My layout’s SP fuel and water storage

My layout, set in 1953, includes a modest engine terminal in the town of Shumala, with a turntable, two-stall roundhouse, and a sand house, along with water and oil columns for locomotive servicing. The columns, of course, are fed from storage tanks. The water is assumed to be provided by the town water system, but the fuel oil is brought in by tank car, thus there is a fuel spot to unload those cars. For more about the engine terminal itself, you may wish to look at my article in Model Railroad Hobbyist, August 2017.

The Shumala water tank is a Harriman standard design, imported years ago in brass by Overland. It’s shown below, painted black as was SP practice for steel tanks, alongside my Banta Model Works roundhouse. At the right edge of this view is the pump house for the water tank, an extra building from the Walthers oil dealer kit for McGraw Oil.

To make a storage tank for fuel oil (for SP, this was Bunker C, a viscous product that had to be heated to flow through piping to the firebox), I used an empty bottle of carpenter’s glue, with the top cut off, and with a wrapper of thin styrene with impressed rivet rows, to make a storage tank. I added a ladder to the tank top and an access hatch along with an SP medallion. The oil pump house is another building from McGraw Oil that I didn’t use with my Associated Oil model (see Model Railroad Hobbyist, March 2014).

The tank car you see above has the aluminum end stripe that SP used to designate cars assigned to diesel fuel service. In the foreground above, incidentally, is my scratchbuilt sand house, made following SP drawings for such buildings (see my article in Model Railroad Hobbyist, for January 2021).

To the right of the black fuel oil tank in the photo above is a smaller silver tank. This tank stores diesel fuel, with a clearer view of it below. I described building this tank, with color and label following an SP tank I photographed at West Oakland, in a previous blog post (you can find it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2022/12/adding-storage-tanks.html ). 

The car at left below, probably delivering Bunker C fuel, is at the actual unloading spot. It is a generic black SP tank car, thus not in assigned service. The car is one of my several conversions of Athearn tank cars to accurate SP models. These Athearn conversions have been described in a full article about the process at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/05/modeling-sp-tank-cars.html ).

In addition to the end stripe on tank cars in diesel fuel service, there was also an all-aluminum scheme for this service, and in the early 1950s cars in both schemes were common. Here is an example of another Athearn conversion, lettered with the decal set I designed (now available from Tichy). This is the right side of the car, which correctly lacks dome walkway and grab iron.

In addition to providing a source for the fuel and water columns in the engine servicing area, the Bunker C and diesel fuel storage tanks are destinations for loaded tank cars, adding a little more switching around the engine terminal. Here’s an example waybill. Though SP mostly bought petroleum products from Chevron, they purchased from other oil companies also.

These parts of my engine terminal have worked out well. Though simple, they complete the logic of fuel and water supply, and as mentioned, are also an unloading destination. 

Tony Thompson 

New book on steam facilities from Firecrown

I’ve just received my copy of an excellent new book from Firecrown Media (successor to Kalmbach Media and all its assets). This book was created by Jeff Wilson, but as Jeff explains, it really was the dream of former Trains editor Jim Wrinn, who didn’t live long enough to do the project himself.

It really is a very handsome volume, with excellent photos featured throughout. An 8.5 x 11-inch book, it contains 208 pages, and is available for $29.99 at http://shop.trains.com/ . Here’s the cover: 

The book, naturally, draws on the very extensive resources of the former Kalmbach Library, particularly the part associated with Trains magazine (thus the Trains logo on the cover). 

Of course, you have to be interested in steam locomotives to fully appreciate this book and its photographic quality, but an image like the one below is surely quintessential railroading. (It’s Milwaukee Road 2-8-2 no. 354, taking water at New Lisbon, Wisconsin in July 1953; James G. LaVale photo.)  

The many photos of the interiors of roundhouses and shops are endlessly informative, as are the photos showing the scale of such facilities. I enjoyed this aerial view of the Santa Fe locomotive facility at Albuquerque, N.M., including the heavy repair shop at left (Santa Fe photo). This is just one of the numerous double-page spreads in the book; I apologize for the gutter image at center. 

And many of the activities associated with locomotive servicing are shown throughout the book. Here is just one example, showing a Union Pacific self-propelled crane, unloading coal from GS gondolas at a coaling dock. (Trains magazine collection). As the book notes, the Utah Coal Route gondola nearest the camera represents a jointly-owned operation of the the Utah Railway and UP’s Los Angeles & Salt Lake. Originally the UCR owned 2000 of these gondolas.

