Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

I've known for ages there was something missing from this film title (I never saw the movie)...boats! Over the decades of my fascination with machinery I had observed that many of the “car people” (makes a weird mental picture of some sort of Transformer beastie, doesn't it?) are often also interested in at least one other of these...sometimes more than one. The only link is that they are all means of transportation... but so is a horse, and the only car guy I knew who was also into, as Ernie used to say, a means of transportation you had to put gas into even if it wasn't going anywhere, was Mike Cotsworth. But then Mike had two daughters, and we all know what that means in regards to horses.

I have always been interested in all four (not that I don't like horses..but they are BIG animals that intimidate me...and they know that), and though my direct history and contact with cars is long, my involvement with trains is even longer. In fairness, I have never driven nor wrenched on a real train, though I have ridden on many, including a number of steam powered rides...Railtown 1890 while it was still the Sierra Railroad, Roaring Camp and Big Trees, The California Western “skunk” line, The Sacramento Northern, etc. The actual CW “skunk” was a gasoline powered railcar, so named because you could smell it coming long before you could see it...but we rode behind a restored steamer...a 2-8-0 or 2-8-2 best I recall. If you don't know what those numbers mean, rather than taking up space here I'll just suggest looking them up on Wikipedia.

CWRR 2-8-2
This type was first built for Japan
and thus is nicknamed a "Mikado"

What I have done is modeling in miniature trains and train lines...and I started when I was about ten, though my first “train set” came when I was four.

We were Jewish, and I was born in an era in which Jews did not at all recognize or celebrate some min-version of Christmas...no “Hanukah Bushes” or eight days of gifts giving. Yet for some strange reason, this one year we did have a tree, under which Mom and Dad had placed a Marx steam loco with a couple of cars, a caboose, and enough track to make a loop. My sister got a “Howdie Doody” marionette. Yuch.

Not very realistic...but a start

Marx trains were a cheap alternative for people who could not afford Lionel. They were stamped tin with minimal attention to detail and non-working couplers. I don't remember doing much with the set, but on the other hand I still had it after we moved from NY to Florida.

Maybe it was Greer Ganong's HO “layout” which inspired me? This kid was older than me and as strange as his name...but then I was a pretty precocious and odd duck myself so we were attracted to each other. His “layout” was a loop of track, perhaps with a couple of sidings, on a green painted plywood table. But at least the engine and cars looked like the real things.

HO layouts can look quite real

I grabbed my bike, somehow got Dad to buy a piece of plywood, and toddled off to Orange Blossom Hobbies to trade in some of my stuff and get some more correctly scaled Lionel gear. I then nailed down a loop of track and two sidings and had my first rail “empire.”

But O scale, though “only” 1/48 actual size, takes up a lot of room, and it is impossible to build what I had in mind on 32 square feet. Hell, I'd have needed our entire apartment. So railroading got mothballed...for almost a decade.

I really don't know why I picked it up again, but just after I started dating Marcia I built a shelf switching layout in HO in my apartment in Gainesville. This was on three modules which could be “knocked down” for easy movement. This pre-dated what is now a standardized and documented way to build a modular layout, but it served its purpose. I “scratch built” my own structures for it as I had no funds for buying commercial kits, and used parakeet cage pet store gravel to ballast the rails. I was attracted by model building at a young age, and also was interested in the movements required to switch railcars from one area to another. I have little patience for puzzles in general, but for some reason this type appealed to me.

But the world was complex and, with Vietnam and grad school looming, the hobby went dormant again until after I was married, whereupon the new smaller N scale came on the scene. HO stood for “Half O”...and was 1/87 actual size. This made building a very basic layout in a space as small as a sheet of plywood possible, and allowed for some decent modeling and diorama-like techniques to be applied as well as some semi-realistic operation, but it was pretty minimal. But cut that size in half yet again (N is 1/160 actual size) and you could build a real empire in the same footprint.

A "huge" 2-6-6-2 Articulated C&O steamer
The real one is over 140 feet long...scaled in the length of a pencil!

