Choosing vehicles in HO scale

Scale automobiles and trucks on a layout play a very important role, sometimes not fully appreciated by modelers. Of course they are needed to make roads, parking lots, and industrial shipping docks realistic, but I’m referring to their role in helping set the era you are depicting. As I have remarked before on this topic, visitors who know little about railroads will nevertheless be knowledgeable and critical observers of modeled highway vehicles, which after all they have known all their lives. That post was about way you can avoid having to “explain” your layout (here’s a link: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2013/06/explaining-your-layout.html).
     The present post, however, is about the choice of vehicles that are needed for their various on-layout roles. I will only describe what I am doing for my own modeling year of 1953, but the my approach may suggest ways to deal with any era. First and foremost, in my opinion, are automobiles, as many visitors to the layout, whether model railroaders or not, do know auto model years. If, like me, you are trying to model any particular year, it is really “playing with fire” to include any model autos from model years later than your declared model year. For me, of course, “too late” would mean 1954 or later.
     What about cars which are much older than your modeled year? In many parts of the country, cars did not live to ripe old ages in those days, because harsh winters and highway salting took a heavy toll. But my layout, set in California, is far less subject to that limitation, and period photos bear out the idea that fairly old autos, from back into the 1930s, visibly did survive into the 1950s. So I need a mix. The same is even more true of highway trucks, since commercial needs often keep trucks in service for substantial numbers of years. But in this post, I focus on automobiles.
     Before I start on vehicles themselves, let me make what I think is an important point: license plates for those vehicles. First, all autos and trucks obviously had them, so if your models don’t display plates, something is missing. Second, your license plates could conceivably be little rectangles of indeterminate color, serving as place holders, but in most eras states issued distinctive plates. This is an opportunity to capture an accurate detail. I discussed this aspect in an earlier post, and mentioned a California example of the kind of internet resources out there which can make your research easy (see: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/04/choosing-and-modeling-era.html ).
     I have used a variety of on-line images to make correct plates for my 1953 era in California, as I have described previously (here’s a link to that post: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2012/11/vehicle-license-plates-in-ho-scale.html ).
     A car which would be brand new in my1953 era is, of course, the 1953 Chevrolet. I used a Magnuson Models version, molded in clear resin, and painted it in the two-tone green and yellow which was on my father’s 1953 Chevrolet four-door Bel Air. This was the first car I drove alone (beyond driver training). A personal connection like this makes extra fun. The car is shown on Chamisal Road in Shumala.

     The “Mini-Metals” (Classic Metal Works) vehicles have been a godsend for transition-era modelers. I especially like their 1941-46 Chevrolet trucks, but they have also done 1950 Dodge and Plymouth sedans and 1953 Ford models, among others. Below I show them both, first the 1953 Ford Country Squire wagon passing the Shumala depot.

A red 1950 Plymouth is shown at about the same location, stopping for an approaching train. (A photo like this unfortunately emphasizes the lack of a driver in these vehicles! Perhaps she has run into the depot to pick up a ticket.)

     These are only a few examples, but they do demonstrate what I mean about era consistency. Some modelers don’t worry about the vehicles on their layout, but I think it is an important part of the image that the layout projects.
Tony Thompson

Associated Oil Company — background

I have often said that regional oil companies are one of the ways to solidify the identity of the area you model. In my case, those are California companies, and in the 1950s, when I model, there was a kind of “Big Three” in California oil. They were Standard of California (now called Chevron), Union Oil (now part of Phillips) and the Associated Oil Company, the subject of this post. Associated is of particular interest because for a number of years, it was connected to the Southern Pacific. Understanding this company has implications both for bulk oil dealers and for tank cars, and I intend to model both; I am working on a model of an Associated bulk oil dealer.
     Finding good historical material on Associated is not simple, and some of what is on the internet at the moment is pretty garbled, including a few erroneous statements. I have been researching this topic at some length, and now have made a document with a set of facts referenced to authoritative sources (see bottom of this post). Over time, I hope to direct the attention of the owners of the erroneous pages to my document, in the hope that they will correct their misstatements, and I have made a few relevant edits to the Wikipedia pages on Associated Oil and on Tidewater Associated.