I continue to browse the book and find more and more interesting and informative photos. Kudos to Jeff Wilson for making this book a reality, and to Firecrown for publishing it in the size it deserves.

Tony Thompson 

A look back: David Weitzman’s steam book

Today I want to say a few words about a wonderful book I’ve admired and treasured for many years, Superpower, by David Weitzman (David R. Godine, Boston, 1977). It’s descriptively sub-titled, “The Making of a Steam Locomotive,” and that is very much what the book contains.

The dust jacket features an illustration that wraps all the way around the book, of the first “superpower” steam locomotive, Lima’s 2 -8-4 for the Boston and Albany, always called “A-1” at Lima. It’s an 11 x 13-inch book, horizontal format, hardbound, containing just 108 pages.  The jacket foretells the illustration style of the book: just the subject of each image, no background, nothing more. 

The story line is that of a young apprentice, just starting out at the Lima Locomotive Works, who is shown the various components for building the A-1. He even meets Will Woodard, the designer of the superpower concept. I will just show a few examples of the 35 drawings, which can only suggest the power of them in the book, as they often run across the gutter of this large-format book.

An early example is the cylinder castings, shown being examined before assembling the pair of them into the cylinder saddle. The right-hand cylinder is on the facing page, its edge just visible here.

Another interesting example is the foundry work for casting the frame halves. The partial image I show below is the sand casting mold, being prepared in the lower area for the molten steel to be poured into the mold, and the upper half of the mold above it. This is most but not all of this large drawing.

Other locomotive parts were forged from steel. The work making one of the main rods is shown, with a typical modest-size forging hammer. Again, this is most but not all of this drawing.

The last drawing I will show is the assembly of the boiler onto the frame and cylinder saddle, when the locomotive parts first begin to all come together. 

What a book! I have been through it  many times, and thoroughly enjoyed it every time. Of course, I’m a steam-era guy and all that, but the illustrations are so well done, and the processes so well shown, that I think anyone with an engineering bent of any kind would like it,

Tony Thompson  

SP steam passenger power

I have not posted many comments about Southern Pacific passenger power, steam or otherwise. I did offer an introduction to the topic a few years ago (see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2022/06/choosing-passenger-locomotive.html ). In that post, I showed my Westside brass model of a Class P-4 Pacific, a class rebuilt in the late 1920s from elderly Class P-1 Pacifics. I also pointed out that though it is a fairly light Pacific, it would be suitable for shorter or less important trains.

I subsequently placed in service a model of much larger Pacific (the heavy Pacific was an engine type developed in part by SP, and purchased in numerous examples). The final SP class of Pacifics was Class P-10, an engine with  almost 44,000 pounds of tractive effort, compare to the 31,000 pounds of the P-4 locomotives. 

The P-10s were built by Baldwin in 1923–24; there were 14 of them, numbered 2478–2491. By the fall of 1941, all of the last 8 of the class had skyline casings. Here is an example at Oakland in March, 1953 (Grady Robarts photo, Steve Peery collection). The front ladders show that it is one of three P-10s that had been streamlined in prior years.

 

The locomotive number above, SP 2485, is what I chose for my model locomotive. This particular model is a Precision Scale product and happens to have Glide Drive, a feature loathed by some modelers, but loved by others, including me. It’s shown passing the depot at Shumala on my layout, trailed by baggage car SP 6337, built from a Southern Car & Foundry kit.

But as many know, Pacifics were superseded as mainline power in the mid-1920s on the SP by Mountains. In my article in Model Railroad Hobbyist in February 2019, I described a little about my model locomotive selection (for more, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/02/my-column-in-february-model-railroad.html ). The goal was to duplicate the look of these handsome engines, long-lived after their introduction, because they survived in the San Francisco Peninsula commute pool to the end of steam. 

Below is a view of one of these locomotives in action on the Coast Division, just south of Paso Robles, with eastward Train 72 depicted. The power is SP 4340, a Mountain with a skyline casing, as all SP Mountains had by 1950. This particular engine has a 16,000-gallon tender, though many Mountains served out their lives with 12,000-gallon tenders. The date was not recorded, but the photographer believed it was 1951. (Wilbur C. Whittaker photo)

 Modeling the distinctive SP Mountain classes used to require brass, but in recent years Athearn Genesis has offered a superb rendition of these locomotives with a plastic body. I have simply added flat finish and some light weathering to the model as it comes from the box. For more, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-sp-4-8-2-from-athearn.html . That post has a photo of my model.

