Expansion to San Luis Obispo (and beyond)

It has been awhile since my last post. It seems that gardening, travel, and summer activities on the lake have been occupying most of my time. However, fall is now in the air and it is time to get back to railroading.

The Move and the Plan

My wife, Aggie, and I both fully retired in 2019 and decided to move from the greater Seattle area, where we had spent the last 35 years, to Indiana, where we both were originally from, to be closer to extended family. As part of the move, I acquired Right of Way in a corner of the (heated and air conditioned) garage in our new home for my model railroad. After the move in 2020, I built a short divider wall separating my corner from the heating and water utility area, installed the Port San Luis (PSL) modules (described in Blog Post #s 1 and 3) that I had moved from Washington above my modeling workbench and began planning the expansion of the line to San Luis Obispo (SLO). 

I wanted to include a lot of the prototype track arrangement in SLO, the Southern Pacific RR interchange, and representational models of many of the prototype structures, such as the engine house and turntable, coach shed, fruit and grain warehouse, and the combination depot and offices.  I also wanted to include the spur to the Bishop's Peak Quarry to provide loads for the rock barge at the PSL described in Blog Post #4. Finally, I wanted to include the sector plate and turntable staging yard, also described in Blog Post #1, to represent movement of trains beyond SLO. The plan also needed to accommodate continued use of the garage to house two vehicles, my general shop workbench, and various bench-type power tools, spray booth, storage cabinets, etc. The resulting plan is shown below as existing. 

Layout Plan

Construction and Overview

Since the 2020 move I have completed all of the wiring and trackwork on the "existing" section of the layout and about 70 % of the scenery. I have also scratch-built the structures in the PSL scene, modified and detailed my roster of 4 locomotives, 6 passenger and 24 freight cars, developed a timetable/train sequence and set-up a car waybill system for operations. The structures in SLO at present are all foam core mock-ups I fabricated for planning purposes. These will be eventually be replaced by scratch-built compressed structures developed from the plans and photos in the Westcott and Johnson book, similarly to the structures in the PSL scene . Following are a pair of overview photos of the layout as it presently exists.

Layout Overview (from Bishop's Peak)

In the above photo the PSL scene is above the modeling workbench in the background and Bishop's Peak and the quarry in the foreground. 

Layout Overview (from South end of San Luis Obispo)

In the above view, the staging yard is at the upper right behind the backdrop. The track in the center  foreground behind the caboose is the truncated main line leaving south out of SLO and the far left track, adjacent to the transfer platform, is the truncated standard gauge Southern Pacific interchange track . The engine house and turntable are beyond the transfer platform and the coach shed beyond them. The depot/offices are adjacent to the backdrop at the right.

And Beyond

I am not satisfied with the operational access to the staging yard. Trains must terminate at end of track in SLO and back through a hole through enter the back drop to staging. To correct this, I have recently negotiated further Right of Way over the hood of our SUV to extend the main line the correct direction out of SLO, around the corner and parallel to the back drop toward the staging yard, as shown in the Layout Plan. This will improve operations and also allow inclusion the scenes of the low trestle over the Santa Maria River and the town and some of the track arrangement in Santa Maria before terminating at the Los Olivos staging yard. Materials for this expansion have already been purchased and I should start construction soon.

In my next installment I intend to describe and provide photos of my locomotive roster. Till then, thanks for reading and please give me your comments and feedback.