Downsizing a layout without losing character
The L-girder framework (above) is surprisingly simple, though in this early photo the leg has yet to be braced and there will be more cross pieces added. The author also later installed one more leg. The old downtown section was fitted to the wider end and additional plywood and Homasote were added around it
black Overnight cars built from resin kits, plus I had modeled the colorful Pacific Motor Trucking trailers. Most of the downtown area next to
the yard is what the SP switch crews called the Rathole, for all of its twists and turns through narrow alleys be- tween buildings, with covered loading docks buried deep inside. It is roughly in the area of 2nd and Alameda for those who know L.A., though most of these buildings have been torn down since the 1987
Whittier Narrows earthquake
made these old brick structures unsafe. The downtown end of the new boomerang-shaped layout is nearly complete, except for some of the yard facilities and a few new buildings I’m working on, including Anthony Maca- roni Company. I couldn’t fit the impres- sive Capitol Milling operation onto the new layout but I did add my grandfa- ther Spangler’s sheet metal business (Spangler actually means tinsmith in German). I even modeled his 1951 Ford panel truck after finding an old Alloy Forms model on eBay. And lettered it, thanks to Joe Schulte at Diecast and Decals (
www.diecastanddecals.com) who makes decals for trucks, including ¹₈₇th scale. If you look closely at some of the photos you might also see I lettered the Davies Warehouse truck To shoehorn some of the structures onto the new downtown I had to shorten them, such as the now truncated River Station C freight shed which in real life stretched for a couple blocks. In other cases I got to add new buildings where something else had been, such as the new covered loading docks and the sheet metal shop which was where a tunnel through the backdrop used to be. Most
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(above right) to hold a yard and more of the downtown. The back- drop is on the wall and the leg now braced; the front will be cut for a curved fascia. Here (below) is the completed scene. A pair of real SP lights hang on the wall above it (only one headlight is visible), along with photos of actual SP crews taken in the 1950’s.
importantly I saved my scratchbuilt and kitbashed warehouses, including Davies and Star and just about all the down- town buildings. I even added a few, which had been in another town on my last layout. They’ve added to the street scene since some of my favorite photos of downtown L.A. in the 1950’s shows an amazing mix of building types and sizes. Two-story hardware stores sat right next to high rises, though nothing in L.A. at the time was allowed to be taller than city hall. I even added City Hall this time around, by pasting a photo of it to the blue-painted hardboard backdrop. The dry arroyo, loosely based on the
Arroyo Seco that flows into the L.A. River near downtown, is also finished. On the last layout the bridges were supported by laboriously hand cast plaster piers and abutments; this time I went with the better-looking A.I.M. plaster abutments and piers. It was a lot easier! There are some California poppies (orange ground foam) bloom- ing in the bottom.
I’m now working on the rural side of the arroyo. The track is laid so I can run tiger-striped switchers the entire length of the layout, and my grandchil- dren–perched on stools–never seem to tire of watching them run back and
OCTOBER 2013
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