The amazing scheme used on some of these engines was the “half-Daylight,” as it’s sometimes called, just the cab and tender receiving Daylight paint, applied to the Class Mt-4 engines in the helper pool for the San Joaquin Daylight over Tehachapi. First painted in May, 1946, soon after wartime restrictions on special paint schemes were lifted, it continued until 1951 or 1952. A dramatic view below shows double-headed Mt-4s on the San Joaquin Daylight in 1946 (R.G. Denechaud photo, Bob Church collection).

As need for the engines as helpers declined, they were occasionally used on other passenger trains, largely on the Coast Division.  That’s my basis for using one of the Athearn models in this paint scheme, as you see below. Eastward SP 4352 is just crossing Chamisal Road in Shumala, with 70-foot baggage SP 6448, Class 70-B-9, trailing (kitbashed from an Athearn baggage; the latter project was described in some detail for Prototype Modeler magazine, Vol. 7, No. 6, March-April 1984, pages 39–44).

Of course the queens of SP steam passenger power were the GS class 4-8-4s, and their presence is nearly obligatory on an SP layout set in the steam era. I do have one of them in all black paint, as was the fate of most surviving engines by 1953, the year I model. But that’s a topic for a future post.

Tony Thompson 

An SP steam switcher, Part 4

I began this series of posts with prototype information and photos, focusing on later classes of Southern Pacific 0-6-0 switchers, and discussed some related points, such as tenders. You can find that post at this link: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/02/southern-pacific-steam-switchers.html . 

I followed that with describing the mechanism work on the M.B. Austin HO scale brass model I have, along with a couple more prototype photos. (That second post is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/04/an-sp-steam-switcher-part-2.html ). The work was done by Mark Schutzer.

Finally, I showed the remainder of Mark’s work on the model, the new, much larger boiler weight and the sound decoder and speaker in the tender. The post describing and illustrating those steps is located here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/04/an-sp-steam-switcher-part-3.html ). Next I touched up the paint, which was quickly completed, and then turned to lettering.

As most SP modelers know, we have a superb reference document for painting and lettering of SP locomotives, in the Southern Pacific Painting and Lettering Guide, Locomotives and Passenger Cars, by Jeff Cauthen and John Signor, 2nd edition, SP Historical & Technical Society, Upland, CA, 2019. I have relied on the information in this book in lettering my 0-6-0 model.

The overall locomotive and tender were black, with an aluminum-painted boiler front. In 1947, SP adopted a gray enamel, Lettering Gray, for all locomotive lettering (except Daylight steam locomotives). Any model lettering for non-Daylight locomotives that is white or silver is incorrect from 1947 onwards. This has been well understood by decal makers, including Microscale, Foothill Model Works, and California Locomotive Works.

Here is a prototype photo which illustrates the locations of lettering elements (photographer unknown, Bob Brown collection, courtesy Clark Bauer). This is a Class S-10 engine at Bayshore, but lettering was the same on the Class S-12 engine that I am modeling. You can see the tender capacity data at the lower front of the tender, and engine class data under the cabside numbers. As was usually done, the road name on the tender is on the water compartment.

The points to be recognized in lettering a locomotive like this with a relatively small tender (7000 gallons of water) is that the road name on the tender after 1946 was only 9 inches high. Cab numerals, however, were to be 15 inches for all locomotives (again, except for Daylight schemes), and tender rear numerals 12 inches. I have used a mix of Microscale (set 87-105, SP Light Steam), and Foothill Model Works (sheet FMW-600, SP Steam), the latter using the excellent artwork of Charles H. Givens. 

Here is a front view of the model, showing the engine number lettering on the front number plate and on the (illuminated) sides of the headlight casing. Here the model has a coat of clear flat but is not yet weathered.

In addition to lettering, there is also some detail painting that is needed. Most SP steam locomotives had injectors and certain hot water and steam line valve handles painted some kind of red, which typically oxidized to a brownish-red color. I used Tamiya “Hull Red” (XF-9) for this. 