     Here is a brief summary. Around 1900, a number of small oil producers in the Kern River oil field, north of Bakersfield, experienced difficulties storing and marketing their oil once it was out of the ground. Standard Oil (Iowa), the name at that time of the part of the Standard Oil Company operating in California, was preparing to come in with all its known ability to dominate those parts of the oil business, so the small companies formed a new company to manage storage and marketing. They incorporated as the Associated Oil Company on October 7, 1901.
     Unfortunately, it was soon evident that they did not have even close to the amounts of capital required. In 1902, a new investor came on board: E.H. Harriman, buying enough Associated bonds to give him the dominant voice in Associated. He seems to have bought these bonds on his personal account, rather than for Southern Pacific. But in 1906, SP did buy the bonds from him, probably at his direction. In 1909, SP would sell some of the bonds, but buy 50.4 percent of the Associated stock, giving SP full control of the company.

     Southern Pacific also owned a lot of oil lands of their own, and had formed a subsidiary company to handle production and sale of oil, the Kern Trading and Oil Company. Some of the SP’s oil was sold to and refined by Associated, but SP also had a deal with Standard, to exchange crude oil for fuel oil (not one to one, but at an appropriate ratio to reflect the greater value of crude). Fuel oil was also purchased by SP from Associated and other companies.
     Starting in 1909, several government suits had gone after SP and other railroads, seeking to return granted land to the government if it contained mineral values. The suit against SP only caused a small proportion of the land owned to revert to the government, but SP decided the time had come to get out of the oil business.
     In 1919, they set up a complex transfer to accomplish this goal. A new entity, Pacific Oil Company, was created as of January 1, 1920. Pacific sold all its stock to SP, which in turn offered the stock to its own stockholders. In short order, nearly all the stock was sold, reimbursing SP for its stock purchase. Meanwhile, Pacific bought all of SP’s oil lands, and its stock in Associated Oil, using the money they had received from the stock sale.
     It seems likely that Pacific Oil was not intended as a long-term operation. After a few years, negotiations were completed to sell off all its holdings. The former SP oil lands and facilities were all sold to Standard Oil of California on January 1, 1926. This was the larger part of the Pacific Oil property.
     The rest of Pacific Oil, the controlling stock ownership in Associated, went elsewhere. California Standard did not buy it; instead it was sold to a new holding company, formed in late 1925, called Tide Water Associated Oil Company. This company also acquired at the same time the stock of the Tide Water Oil Company, a New Jersey company dating back to the 1880s. The largest stockholder in Tide Water for some years had been Standard Oil of New Jersey. It seems less than coincidental that both parts of Pacific Oil’s holdings went to Standard companies. Though broken up into “baby Standards” by an anti-trust suit in 1911, the original company continued to have a ghostly presence in the form of cooperation among the “babies” and in the use of Union Tank Line tank cars.
     Speaking of tank cars, here is a 1920s photo in central California of Associated tank car no. 147, an image from the Arnold Menke collection.

     When the Tide Water Associated holding company was formed, the immediate impact on the two components was minimal. Both continued to market in their respective territories under their original names. Tank cars of Associated continued to use the reporting mark AOX, as they would into the 1950s, and those of Tide Water used the mark TWOX. There was also a third mark, TIDX, used for the cars assigned to Tide Water’s refinery near Tulsa, Oklahoma.
     In 1936, the two companies, Associated and Tide Water, were merged into a single entity, Tidewater Associated Oil Company, and the formerly separate companies were dissolved. But the separate company names were still used for marketing. The new company operated with three divisions: Tidewater Eastern Division, centered on New Jersey; Tidewater Midcontinent Division, centered on Oklahoma; and the Associated Division in the far west. Again, these divisions used the TWOX, TIDX, and AOX reporting marks, respectively.
     Here is a photo of an AC&F-built Associated car at Tacoma, Washington, on February 19, 1955, taken by Colonel Chet McCoid, from the Bob’s Photo collection and used with permission. Note that the reweigh date on the car is April 1921.

