What I "Model" (Give Or Take 70 Yrs.)
 |
| Not actually modeling it, used as an inspiration & jumping-off point. |
Did
entirely too much research; I'd need more reefers & stock cars for authentic operations. Fortunately, it's a switching layout, not an operating layout.
For most of its existence, the line sourced outstanding levels of traffic carrying produce and other agricultural products from the valley. For example, an Interstate Commerce Commission report from 1956 states that the seasonal perishable train (The PVX), bound to Chicago, "averaged 69 cars," longer than the usual length of the GFX trains from California's Central Valley (although the PVX was seasonal and the GFX was year round). One week in the spring of 1954 had seen 191 carloads of lettuce, the majority percentage shipping to Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. The three weeks prior to approx. April 8, 1954 saw 708 carloads of lettuce shipped. In the summer of 1959, cantaloupe shipments reached 2333 cars in the growing season. In 1970, a derailed train primarily hauling lettuce had 77 cars, with at least one of the cars appearing in the picture being a newer and longer SFRC car as opposed to a 40 ft SFRD car. And the railway agent of the Blythe yard once recalled "as many as 135 cars" at one unspecified time. But as of 1977 the train length might be 35 cars "on a good day." Off-season reefer traffic cars were dropped off to Rice or Cadiz to be picked up by other trains, while the PVX trains ran directly to the transcon line between Los Angeles and Chicago. White ice was produced in Blythe and had been shipped to Winslow, Arizona in the summer of 1949 for the reefer trains stopping there.
Grain and livestock traffic was heavy too. The Blythe-Ripley included the Union Feed Yards south of Blythe, which at one time was the largest feed yard in the country. There was a nearly four-mile spur originating from the curve near the valley's northern edge that served Riverview Farms to the east from 1954 to 1982. (Myrick, Pg. 240) Information referring to this spur is extremely scarce. You can see big pictures of those feed yards in the Palo Verde Historical Museum.
Will not be attempting any of the now reduced to slabs of concrete facilities as they were in the 1950s, but the geography fits my unwillingness to make terrain features, & I was insprired by the schadenfreude of the burg of Ripley, named after a former A.T. & S.F. president, & washed away w/ the rail line by a flood in the winter of 1922. (Maybe the schadenfreude isn't justified; money was probably made on insurance.)
You needn't arse yourselves w/ any of this; it's for this reporter's reference, &
he's numb already. Hollywood's one-time provider of artificial snow was U.S. Gypsum in Midland, now a ghost town. It was
burned to the sand. Dunno who "Jane" is but it's a great museum.
"Jane" is the guy's GPS, it turns out. What? Not a bad traveling set-up, either, if you like to leave the house.
Also, which led to
geoglyphs 15 miles north of Blythe. Pardon the New Age or whatever music.
Those would be fun to copy, but I'd need more space than could be spared. The longest glyph would be almost two linear ft. in HO.
Railfanning nothin', planefanning, w/ a good long look at the geography. Be quite a wasteland w/o irrigation.
I'll need a shitpile of little green things to scatter about. Inspiration: W/ his name so bandied about, I think I'll call the Army facility Camp Patton instead of Camp Swampy. I s'pect the only swampy areas here would be where irrigation pipes had broken.
Looks just like it though, dunnit?
"Camp Patton" will be beneath the lovely currently cardboard backdrop at the left.
Still a Sisyphean mountain of work. Once I've painted track, sanded, painted & installed roadbed, gotten two or three bridges & lost that chunk of wood, I have to ensure adequate electricity flows though the tracks, sure to be a total effing pain involving redoing the track I'll have just finally laid, then slap together seven structure kits, most of which have been sitting here for several yrs. (Hey, I beat inflation & tariffs.)
& blow more moolah on oil loading platforms, high tension transmission poles & another electrical substation. Then scenery, signage & details. And at some point exchange couplers, purchase & add coupler boxes & buy & replace trucks on several cars. Estimated completion date is approx. the 12th of Never. Gah.