Smokebox sides and stacks were painted with a graphite mixture, which gradually darkened and got dirty in service, but is usually evident in photos, as in the example above. I used Floquil “Graphite” for this. Smokebox fronts were painted aluminum, and number plates were black with aluminum numbers.

Cab window shades were canvas on an adjustable steel rod frame. When new, they were a khaki color, but of course got dirtier and dirtier until replaced. I used Tamiya “Deck Tan” (XF-78) for the base color, then used Pan Pastels to dirty it.

I also installed a cab apron in the model. What’s a cab apron? Prototype background and modeling techniques were described in a previous blog post (consult it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2022/07/modeling-cab-aprons.html ). My first step in adding this part was to add a cab floor. The model had none, because the original mechanism had the open-frame motor extending back into the cab, with an appearance something like this (not my model).

 With the new mechanism (see my “Part 2” post, linked in the top paragraph, above), this space is empty. I made a new floor from cardstock, and used the same material for a new apron (I have used styrene here in other locomotives). This effectively conceals the relatively large gap between engine and tender that is conventional in model locomotives. 

Here is a rear view of the engine, switching on my layout at Shumala, showing the tender lettering, including the “7000 gallons” legend at the bottom rear of the tank and the capacity data at lower front corner of the tank. 

The model was lightly weathered using acrylic washes (see the “Reference pages” linked at the top right of the present post). But as that is a somewhat separate topic, I will conclude this post here.

Tony Thompson

An SP steam switcher, Part 2

A few weeks ago, I posted a commentary on Southern Pacific steam switchers, focusing (as did SP) on the 0-6-0 wheel arrangement. I concluded that a 1950s SP modeler would likely want to model the later switchers with piston valves, and might well choose Class S-12, a large class of 38 locomotives built in SP shops during 1918–1923. That post is located at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/02/southern-pacific-steam-switchers.html .

 This consideration was inspired by an acquisition, a couple of years ago, of a rather ancient brass model, imported by M.B. Austin, of an HO scale SP 0-6-0. I know from the late John Glaab’s Brown Book (3rd Ed.) that this was a run of 400 models, built by KTM in Japan and brought to the U.S. in 1960.

Whether to modify and/or upgrade it, and what to do about its elderly worm-and-gear drive and open-frame motor, were challenges. But I had been attracted to it because of its distinctive tender, one of SP’s 70-C class cars with cut-down oil bunkers for visibility, as I showed in the post linked in the paragraph above. Here’s the model as it came to me:

This view of the right side of the model shows that it has the forward window on the cab side still open, though many S-12 switchers had these forward windows plated over by the late days of steam. To illustrate a plated-over window area on a Class S-12 engine, below is a Stan Kistler photo of SP 1254, taken at Oakland in April of 1953. Note the cross-compound air compressor on this left side of the engine, and the 70-C tender.

But a few engines continued to have windows in this location, including SP 1284, seen below in a Paul Jansen photo of the right side (Clark Bauer collection), working at Bayshore Yard on Coast Division. It too has a 70-C tender at the time of the photo, of a slightly different design. As I mentioned in that previous post on this topic, only the oil bunker was cut down, so the class definition of these tenders, their 7000-gallon water compartments, was unchanged.

Note in both these photos that the smokebox sides are slightly gray relative to the boiler jacket. Applied as a graphite compound, these areas darkened in service from their initial medium gray color.

Before leaving the topic of the prototype switchers, I should mention that tenders were not permanently assigned to engines, but were swapped as needed at major shoppings. Often tender work would be completed before its former engine, and some other engine ready for release would receive that tender. 

My friend Mark Schutzer consented to take on the task of modernizing the drive of this model locomotive, replacing the gear box and adding a can motor (for those interested, Mark’s website, including links to his clinics about re-powering brass locomotives, is at: https://markschutzer.com/ ). 

The original open-frame motor was rather small and as was customary in early days, directly driving its worm on the main axle gear. 

Mark’s first task, after disassembly of the mechanism, was to fit a Northwest Short Line 28-1 gear box to the frame, and add a NWSL universal coupling and a brass mount for the new motor.

With that working all right. a torque arm between gear box and motor was added, and the mechanism reassembled for test.  (both photos, Mark Schutzer)

With this much completed on the mechanism, the next steps were a better locomotive weight, and of course a decoder and sound. I’ll turn to those aspects in a future post.

