete Abutments and spans, including several photos. There was also a set of drawings for the Ballast Deck Bridge over Cottonwood Creek, near Bartlett. It might be fun to build a model of one of these smaller ballast deck bridges.
The Owenyo Station plan shows that the Ballast Deck Culvert next to the large dump-trestle shows as only 6ft long and about 2ft tall, but the width shows as about 16ft. I'll look forward to working this into the Owenyo #3 Module.
Bridges?
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| Owens River Bridge - lone_pine_09_sml - Owensvalleyhistory,com |
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| Cover of the Owens River Bridge Engineering data package - CSRM collection |
I'm planning to do a post or two on these big bridges of the Jawbone Branch.
In Closing
All of this new information has been marinating in my mind for the last two months. I've been working on getting the permissions from CSRM to actually share some of the research on my blogs discussing them.
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| Updated Jawbone track plan concepts from 20251004 with flipped Bartlett trackage and 46"R wye. |
This is my current scheme for the layout's plans. I'll be covering these concepts and changes in more depth with upcoming blog posts.
Jason Hill
Related Articles:
SP Jawbone Branch (Part 57) - Rough Owenyo Water Tank Mock-up - before I got the new info.
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