Western Railroad Discussion > Modeling SP's Santa Paula Branch, looking for some info

Hi,  I'm switching from modeling the Jawbone branch as I just don't have enough space to capture the sparse look I want so I'm switching to the Santa Paula branch with its citrus and oil industries of the 60's and maybe 70's before abandonment.  Info and photos are really sparse though.  Do any of you know what engines they ran?  Thanks!

Ted

If Stan Richmond had done more in the way of PE steeple cabs I would have modeled PE and done Berdoo out to Patton or that area.
But then I came to my senses and started counting orange trees to model! That line of which you speak used to be a secondary main
for the SP hence SD45s ran on it at one time! If you pick the era after the Saugus end washed out the line was serviced by Geeps, 9s
and up,  Say 1975 or so, you'd still have packing house bsuiness plus some local inbound lumber and a local out of Oxnard.

Out 

Perhaps just to add an interesting reflection of back-in-the-day, my wife grew up in Ojai, and was raised by her grandmother.  Her house was right next to the tracks, and when she was a young girl, her grandma used to make burritos for the train crews as they came by each morning, heading to the packing sheds, about a mile away.  They would stop, pick up the burritos, and give my wife and her 2 brothers a ride out to the sheds.  She has some great memories of the ol' SP.  We live in Ojai today, and she thinks of those days often.

Ojai was a  branch on itself, ended in Ojai and just more orange trees!

Out 

Here is a Santa Paula Branch train I shot in the mid-70's.  It's probably fairly typical of the era.  It's crossing the bridge at the Saugus end of the line.  Not long after, this bridge washed out and was never replaced- kinda the beginning of the end for the branch.
SR

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callum_out Wrote:
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> Ojai was a  branch on itself, ended in Ojai and
> just more orange trees!
>
> Out 
Yeah, I know.  Was just adding a old memory of the general area.

Nice Boiling Man do you have more of this branch, thanks for sharing!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/17/21 21:59 by Fiftyfooter.

Thanks for the info and especially the photos Boiling Man.  I currently have an Athearn Genesis SD39 and just got an Athearn Genesis GP9 both in bloody nose so I think I'm covered in the short term.  I just tackled modifying my AMB type 22 station which I had modified to represent Lone Pine (hipped roofs, extended platform) to represent Santa Paula (hipped roof second story, gabled on the ground floor, shortened platform).  Trying to emulate Robert Smaus's fictional Fillmore of 20 years ago with palm trees, packing sheds, walking beam oil pumps, etc.  Even found HO smudge pots (used to warm orchards on cold nights) from Showcase Miniatures whose citrus packing plant I highly recommend.

In response to those looking for more Jawbone modeling info a modeler I follow is starting a Jawbone layout and already has posted a lot of great research.  It's nightowlmodeler.com.

Tede

There is a picture in an article about modeling SP SW1500s in the December 1990 (if I remember correctly) issue of Model Railroader that shows a SW1500 and GP9 pulling a long train of boxcars (mostly RBLs if I remember correctly) going into or coming out of storage on the now removed section of this branch.

An atypical, but not a radical exception, this was a grab shot in April of '76.
He is actually the Saugus Local with a car for Fillmore by an odd routing.  
You could run a passenger train as a fan trip, I rode one in about 1960 with F units.
Los Angeles-Saugus-Santa Paula- Santa Barbara-Los Angeles.
Also in the early 1970s the SP closed Tunnel 26 for a tie and ballast replacement cycle and regular coast freights ran on the branch.
It was slightly wider clearance than via Chatsworth so occsional excess dimension loads came through too.

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Fiftyfooter Wrote:
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> Nice Boiling Man do you have more of this branch,
> thanks for sharing!

No, sorry, this is it.   In those day I used to make the trip on Hwy 126 quite often, and was always on the lookout for trains.  But above Piru, where the road was close to the RR, trains were pretty scarce.  I assume most of the traffic was below Fillmore.   I did catch this guy at Saugus, but I don't know that he'd come off the Santa Paula- I kinda doubt it.  Besides, this may have been after the washout.
SR

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I've lived in santa Paula or nearby for over 50 years.  After the line was severed in '69, I only ever saw SW1500's serving the line from the west.  That was the most common power based in Oxnard at the time.  There may have been other power as evidenced in the pictures, but that would have been the exception.

clubted Wrote:

> In response to those looking for more Jawbone modeling info a modeler I follow is starting a Jawbone layout and already has posted a lot of great research.  It's nightowlmodeler.com.

Shouldn't that be nightowlmodeler.blogspot.com ?
 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/18/21 15:25 by johnsweetser.

I wrote a story years ago about wyeing my power at Saugus on the Santa Clara bridge during the large rain storms in 1978. Maybe I can find it and supply a link.

To answer another question about accessing the branch at both ends. I made several trips from Saugus to Piru, Mayo, SCE spur etc. In 1973 or 74 when Interstate 5 was completed went cab hop over to Castacic junction and picked up several loaded flat cars of machinery that was used in building I 5.
Delivered tank cars to Mayo. Picked up many high wide cars at Piru that would not fit through the Chatsworth tunnels and had to be routed via Newhall.
More history to come.

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