Model Railroading > "Owl" on The Loop... Finale.

Okay... this is the magnum opus. A possible dip into fantasy, since we know Alco PAs were dispatched over Tehachapi in the 1960s, but whether they fronted an Owl during that period is... well... lost in a cloud of unrecorded history and sooty black smoke?

Still, this all is looking good here, to me. And I'm told I can be fussy. But operating on such an incredible railroad as the La Mesa Model Railroad Club is a transcendent experience. And it transcends many limitations through the sheer spectacle. This was basically a trial run and a "screen test" for a more accurate Owl that I'm still building. But it was so great to see the 1960s come alive in ways I remember!

This is the last of this video series for now. Some backstage insight: during last Saturday's run, I'd been tussling with an increasingly balky set of Genesis FP7s and my freshly-finished SP 10405 Coffee Shop (an old Coach Yard model from the mid-1980s, updated and still getting final decals earlier that morning!). That car's last-minute fixed diaphragm didn't fancy the interface with the top of the Sleeper's coupler, and it caused a bit of interruption until I first swapped it end for end, then BO'd it completely. So if you watch the consist with care, you may notice: here a Coffee Shop, there a Coffee Shop, where a Coffee Shop?

If you know the railroad, in 1:87 or 1:1, you'll also know that my shots have been set up for shot-to-shot continuity editing, but favor screen flow and direction over actual linear progression or exact location on the railroad. (Sir, pull over and show me your poetic license and registration?) It's fun to be a prototypic stickler full time, then have an opportunity to play fast and loose for the fun factor. (Well, not that fast; maybe 40 SMPH, tops?)

Thanks again to Dick Harley for the loan of his Union Terminal Imports PA-PA- PB power. I had a bit of influence in the research and creation of those units for Union Terminal Imports, so it's fair to say that I did some modeling at that end of the consist too. Immense thanks to Chuck Sted for the loan of his Coach Yard 80-BP-60 RPO, the SP 2242 re-skinned Chair Car, and the absolute correct 6-6-4 Sleeper for an Owl, down to the blanked-out tail signs applied by painter-finisher Boyd Reyes.

That's it for now. I hope you enjoy the cinematic framing, the attention to edits, and the increasingly-appreciated era of the mid-1960s. This video shows a fanciful, slightly exaggerated, but generally plausible Owl -- at a time when was not long for the world. In real life, I missed it by this much. Last Saturday, with the generous invite and hospitality of Dave Hussey, Tim Costello, and the LMMRC... I was there for it all. (And will be there with a date-specific Train 57-58 consist one day again, if the stars shine brightly.)

~ BZ

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FANTASTIC !     In the future may we see more of your FP-7's ?  Thanks for sharing such realism. 

I am very interested in more coverage of the FP7s, and thanks! They'll be part of my San Joaquin Daylight, and while I have a soft spot for the PAs, those units were my first contact with SP passenger trains, and thus my first love. Once I can troubleshoot some of the contact issues, or install keep-alives, I imagine they'll be trustworthy and the stars of more epics!

I do have a couple shots of the Fs from Saturday that I haven't edited together or shared yet here, and you've nudged me into knocking those clips together. Thanks!

~ BZ

Here's my "Owl" on the loop. Circa 1963 or so. I like your version with the PA's.

Robert Morris
Dunsmuir, CA
Robert Morris Photography

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And I like yours with the heavyweight Mail & Express cars! If I step back just a couple years, I can do this exact train you shot. I just have to get busy building converting and acquiring, right? Always! Well, I have time... the book's done!  :-)

~ BZ

Back in the '40s and '50s when the Owl was a long all-heavyweight train it ran with one cab-forward from LA to BFL.

Bill Deaver
Tehachapi, CA

Seen some great images from that era. I was there for the melancholy last six years or so of SP service... but I'm grateful to have had any pre-Amtrak experiences, and there were many!

~ BZ

WOW!  Thank You!  Of all or most of the videos of La Mesa here on train orders are way too short, finally a long video showing different scenes of the layout.  Thank You so much, Loved It!

La Mesa is a great study of realism and detail. One must just stop watching the trains and look at the detail of the scenery. That is what makes ordinary come alive

But where is the automat? A Hamburger Grill car is an update on the Owl for sure. DJR must have been on vacation and not looking at consists

Thanks for the great series.  As time goes along, I find myself far more interested in railroad history (and in recreating it in miniature) than I do with contemporary railroading.  Your series provided the equivalent of a great railfan trip to an era of private passenger trains and classic diesels, the era of my youth and young adulthood.

A true blast from the past.

Art House

WAF Wrote:
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> But where is the automat? A Hamburger Grill car is
> an update on the Owl for sure. DJR must have been
> on vacation and not looking at consists

The HGL was definitely my protection car, since it was closer to done than any of my other Owl-ish cars (besides the head end).

I started SP 10601 in what I hoped was enough time before the trip; that, of course, is the converted 1939 Tavern Car SP 10314 that was the mainstay of 57-58 "food service" for years. But I ran short of satisfaction on various kinds of Simulated Stainless Steel paint -- and my rusty skills using a new Iwata airbrush. (I'd used a Thayer & Chandler with siphon bottle for decades, but haven't got chops with the Iwata's color cup yet.)