     In this same period, J. Paul Getty was attempting to gain control of Tide Water Associated. It would be more than a decade before Getty would finally obtain control of the holding company which held Tidewater Associated’s stock, Mission Corporation, and thus eventually of Tidewater Associated itself.
     The trademark for Associated’s gasoline products had been “Flying A” since the 1920s.  Tide Water Oil had been using the trademarks “Tydol” for gasoline and “Veedol” for lubricants. Gradually these trademarks became used across the company. By the 1950s, Flying A was the name for gasoline sold throughout the system. The Tydol and Veedol names were also in use system-wide, both names now used for lubricants and other products. But on tank cars, the Flying A emblem was ordinarily used only on TWOX cars in this period. Here’s an example, again from the Bob’s Photo collection.

This is a General American tank car, built in June 1923 and still with that weigh date, although the photo dates from the 1950s (photographer unknown).
     My full document describing Associated Oil Company history, complete with citations to published sources, is available on Google Drive, at the following link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz_ctrHrDz4wTzRMZWZ5a0NNUEE/edit?usp=sharing

Tony Thompson

A roundhouse for Shumala, Part 2

In the previous part, I described the rationale for the kind of roundhouse I was building, and showed the framing stages of assembling the fine Banta Modelworks kit for the SP roundhouse at Port Costa. You can read it at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2013/12/a-roundhouse-for-shumala.html .
     The next family of steps in the kit is the attachment of sheathing to the frames. But before doing so, I prepainted all window sashes white, and all window and door frames black. Based on photos I have seen of SP shops and roundhouses, I made my doors completely black, although the kit directions show them black with boxcar red trim. These parts are all backed with adhesive paper, so that they assemble in a peel-and-stick fashion, very quick and easy to do.

Here the far wall is being attached. The near side pieces above the boiler house have already been attached, as has the interior wall of the boiler house.
     One change I am making to this structure is the addition of a small machine shop behind the boiler house. This means that I need two side doors, one at ground level, via which coal is taken inside to feed the boiler, and one at platform height, so that parts and materials can be conveniently unloaded from freight cars and taken into the shop. To create this arrangement, I added a new ground-level door, and raised the double door at the kit location, by the simple expedient of cutting out the siding above the kit door opening, and moving it below the door. The joint there will be invisible when the loading platform is added.
     The new door is simply a piece of Evergreen car siding, their material no. 2037, framed with scale 1 x 6-inch styrene strip. Dimensions simply duplicate those of the kit double doors. When painted black, it will be indistinguishable from the kit door.

     Here are two views of the structure with almost all sheathing applied. The one sheathing piece not yet placed is the area where the machine shop addition will connect to the building. In the upper view, you can see the new door at ground level on the boiler house wall. Corner trim strips remain to be placed.

The gap between the clerestory siding and the building below is for the roofing pieces to fit. Several windows on the right side are partly open.
     Once the sheathing is all attached, the remaining step for the kit is the roofing. The kit is designed so that much or all of the roof can be removable, a good idea with rolling stock inside. My other remaining task is the design and building of the machine shop addition, which I will cover in a separate post.
Tony Thompson

Joining layout and backdrop

This is a challenging topic of long standing in designing layout scenery, and many books and talks about scenery present approaches to it. I just want to show one simple method I was able to use in a few places.
     Re-erection of my layout segments in California, after moving them from Pennsylvania, did not always result in a tidy fit between the pieces. In particular, I made an adjustment in table height (to raise the entire layout a little), and in the process ended up with my backdrop even higher, leaving an actual vertical gap between the bottom of the backdrop and the layout surface. But once in place, lowering the backdrop would not have been simple. So I set out to disguise the gap.
     Naturally hills or other terrain features, such as dense woods, could readily hide this gap. But those features did not make sense in some of my affected areas. Instead, I chose a really simple procedure to hide the gap. I just used pieces of manila folder, glued only to the layout, folded to extend upwards and cover the gap. Here is a view of a number of these manila pieces, and you can see how they are folded just high enough to cover the gap, which in this part of Ballard was about one inch.