Tony Thompson

Southern Pacific steam switchers

Like most railroads, Southern Pacific in steam days owned a considerable fleet of switchers, very predominantly of the 0-6-0 wheel arrangement. And as with most of the SP steam locomotive roster, many were built by Baldwin, others by Alco and Lima, but a notable class of relatively modern switchers was built in SP’s own shops, 38 locomotives in switcher class S-12. Many of these survived to the end of steam. I’ve been meaning for some time to summarize the SP fleet as it was in later days.

Like other steam locomotives in the early days, SP switchers originally all had slide-valve cylinders, limiting the boiler pressure and thus the tractive effort which they could use. These older switchers also were frequently equipped with what are often called “slope-back” tenders and inside valve gear. Below is an example from Class S-8, built by Alco-Brooks in 1908 (Wilbur C. Whittaker collection, location unknown). 

But in the summer of 1913, SP began to acquire switchers in new Class S-10 with piston valves, a modern feature in use with SP road locomotives since at least as early as 1900. Engines in the S-10 class were built by Baldwin; following Class S-11 came from Lima. They were succeeded by the SP-built Class S-12 mentioned above, from the summer of 1918 to the summer of 1923, 33 of them built at Sacramento and the other five at Los Angeles General Shops.

Many of the Class S-12 locomotives were equipped with newly-built cylindrical tenders, like the one shown below (Paul Jansen photo at Bayshore, Clark Bauer collection). Long called “sausage tenders” by SP enthusiasts, they were modified after construction with the very tall oil hatch visible here. Note also that the road name lettering is entirely located on the water tank, avoiding the inevitable oil spills on the forward fuel tank.

The earliest versions of this tender design had a 4700-gallon water capacity and were classed accordingly as Class 47-C (C = cylindrical). Soon the design was enlarged to 5200 gallons, Class 52-C (taller and 3 feet longer), for most of the Class S-12 engines. The car shown above is a Class 52-C tender.

Other locomotives of Class S-12, along with those of other classes, were also equipped at times with tenders from older locomotives, suitably modified. By that, I mean changes such as cutting away the projecting sides of the oil bunkers on conventional Vanderbilt tenders for better rearward visibility. The need to do so can be visualized, looking at the Class 70-C tender shown below (behind 4-8-0 no. 2919; Joe Strapac collection).

When one of these 7000-gallon tenders was modified in this way, it looked like the photo below (Gene Deimling collection), and is sometimes called a “clear-vision” tender. (You can click on the image to enlarge it if you wish.) The switcher is from Class S-12. Incidentally, steam locomotive range was entirely a function of tender water capacity, not fuel, so reducing the fuel bunker somewhat did not limit the locomotive.

So if a person were to model a Southern Pacific steam switcher, and do so for the period after World War II, the largest class with piston valves would be the best choice. That class is Class S-12, which has the additional attraction of having been built in the railroad’s own shops.

For much more about SP steam switchers, particularly photographs, the indispensable book is this one by Gene Deimling. It was published by Benchmark Publications, Los Altos, CA, 1987.

In addition, there are other helpful references:

Diebert, Timothy S. and Joseph A. Strapac, Southern Pacific Company Steam Locomotive Compendium, Shade Tree Books, Huntington Beach, CA, 1987.

 Wright, Richard K., Editor, Southern Pacific Company Diagrams of Locomotives and Tenders, Wright Enterprises, Oakhurst, CA 1973.

I am still contemplating a modeling exercise aimed at one of these locomotives, but have been exploring options.

Tony Thompson

Southern Pacific’s GE 44-tonners

The General Electric 44-ton diesel switcher was sold to railroads large and small, and to industrial users, all over North America, and many survived 30 years or more in service (and a number have been preserved at various railroad museums). Powered by a pair of Caterpillar 190-horsepower diesels, they were easy to maintain, with Caterpillar parts available everywhere. Over time, Southern Pacific and its subsidiaries owned a full dozen of them.

The earliest three 44-tonners owned by SP arrived in the fall of 1942, only two years after the first 44-ton locomotives had been produced by GE. Numbered 1900–1902, they were mostly used in Oregon during the war, and later were tried many places on the SP system. Like others in the earliest production, these had side radiators, unlike the many post-1942 44-ton engines with end radiator shutters. 

