Welcome to my railroad!

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Some day, the Layout pictured here will slightly resemble the Southern Pacific's Coast Line between San Francisco and Los Angeles.  Today, it looks like a construction disaster area.  

That not withstanding, here we go on a tour of the Layout.

We start off with the train northbound, along the ocean.  Inside the curve, there will be a beach with a girl in a bathing suit, waving to the train.  The bridge on the right goes over the mouth of a small river.  However, I'm not sure it will stay here.  

Feb 04.  Sure enough, that bridge has moved.

beach.jpg (43242 bytes)

After passing through a cut  we come to San Luis Obispo, where our train passes the south bound mail train.

slo.jpg (48930 bytes)

From San Luis, we go up and over the Cuesta grade, which is too steep and needs to be reengineered.  Reengineering complete in December 03.

cuesta.jpg (50197 bytes)

On the other side of the hill is Santa Margarita.  The buildings stacked up here are left over from a previous incarnation of Santa Margarita and will be spread out in a more pleasing fashion-someday!

Santa Margarita.jpg (46540 bytes)

Continuing north, the tracks enter the upper Salinas River valley and pass through numerous small towns, one of which will fill in here.  There should also be a river and some oil wells in this scene

valley.jpg (44933 bytes) 

Next we enter Salinas.  Here you can see a small yard with a Daylight Passenger train and a train load of sugar beets waiting for their turn on the Layout.  There will be a narrow peninsula sticking out towards the photographer which will contain a sugar beet mill (maybe).

salinas.jpg (61761 bytes)

On the last leg we see the train passing through unsceneicable gorge which is just before stairwell

 valley.

unsceniced.jpg (49366 bytes)  stairs.jpg (35307 bytes)  As you can see, the door to this basement is

in the basement.

 

Here is a over all view of the Layout. basementv7.jpg (44591 bytes)

 

Update as of 1/10/04

At the top of the Cuesta grade is an overpass where the train goes over Highway 101.  I know today that the rebuilt, 4 lane 101 passes over the train.  However, in my memory I believe that in 1957 the train passed over the highway as shown in these pictures.  Here we see three of SP's first F3's pulling the nightly Overnight freight between San Francisco and  LA

Cuesta overpass1 sm.JPG (47203 bytes)  Cuesta overpass2 sm.JPG (47669 bytes)

1/26/04

Grass is now growing on the hills around the summit.  More details still needed but we are making progress.  This is an Athearn Genesis F7 leading  a group of Stewart F's north bound.

Cuesta overpass 3 sm.jpg (62926 bytes)

2/21/04 

Here we see the Salinas River valley and the oil fields starting to take shape.  Three modified Athearn GP9's lead a string of Sugar Beet cars to the mill outside of Salinas.

Salinas River2sm.JPG (53168 bytes)   Salinas River4sm.JPG (51598 bytes)

3/7/04

Work continues on the climb over Cuesta from San Luis Obispo.  Here a string of GP9's leads a load of sugar beets north towards Salinas.

 

3/14/04 Detailing the Cuesta scene continues  

Here are two pictures taken off the actual climb over Cuesta-these are both on the San Luis Obispo side.

   

 

This shot shows the terrain just north of Santa Margarita

 

Stay tuned for further developments.

04-05  05-06  06-07

 

Thanks for visiting.  Jim Pattison