     Once these were in place, I painted them my usual “ground” color, Rust-Oleum Nutmeg, which of course made them a lot less obvious. Here at Shumala, you may note some cut-outs of distant houses on the backdrop, and I have also glued some Woodland Scenics Foliage material to the backdrop to add some three-dimensionality to the area.

     In most places there will be structures or other “foreground” features in front of these manila areas, so I mainly wanted to indicate some kind of foliage back there. In my opinion, the last thing you want in this situation is an accurate or detailed or artistic piece of vegetation. Instead, I think you want just the suggestion that vegetation is what is there.
     I used acrylic paints, mostly Chromium Green, darkened in places with a little Black, and some Light Green and Ochre Yellow for highlights. Here is how my vegetation looks on the Ballard side. Remember, little if any of this will be directly visible.

Most of the space visible here will be occupied by the Peerless wholesale food warehouse, which is displaced at right to make room to paint. But if you manage to see over the warehouse, there will be something there.
     Behind part of Shumala, I did the same thing, although the gap was not as large. Here is the finished version. That’s a propane tank for the future bulk oil depot, an industry which will occupy most of the space you see in front of the backdrop.

     Simple but, I think, effective. That would be my summary on this little trick for hiding any gap between scenery and backdrop. Maybe it will give you some ideas, even if you can’t use it the way I did.
Tony Thompson

A roundhouse for Shumala

I have mentioned in a number of earlier posts about my layout, that Southern Pacific’s main line of the Coast Route in California has a junction with my imaginary branch line at Shumala, a little south of Oceano. Specifics of my layout locale were discussed in a prior post also; you can see those comments at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/01/layout-design-locale.html .
     An essential part of this junction is a small engine terminal (discussed earlier at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/04/modeling-engine-terminal.html ). Considering the operation of several SP branches I know about, a number were operated with locals which simply originated at the nearest division point. Upon completing their work on the branch, they would then return to that origin. That would mean that branchline engines were housed and serviced at the division point. But when the run from the division point was lengthy, or when there was enough traffic, the branch had engine facilities of its own, naturally modest in size. Given that Shumala is not very many miles from San Luis Obispo, but wanting to include some engine facilities, my choice was clear: I surmised that there had been enough traffic (in the past) to require a branchline facility at my junction.
     Needing a small structure, and wanting it to be typical of SP practice, I chose the Banta Modelworks kit, no. 2097, for the SP roundhouse at Port Costa, with only two stalls. That should be sufficient for the needs of my branch. As I mentioned in the post about my engine terminal plans (the second one cited above), this Banta kit was reviewed by Jimmy Booth in the Southern Pacific Historical & Technical Society magazine Trainline, issue 104 (Summer 2010), page 4.
     I decided not to build the kit with inspection pits inside the structure, partly because they would be all but invisible with the orientation the structure will have on my layout. That freed me to depart from the Banta recommendation to build the structure on a base, which would make the tracks permanently attached inside the  building. I wanted to have the ability to easily clean tracks, which I can achieve with the lift-off roundhouse I will build.
     My first step, then, was to place the roundhouse tracks in alignment with the existing turntable. I used Micro Engineering Code 83 track, as Banta recommends, and attached it with Barge Cement.

The photo above shows the two converging roundhouse tracks, and outside of them, experimental placement of two additional tracks to the left of the turntable, one on each side of the roundhouse tracks. The tube of Barge Cement happens to be in the view also. At this point I dropped electrical feeders from the outer ends of both roundhouse tracks.
     The tracks, of course, are laid out so they exactly fit the roundhouse floor. Here is the floor shown in place. It has been rubbed with walnut stain, and dirtied with dark gray and black paint patches. The part nearest the camera is the office and boiler house floor, which will not be visible in the completed model.

     The first steps in adding parts to the structure are the various interior walls, ingeniously all laser cut from single pieces of plywood. I won’t spend time going through what is, after all, in the kit directions, but will show some in-progress views for flavor. Here is the first group of frames, all laser-cut as single pieces from thin plywood and remarkably strong.