(One of the magisterial Joe Strapac books on SP diesel locomotives, Volume 18 in the series Southern Pacific Historic Diesels, is about Alco and GE diesel switchers. He covers the 44-tonners owned by SP, Pacific Electric, Visalia Electric, and Petaluma & Santa Rosa, along with Pacific Fruit Express. It should be consulted for history of the locomotives on all the subsidiaries.)

Here’s a photo from that book (Gordon Spafford photo, courtesy Joe Strapac), taken at Eugene, Oregon on March 15, 1946, with SP 1901 painted in “Tiger Stripe” colors. The side shutters and plain hood end are clearly shown.

In the photo above, note the prominent rerailing frog over the front truck at right. Photos of these locomotives on the SP after the 1940s no longer show these frogs present, so they were not a permanent feature. 

What might this have to do with SP’s Coast Division and in particular, the San Luis Obispo area (which I model)? In the 1953–54 era, SP tried out a variety of diesel locomotives on different parts of the system, including Coast Division, and specifically at San Luis. 

One of my previous posts, with parts of my interview with Malcolm “Mac” Gaddis who worked there in the early 1950s, mentions trying out GE 70-ton engines, Baldwin and Alco six-axle road switchers, and others (here’s a link to that post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/08/san-luis-obispo-operations-3.html ). He mentioned the 44-tonners in another part of the interview. Neither the 44-ton nor 70-ton locomotives could do the desired job in the yard at San Luis Obispo (which is on a grade), and after short stints, they were sent elsewhere — but they did work there.

This is of current interest because Rapido Trains has just introduced a GE 44-tonner in HO scale, and they offer it in SP paint and lettering. Among the body styles they chose to do is the original design, with side radiators, sometimes called Phase I, correct for the SP numbers they have modeled. Here is a photo of SP 1902 at work on my layout, switching cars at Shumala.

The engine runs nicely, has a realistic diesel sound, and handles switching well. It’s shown below spotting a reefer at the Phelan & Taylor packing shed in East Shumala on my layout.

I’m sure the 44-tonners didn’t serve very long in this area of Coast Division, but the times when they were tested does fit my modeling era, so I will operate this one occasionally.

Tony Thompson

Repainting a GS-4 tender

I have an all-black Broadway Limited HO scale model of a Southern Pacific 4-8-4 locomotive, Class GS-4. That is how these engines were painted once the red and orange Daylight paint scheme began to be removed in the early 1950s. But as I received it, the model is lettered in the pre-1946 lettering scheme, with the road name as “Southern Pacific Lines” in relatively small lettering (9 inches tall) and with a small, lower number on the back of the tender. 

Here is a view of one such prototype GS-4 locomotive, taken at Glendale on November 24, 1943. Locomotive 4431 is at the head end of No. 71, the “Coast Mail” and has been repainted black under wartime conditions (Fred A. Stindt photo, courtesy Bob Church). It’s interesting that the tender lettering is located high on the car side, where it had been in the Daylight scheme.

There are not many good photos of the backs of tenders, but the nearly identical SP tender class applied to the GS-6 locomotives were well photographed  by Guy L. Dunscomb at Oakland in March of 1947 (Arnold Menke collection). The small road number beneath the back-up light is evident.

The Broadway Limited model has these characteristics, as you can see below. But for my operating year of 1953, I definitely have to re-letter the tender. Few SP locomotives retained the pre-1946 lettering past the summer of 1947. The problem now is to research what new lettering to apply.

As I think most SP enthusiasts know, in 1946 SP replaced the scheme just shown with a dramatic increase in size of tender lettering (to 20 inches in height) and discontinued the word “Lines.” Details of the 1946 paint and lettering are contained in the Southern Pacific Painting and Lettering Guide, “Locomotives and Passenger Cars,” revised edition (J.A. Cauthen and J.R. Signor, SPH&TS, Upland, CA, 2019). Views of post-1946 locomotives in black paint are numerous, usually including tenders, as shown below (Bob Church collection).

Tender end numbers were enlarged also, and relocated above the back-up light. But it’s surprisingly hard to find an end photo of a black GS-4 tender in post-1946 lettering. Even Arnold Menke’s outstanding chapter on tenders in Bob Church’s Daylight engine book doesn’t have one (Robert J. Church, Southern Pacific Daylight Locomotives, Signature Press, Berkeley and Wilton, CA, 2004). 

