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.
After passing through a cut we come to San Luis Obispo, where our train passes the south bound mail train.
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.
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!
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
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).
On the last leg we see the train passing through unsceneicable gorge which is just before stairwell
valley.
As you can see, the door to this basement is
in the basement.
Here is a over all view of the Layout. 
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
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.
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.
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.
Thanks for visiting. Jim Pattison