You can see that I am using reversed clothes pins as clamps, as I usually do. They are so useful I find myself reaching for them on almost every project.
     In the structure shown above, the left-hand section contains an office for the roundhouse foreman and his clerks, a boiler room to provide steam for the roundhouse and garden track, and locker rooms for both roundhouse workers and train crews. I will add onto the structure in the form of a small machine shop behind the rear of the boiler house section.
     With all framing completed, it looked like this. The walls in the foreground are inner walls, and will have sheathing applied over them.

It’s worth mentioning that this kit goes together perfectly. Everything fit as it was supposed to, at least as far along as this point.
    Before attaching sheathing, I colored all exterior walls the same basic way I colored the floor, as a wiping stain, using a cotton cloth. The color is boxcar red. This gives a kind of faded color, which is probably appropriate for a structure like this one. At least as early as World War II, SP standard paint for utilitarian structures like roundhouses and shops was boxcar red walls, black trim around doors and windows, and white window sash.
     Prototype photos of the Port Costa roundhouse illustrate this scheme, showing lighter walls with black trim around doors and windows, and white sash. The detail of a Fred Matthews photo below of the roundhouse, taken in November 1956, is an example. It shows that there were garden tracks on both sides of this particular roundhouse  (photo courtesy John Signor); I will build similar garden tracks. You can click to enlarge.

Although this photo was taken very late in the SP steam era, there are four steam engines visible (and the smoke presumably indicates another one in the roundhouse), at least three of them 2-8-0’s, and no diesels in sight.
     My next effort is to add sheathing to the structure and add all windows and doors. I will illustrate that in my next post.
Tony Thompson

Repairing the Ballard hill — Part 5

The process of repairing this major scenic feature of my layout is finally approaching completion. Rather than give all the previous links, I will just cite Part 4, which in turn contains links to all the earlier posts. You can read Part 4 at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2013/12/repairing-ballard-hill-part-4.html .
     Defining the subsidiary ridges on the “back” side of the hill, the side toward Ballard and away from the end of the peninsula, was approaching completeness in Part 4. As progress continued, here is how it looked from a high angle (a view which is not accessible as such to layout visitors). The tunnel area is about ready for installation of the portal. The upper part of the hill has already been painted the Nutmeg color.

     One of the last areas to be completed was the Ballard tunnel portal. You can see that area at left in the photo above. I first glued the portal to the supports, which were in place from the previous layout, then carefully applied Sculptamold around the portal to get a realistic cut into the hillside. It is shown below, partway along, with final surface refinement still to come. In the center background, additional Nutmeg has been applied to the ridge in the middle of the hill. The far ridge remains unfinished.

     Once all surface contours looked satisfactory to me, as refined with the Brandt’s paper mache, and painted Nutmeg, I proceeded to apply scenic materials to this entire job of repair and rebuilding. But before describing my process of applying these materials, I should make a couple of comments on the prototype that I am trying to depict. My layout locale is the central California coast, so I need to aim at the landscapes typical of that area. I wrote a blog post awhile back about this subject, which you may wish to read. It is at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2013/03/vegetation-communities-as-guide-to.html .
     I will start with the oak woodland which is widespread in my area. Here is my procedure for that scenic type (this is simply an adaptation of the well-known Dave Frary “water-soluble scenery” method). I usually use a 1-inch brush to paint on Matte Medium, full strength or diluted about 2:1, Matte Medium to water, on a working area of a couple of square feet. On top of that, I like to sprinkle Woodland Scenics finer-size turf material for a base layer, primarily a fair amount of No. T42, Earth, T43, Yellow Grass (a little too yellow, so used sparingly), and some T44, Burnt Grass, with a little sprinkling in places of  blended turf No. T49, Green Blend. Once this application has been well misted with “wet water” (water with a drop of detergent) until it is soaked, I allow it to dry thoroughly.
     The second step is aimed at blending colors, and adjusting any areas that don’t look right. Here I thoroughly wet down the area to be worked with “wet water,” sprinkle adjustment colors as needed, and again use a sprayer, with a 50:50 mix of Matte Medium and water, to make sure everything will adhere, and allowed to dry. Finally, I go back and touch up any thin areas, and begin adding various colors of Woodland Scenics coarse turf, such as No. T60, Earth, and T65, Dark Green. This is glued down with Matte Medium to make clumps of small vegetation. Here is a view of one area (on the Shumala side of the hill) with the two applications done; the area at upper left is the painted backdrop behind Shumala.