But one of my favorite Don Sims photos does capture exactly that. Here we see GS-4 4448 at Bakersfield, just cut off from the San Joaquin Daylight after its run eastward down the valley. A set of F7 freight diesels will take the train over the Tehachapi. The end lettering is very clear.

This is how I will be re-lettering my GS-4 tender, as I will show in a future post.

Tony Thompson

The new SP Berkshire locomotive models

As I’m sure was the case for many Southern Pacific modelers, the recent announcement by Broadway Limited Imports (BLI) of new HO scale locomotive models of the Boston & Maine Berkshires was of interest. These engines ran for almost 20 years on the B&M, their original purchaser, but in the summer of 1945, both SP and Santa Fe each bought ten of these locomotives from the B&M.  

Why did the two roads make these purchases? The War Department had warned both railroads that with the concluding of the war in Europe, there would be heavy traffic across the U.S., transferring men, supplies and equipment from the European Theater to the Pacific, in preparation for what was expected to be a major campaign invading the home islands of Japan. Thus both railroads went out to acquire additional locomotives. That the atomic bomb would end World War II was, of course, not yet known.

The BLI announcement includes locomotives decorated for both SP and Santa Fe, two engine numbers for each railroad. Below I show the BLI artwork for the SP models. They included the smaller “Southern Pacific Lines” lettering on one engine because when the engines arrived on SP rails in August 1945, that was the official paint scheme. SP changed to the larger lettering and eliminated “Lines” in June 1946. 

Both tenders shown by BLI are the original B&M coal tenders, and indeed the SP locomotives were initially operated with those tenders, exclusively on the Rio Grande Division, SP’s only coal-fired division at that time. But in subsequent years, all ten engines were converted to oil fuel and migrated to California in the spring and summer of 1950. So my first thought was, could I use one of these distinctive locomotives on my layout?

Below I will describe some of the research I did to answer that question. In doing so, I don’t intend to praise or criticize the models themselves, and my goal is only to show the kind(s) of research that is possible with the sources we have. I certainly don’t wish to suggest what anyone else’s purchasing decision should be.

First, it’s worth remembering that these B&M Berkshires were part of the “Superpower” revolution at Lima Locomotive, brainchild of designer Will Woodard, and were capable of impressive horsepower in freight service. Built in 1928, perhaps the main criticism of them would be their retention of Lima’s articulated trailing truck design, something that found favor with few buyers of Lima power.

Second, let’s look at one of these Berkshires soon after SP arrival. (Allan Youell photo at El Paso, 1947, courtesy Guy Dunscomb). Here the very distinctive Coffin feedwater heater on the boiler front stands out (standard SP practice was to paint the entire boiler front aluminum, which is obvious here). The locomotive also still has its B&M trailing truck booster, alligator crosshead, and Baker valve gear. SP had applied train indicators, which BLI has included on the SP models, and blowdown spreaders, which I don’t see in the BLI artwork.

All ten engines remained pretty much like this on the Rio Grande Division from their arrival in August 1945 until the fall of 1949, when they began to be converted to oil fuel and of course given oil tenders. Exact dates and locations of these changes can be found in the Steam Locomotive Compendium (Timothy Diebert and Joe Strapac, Shade Tree Books, 1987).

So the first conclusion about using one of the BLI models is that until the fall of 1949, they ran only on the Rio Grande Division on account of being coal fired. It wasn’t merely unlikely that they would be seen elsewhere on the SP in that period, it was effectively impossible.

So how did these engines look when they had oil tenders? Below I show SP 3500, in a G.M. Best photo at Los Angeles in late 1949. The engine had its oil conversion at El Paso in September, and here it is in California, looking freshly painted. SP preferred multiple-bearing crossheads and Walschaerts valve gear, and any engine not already so equipped was modified. Those two big cylindrical things on the pilot beam are shields over the air pumps. And notice the dry pipe along the top of the boiler, from the superheater in the smokebox to the turret. Booster has been removed.

The tender tank, the upper part of the tender body, is from a retired 4000-series articulated, but it was placed on the original B&M tender frame, and the B&M trucks retained. The reason was to preserve the original arrangement of the drawbar between the engine’s articulated trailing truck, and the tender. For more on this, see Southern Pacific Steam Pictorial, Volume II (Guy L. Dunscomb, Donald K. Dunscomb, and Robert A. Pecotich, Dunscomb Publishing, 1999).