So an Automat never quite made the trip. I'll be back to the car soon to finish it, and it'll definitely be in the consist next time I do an Owl -- as, I hope, will be an American Flyer ex-SSW Chair Car. I don't want to agitate DJR with too much luxury on this milk run. :-)

~ BZ

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Couple more shots of the SP's second experimental Automat of 1961, under construction. I started with a BLI Tavern, basically because I could get a single Tavern Car on short notice at a reasonable price. (I like MTH better in general, but this had a couple things going for it for this car in particular.)

Removing the steam ejector air conditioning and dding the Waukesha replacement components, plus the diesel generator and fuel tank for the vending machine power, BLI's underframe was a little too slippery to work with. So I made a new subfloor out of .040 styrene using the BLI floor as a drilling template, and reattached many of the BLI parts. The components I added are from various sources originally; some are out of production but all should be gettable from current vendors with some diligence. Cal-Scale, Precision Scale, Century Foundry, and a shot of Archer rivets.

Determining what SP used for the diesel fuel tank was a fun research project that I did in conjunction with Don Munger and Jeff Cauthen of the SPH&TS passenger car team, with a side boost of confirmation from TO's topfuel. No drawings or shop cards spell out what was used in these conversions, but one photo dimly shows a domed cylinder with a square cleanout plug. Logical deduction followed, and I also happened to see a former UP diner during the process; that car had lost the jacket to its domestic water tank -- revealing a cylinder with domed ends and a square washout plug. The location is the only place it could go, it's close to the gennie box, and the fuel fillers seen clearly in photos of the real 10601 are also a determiner. I used Evergreen styrene tubing, stuffed it with a plastic air reservoir from the parts bin that was a perfect interference fit, then chucked it in my variable drill and turned the ends to dome shape. I had some old ChartPak chrome striping tape that looked like it would work for the bands.

I hate making styrene boxes, so I use other boxes for something like the gennie so that I can start from a base that's already square and solid. The lower part of the access door's piano hinge is what the row of Archer rivets represent. The upper part will be attached to the car body shell, and since on the prototype it's just half of a sheet metal hinge strip screwed to the fluting, I'm going to cut a notch and make it from square Evergreen stock, then inset it so the thickness looks thin enough but is raised just beyond the fluting surface.

And suchlike. I didn't really think all this work was necessary for a model viewed at ten feet or more on the layout. But this car has always been a pet idea of mine.

~ BZ 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/17/18 12:11 by Notch16.

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Is this a brass car?
 

Looks like a plastic car from the roof sanding work. Great job on under body details. One of the Automats had a side door and the other did not if I remember right. 
We need to keep you at the modeling bench more. Books were taking up your modeling time, but we appreciate that as well! 

WAF Wrote:
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> Is this a brass car?
>  

Yup, plastic, WAF. Broadway Limited with an ABS shell, I believe, and possibly some form of "engineering plastic" for underframe parts. Harder for modelers all around.

Dave, you are so right. Books have been my modeling lately. "Mouse Modeling" as a friend calls it. And doing research and work for SP 9010 in 1:1 scale. And then doing R&D for manufacturers and importers on the side. Plus doing my simulation of an ongoing career with the freelance day job! The latter has been adjusted a bit for more flexibility of late, so there's actually modeling time now -- if I *kaff kaff* manage my time well enough. :-) Also, my wife Joey went to per diem from her full-time demanding work as an RN, and she has more time now to do her art and leisure, and there's a better work-and-family balance.

I got back to the bench in earnest after lens replacement surgeries (easy breezy) made it possible to focus well again. I had a lot of astigmatism and some creeping cataractitudes, and when the second eye got done, I suddenly had the eyesight stamina to stay at the bench for more than twenty minutes. (A couple sessions went all day, and it was glorious!) Part of the volume of my recently started but unfinished projects is due in large measure, now that I realize it, to having frustrations with focus. I've always been nearsighted and that helped my modeling. I pretty much was losing that too. Now I can really see what I'm doing again, with only a set of 1.75 drug store readers, not an Optivisor. It's been like heaven, and now there's a fresh and crazy Old Skool BZ underframe to prove it!  :-)

~ OGBZ

I assume this car will remain fluted

Absolutely. Fluted, in the Simulated Stainless paint with Scarlet letterboard and Dark Gray underbody and trucks. Although the new "SSS" paint finish was nice, SP apparently didn't do the most thorough job of prepping surfaces (or maybe priming at all) when they painted it over from Daylight colors after the conversion to Automat. So after a couple years of baking and washing, the black on the roof was showing through mightily, as was a bit of Daylight Orange on the progressively puckering Plymetl pier panels. I want to do all of those effects, subtly but such that they'd be visible from a distance too. Say, on a layout. :-)

Also, say "Progressively Puckering Plymetl Pier Panels" three times, quickly. No, don't.

~ BZ

Extremely pixelated detail from a friend's unpublished photo, circa 1963-4.



 

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Absolutely incredible work on the underframe of that car!

- Jeff Carlson

Jeff, thanks so much! Can't wait to clear the mess and get back to work on it!

~ BZ