Model Railroading > SP Train 52, in the Summer of Love...

Life is a circle (on more than railroad layouts)...

Had a chance to visit with Chuck Sted of Union Terminal Imports the other day. I'd brought along my power and head end cars for my 1967 San Joaquin Daylight -- something I can truly (and painfully) say has been a work in progress for me ever since then! Chuck graciously helped me realize my youthful vision by supplying the full consist, and a layout on which to run.

Chuck's layout is in an upstairs room with a peaked roof and two windows opening towards the setting California sun. We kept the room lights off for these runbys. They were shot from a crouch, using an iPhone 6, handheld, with all the power and all the limitations. I like railfan-eye views, and the sacrifice is sometimes focus and steadiness. If I'd planned a video shoot, there would have been a little more attention paid to the technical, but as it was, I was dashing around and under the layout, chasing the very last rays of the sun.

I hope you enjoy the viewpoint, and that it provides the same virtual ground-thumping that it does for me, who stood next to a train almost exactly like this one... after riding it. More than once. Lucky kid, is all I have to say.

A couple notes on the train's consist, or I wouldn't be able to achieve traditional BZ word count: SP trains of the late 1960s were sometimes heavily patronized. There'd been an airline strike that had boosted ridership, and some people discovered the train all over again. Also, SP had discontinued all but one train on the San Joaquin Valley route by 1965. This consist, with elephant-style A-A-B-B F-units, three MB&E (Mail, Baggage, Express) cars, a working Railway Post Office, ten revenue cars plus Official Car SP 99, was typical of the month of August, 1967. I was trackside for two weeks just taking 8mm movies and watching. I also rode several times.

The reverse-facing tapered-end Observation Car was the result of having poor rear-facing access to executive occupants of a trailing business car. By the next year or so, ex-Parlor cars like this one were modified with a better door and a doorbell. This position also saved switching moves at Lathrop Junction, during the last few months of through car service to Sacramento on the Sacramento Daylight. The backwards Obs (on both sets of equipment protecting the schedule, and in both directions) was a signature of that summer, which was a Summer of Love of a whole other dimension for me. Pardon the Woozycam™ and the unracked rack focus; the focus puller didn't show for work, and we do what we can.

My, my, it feels good to be back in the running passenger train saddle. Life circles and all...

~ BZ



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/12/18 19:31 by Notch16.

You must be a registered subscriber to watch videos. Join Today!

Great stuff Bob!

Regards, Jim Evans

Nice train! I remember that airline strike summer and have some pix. I got to ride in the back seat of the obs from Mojave to Fresno on a trip to Sacramento on 51 in the late '60s. At Fresno an employee boarded and rudely kicked me out of the seat, blocked the seats with a sheet of plywood and rode the rest of the way like that.
Also, I was the only passenger in that car for most of the trip.In case you're wondering, I was an adult, not a noisy little kid.
SP had some great trains but little PR smarts, especially compared to Santa Fe,which also had cleaner equipment towards the end, always a class act!

Bill Deaver
Tehachapi, CA

We could match lots of stories about the bad P.R. -- there are folks I respect immensely who appreciated SP's management at the time. What I recall from employes (SP spelling) was a sense of low morale. SP trains were clean, and the onboard crews could be friendly as you can imagine. But there were also notoriously grumpy dudes, and the decline could have made them that way. Santa Fe trains, to ride them, were little changed from the 1950s. SP trains underwent massive alterations, and it made them more efficient but far less elegant.

Still, we loved riding this train, I think that's safe to say!

~ BZ

Wonderful! 
 

Javier Cervantes
Castle Rock , CO

I'm not usually a fan of interior lighting on models, but you've shown it off to great effect on you video. I particularly enjoyed to dome lights - however I'd be searching for the trainman to shut them off so I could look out the window at night!.Well done.

Ah yes!! Nothing like the sounds of an EMD 567 prime mover and perhaps the Alco 244. Thanks for sharing.

Bob Krieger
Cheyenne, WY

Very, very nice. Thanks for sharing.

Victor A. Baird
http://www.erstwhilepublications.com

Well that was so GOOD I had to watch it twice .  Thanks for sharing .

That's a really enjoyable video and some terrific models.  I really like the accurate consist, the realistic effects of the lights in the cars, and the people inside the cars that really bring the scenes to life.  Big Kudos to Bob and Chuck. 

Great video and thanks for sharing.  Modeling passenger trains in the 60s can be hit or miss as so much was changing on the prototype.  This one nailed it for the feel of the era and train.

Fantastic looking train BZ. As a subscriber to Chuck's You Tube model passenger train videos, no surprise he could help with this train. Amazing how many great models have come out in the past few decades.
So are you guys taking requests? How bout the a train we both rode in 1969? Love to see you guys do this one:
https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,1779952,1779971#1779971
It will be 50 years next May. Going to Promontory? If so, see you there...