At this point, a second conclusion about the BLI models is that if you want to operate them on a California layout, they need to have oil tenders. It would be an interesting and not impossibly difficult project to built a semi-cylindrical or “whaleback” tender body and put it on the frame and trucks of the BLI models. But this would be getting far beyond an out-of-the-box model, and replacing crossheads and valve gear for the low-numbered engines offered by BLI, even more so.

Apparently records aren’t clear about which engines lost their boosters and when, but at least three did (boosters were out of favor at SP by this time, and many SP locomotives that had been built with boosters lost them in late steam days). Eventually all the engines also lost the prominent Coffin feedwater heaters, which very dramatically changed their appearance (Santa Fe also replaced those heaters.) Below is shown SP 3504, photographed by Guy Dunscomb at Modesto, California in April 1950.

Where did these engines operate after they came to California in 1950? I happen to have an SP Locomotives Assigned pamphlet for March 31, 1950. At that time, all ten of the Berkshires remained in service, but only two were still on Rio Grande Division, SP 3506 and 3509. All the others had been assigned to the San Joaquin Division.

So a third point to be made is that the Berkshires were assigned to Jan Joaquin Division, and we know they remained there until they began to be scrapped. The strict meaning of this is that you would only want one of these engines if you model San Joaquin Division, but in fact engines did sometimes run through on other divisions, or have break-in runs after shopping on other than their home division, so one could stretch the geographic restriction to some extent. Since I model Coast Division, some rationale like that would have to be applied.

Lastly, as batch after batch of EMD F units continued to arrive on SP in 1950 and beyond, more and more steam freight power became surplus, especially “oddballs” like the Berkshires. All the Berkshires were vacated from the roster between the late fall of 1950 and mid-summer 1951 (individual dates are in Diebert & Strapac).

Thus my fourth and final point is that these distinctive locomotives were gone from the SP by August 1951. I model 1953, so it would require more than a small time warp for me to operate a BLI Berkshire. I’m still kind of tempted, but I would certainly have to face up to removing the Coffin feedwater heater and buying or building a tender, not trivial projects. 

But as I already remarked, I am not trying to tell anyone else what to think about these models. Particularly those with the “collector” itch  (something I suffer from myself) may find these hard to resist. 

Tony Thompson

PNR-NMRA 2023

Coming less than a month after the annual convention of my home NMRA region, Pacific Coast Region (PCR), the convention of PNR (Pacific Northwest Region) was held last weekend in Tacoma, Washington. This is the adjoining region to the north of my own, not terribly far away, and I often attend the PNR meeting as well as the PCR. 

As I’ve stated before, I like to report on these meetings because of a long-held conviction, 40 years in the making, that regional NMRA conventions are fun and worthwhile attending. (My report on this year’s PCR meeting is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/05/pcr-nmra-2023.html .)

The PNR convention this year was kind of a mixed bag, with, unfortunately, a sub-par hotel, but there was good content in the convention activities, and an interesting neighborhood around the hotel. Just a block below us was the railroad depot facilities for both Amtrak and regional rail, both the Sound Transit light rail (street cars) and heavy-rail regional service (the Cascades and Sounder trains). Here’s a Sounder with its distinctive Bombardier bi-level coaches.

Incidentally, that’s our hotel at the top right of the photo!

As always, for me the clinic program at the convention was a major time consumer, and there were a number of good ones. Below I show Rich Mahaney, who gave a bunch of different talks, during his presentation on modern tank cars. I also gave a talk in the program.

I am always interested in the contest room, since you can depend on seeing some outstanding models. This convention was no exception. For me, the star this time was Donald Rose’s large-scale model of a narrow-gauge, outside-frame 0-6-0 of the Oahu Railway.

And the closer you looked, the more you saw. Below is a view into the cab, with all the piping and valves that were installed. This was a pretty impressive model.

 

Finally, I had the chance to scratch another of my many itches, discovering the Tacoma Book Center just a block from the hotel. The view below is just one of 12 aisles. I love places like this and could probably have spent all day there quite happily — and would equally probably spend a pile of money, and have to buy another suitcase to take all those wonderful purchases home!

As always, an enjoyable NMRA regional convention. Despite a few problems, congratulations to the organizers, who I know put in a considerable amount of time and effort to make one of these events happen. And to state it one more time, if you’ve never attended one of these conventions, it’s worth a try.

Tony Thompson