There are as yet no trees or major shrubs applied, which come later.
     I should mention that there is none of the long “electrostatic” grass in this area. This is for two reasons. First, the kind of waist-high or higher grass applied by some modelers of other regions simply would be unusual on hillsides in California oak woodland. Second, I don’t want a detailed look to this hillside in any event, to help it look farther away. This applies also to refinement in trees and shrubs—not wanted in this area. But in areas closer to the viewer, I have used and will continue to apply longer grass, and more detailed trees.

     The other vegetation community I need to represent is the “coastal sage” community seen near the coast. This is a much darker family of vegetation and normally includes extensive chaparral as well. For this, my base layer is Woodland Scenics No. T41, Soil, and a modest amount of T49, Green Blend. The addition of coarse turf is mostly the T65, Dark Green. Finally, I add some well-stretched-out fiber foliage material, which from a distance suggests the chaparral part. Here is one area like this, just above the ocean beach, with the Masonite fascia in the foreground. At upper left is an N-scale farmhouse, to lend some forced perspective.

     Pending addition of final vegetation, and completion of ground cover on the Ballard side of the hill, these areas are approaching the overall look I want.
Tony Thompson

Constructing Santa Rosalia – structure

In the first two posts on this topic, I described construction and tracklaying for the staging tracks which are located beneath Santa Rosalia, and which therefore had to be completed before starting on the arrangement for the town itself. Those posts are at these two links: the first one about construction, http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2013/09/constructing-santa-rosalia-staging-under.html ; and the second one describing installation of the track, http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2013/11/constructing-santa-rosalia-staging.html ).
     The third post showed my switch machines in hidden trackage, using twin-coil switch machines, powered by a capacitor-discharge unit. That post is at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2013/11/constructing-santa-rosalia-switch.html .
     I was now ready to proceed with the support structure for the town. Using the existing track supports (see the first post cited above), I added risers high enough for the support level of Santa Rosalia. This is essentially the same level as the adjoining Ballard track board. I made these using chunks of surplus L-girder, which provides more support surface for the new track board, and lengths of 1 x 3-inch wood.

     With these supports made, I clamped them at approximately the right height, preparatory to placing the track board over them to check height and level. Each support riser could then be adjusted to correctly support the track board. The risers must of course clear the staging track below. Here are three of them, B, C and D (the fourth one, A, is behind the camera). At left rear is the Ballard track board

     I used 5/8-inch plywood for the new track board, though 3/4-inch would have been fine too. I have supports fairly closely spaced, so the 5/8-inch will be plenty stiff enough. Much of my layout in Pittsburgh was 1/2-inch plywood, which is fine if supported at frequent intervals, say 14 to 18 inches. When supports have to be much farther apart than that, I believe 3/4-inch plywood is necessary. Santa Rosalia is an intermediate case.
     Here is the track board, temporarily in place to be tested for level, both crosswise and lengthwise. It is 7 feet long and 18 inches wide. I have a piece of Homasote already cut to match, which will be glued on top.

     With this board ready to go, I also tried the fit of my piece of Homasote. It looked good and was at the right height and level.

     While I was working on the track board, I also repaired some minor water damage in my ceiling. I only mention it because I used a model railroading solution. Part of a decorative trim had fallen out, as you can see here, when a water leak (since repaired) caused the ceiling plaster to swell. The smoke detector provides the scale.

I simply used Sculptamold paper mache, generously applied to the approximately mating surfaces, to “cement” the missing pieces back into place. It is very sticky stuff when mixed to a fairly stiff condition, and dries hard. I really tried it as an experiment, but it worked fine.

     The support structure for Santa Rosalia is now complete, though it needs some trimming for a pop-up access at the end toward Ballard. Next comes the backdrop transition, curved from Ballard onto the wall behind Santa Rosalia, and I will take that up in the next post in this series.
Tony Thompson