 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/15/18 09:58 by dmaffei.

---

Dave, I've already started 6456 with the backwards ice bars! (And how times change. When the 6456 showed up in the lead, rolling into 16th & Wood with the Special, I was really ticked -- backwards ice bars and a common-as-dirt Nathan P3, all the way to Ogden! Now, it's a modeler's anomaly in the SP's FP7 fleet, and really amusing!)

Great idea. And yeah, working on going to the 50th of the 100th. The SP 9010 KM restoration debut was originally being discussed for May as part of the 150th celebrations, so that's where I'd have been. But it's now expected later in 2019, to bring it closer to Niles Canyon's own 150th joining to the Transcontinental Railroad which happened in Fall of 1869.

So I'll be free for Ogden now, in other words. And yes, we should work on the GS Special consist! Great idea!

​~ BZ



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/15/18 10:40 by Notch16.

---

Notice the very realistic start. The Soundtraxx Tsunami for me at least, had the easiest way to operate in manual notching. I could be wrong, but it appears that BZ was operating with manual notching. Starting a heavy train often required "notching up" in order to get it moving quickly. I remember the Grand Canyon making a stop in Victorville. It was a heavy summer train with 6 F units. Once the signal was given by the conductor, the engineer "notched up" and those engines were screaming in run 8 in by the time the Valley series Pullman at the end of the train passed. Notching enables you to operate the sound of the RPM's separate from the speed of the train. 

It was in the speed steps, I think. But yeah, vivid recollections of the hoghead grabbing two or three notches until the units load, then widening. Can't count the number of times I saw-heard-felt 51 or 52 walk out of town in Run 8 and full chant. Got to be able to duplicate that, yes!

~ BZ

Notch16 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It was in the speed steps, I think. But yeah,
> vivid recollections of the hoghead grabbing two or
> three notches until the units load, then widening.
> Can't count the number of times I saw-heard-felt
> 51 or 52 walk out of town in Run 8 and full chant.
> Got to be able to duplicate that, yes!
>
> ~ BZ

Thanks for sharing this beautiful and well remembered train. Automat and all....
Make me nostalgic for frozen waffles and soggy burgers.

John

Notch16 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Dave, I've already started 6456 with the backwards
> ice bars! (And how times change. When the 6456
> showed up in the lead, rolling into 16th & Wood
> with the Special, I was really ticked -- backwards
> ice bars and a common-as-dirt Nathan P3, all the
> way to Ogden! Now, it's a modeler's anomaly in the
> SP's FP7 fleet, and really amusing!)
>
> Great idea. And yeah, working on going to the 50th
> of the 100th. The SP 9010 KM restoration debut was
> originally being discussed for May as part of the
> 150th celebrations, so that's where I'd have been.
> But it's now expected later in 2019, to bring it
> closer to Niles Canyon's own 150th joining to the
> Transcontinental Railroad which happened in Fall
> of 1869.
>
> So I'll be free for Ogden now, in other words. And
> yes, we should work on the GS Special consist!
> Great idea!
>
> ​~ BZ

Lot of cars, Bob. Need to dig up an L&N 6-6-4, a SP yellow PS 10-6 blunt end,  a ATSF 11 DBR, couple UP 6-6-4 sleepers, UP 4-4-2, UP 11 DBR, Bunch of SP Budd 10-6, PS 4-4-2 and 12 DBR two SP Budd diners, SP Budd lounge, a dome lounge specifically 3604 and somehow make a El Dorado obs-lounge on the end. Easier to make the Golden Spike Centennial, lol. 5 Fs might pull it



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/16/18 10:32 by WAF.

Fortunately for me, Wes, Chuck Sted has deeper closet shelves than I do. I'm counting on him to be able to flesh out much of this. 

I may have to persuade him to open up his SP 3604 to add the cartoon characters on the windows, drawn there spontaneously by Disney animator and Grizzly Flats impresario Ward Kimball -- in borrowed lipstick!

~ BZ

The "Plaque Special" would be easier, true. UTI just about has every car covered, including the "Bowling Alley" triple-unit rebuild! WP 653 brought up the markers there, as I recall. Away from my consists at the moment...

~ BZ

Notch16 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Fortunately for me, Wes, Chuck Sted has deeper
> closet shelves than I do. I'm counting on him to
> be able to flesh out much of this. 
>
> I may have to persuade him to open up his SP 3604
> to add the cartoon characters on the windows,
> drawn there spontaneously by Disney animator and
> Grizzly Flats impresario Ward Kimball -- in
> borrowed lipstick!
>
> ~ BZ

Betcha the Oakland car cleaners loved that car cleaning those windows after Walt was done