The problem was that miniaturization manufacturing in 1970 was not up to the task in terms of reliability and durability of the mechanisms and motors. Though I built a pretty extensive little world I could not make it run well or reliably, so when we moved from Florida I sold the entire setup to a colleague at work, and once again was out of the hobby, though I did bring my HO stuff with me when we left for Las Vegas, where I cobbled together a basic layout, which could swing up out of the way into a case on the wall when not in use...or was that layout after we came to California? At any rate, I was in and out a number of times but until sometime around 1975 could not be considered a “serious” modeler.

One of the people who worked for me got me “back on the rails.” We were browsing around a bookstore on a lunch break when I stumbled on a nice picture book about modeling he convinced me to buy. From there it was off to the races, first with an overly ambitious N scale layout around the walls of our garage in San Carlos, and then a much more modest “liftup” operated from a central pit which lived inside a spare bedroom for much better temperature and dust control.

By the 1980s N scale was vastly improved mechanically and ran very well. I kept this layout and moved it into a dedicated room here in our retirement place, never expecting anything more ambitious.

And then Ernie died. As I said, there is an affinity among car guys for other hobbies which seem common to the group...modeling, boats, planes, radio controlled craft of one type or another, and trains of all sizes. For example, Sherri and I were standing in line at one Railfair celebration at the Railroad Museum in Old Sacramento when I noticed a few vintage racers in line ahead of me, staring in wonder at a display of large scale custom built steam locomotives. I joined them, also staggered by hand built locomotives and the hundreds to thousands of hours of work it took to machine things like wheels and gears for them. One of the guys muttered under his breath...”and they think we're crazy.”

It was Gary Winiger who put Ernie and me together in terms of N scale modeling. Gary had learned that Ernie and I both had layouts, though Ernie's took up an entire bedroom and he had vastly more running equipment and locomotives than me, including a number of expensive and rare solid brass units. He was also, as I am not, a master craftsman.

Ernie was a big guy...one of his hands could cover both of mine, but he had eyesight that was well beyond 20/20, and those big hands were very steady. He had a heart condition as a child and since he could not play with other kids, had kept busy building plastic model kits, many of which are now on display in my shop, and then moving into scratch built and high quality kits when he started into model railroading. In fact, learning I was “into trains” got him back to working on his own neglected layout, where he constructed a beautiful, scaled down version of a cannery, now gone, which graced the street he lived on in Cupertino.

He quickly decided that it was a great idea to will his stuff to me. I was flattered, but I never expected to have to deal with it as soon as I did. Ernie got sick over one New Years and within a week succumbed to pancreatitis. He was not yet 65.Though the loss was over a decade ago it is something I never will quite get over. He was that much of a force in my life.

I did not care for Ernie's track setup, but decided to tear his layout and my own apart and build a new, vastly expanded line, which would showcase his building skills. Among other things, he had scratch built all the stations on the old Yosemite Valley Railroad, and these became passenger and freight terminals on my newly designed “Sierra Northern, “ the third layout I built using that name.

The lSNRR resides in a dedicated room, occupying eight by 12 feet, with tracks around the walls and a central peninsula...on three different levels. Ernie had so much track, switches, and running gear that, could I figure out how, I could at last build something which looked and ran like a real railroad, moving cars from point to point among towns loosely patterned after the real Sierra Railroad. In order to do access the levels there is an elevator which lifts trains from one to the other.

I have been working on this system for almost 15 years. No layout is ever “finished” but all the tracks except for one yard are in, all towns on the main level are landscaped to some level, and the main interchange yard is also done.

Part of the main interchange yard at Riverbank
SP SD9 switcher waiting for work
Santa Fe Observation car at station
"Cut" of boxcars in foreground
Power poles mark boundary between "upper" arrival/departure tracks and "lower" classification ans storage yard
Note Ernie's scratch built replica of the YVRR Merced Station

 This is where the Sierra Northern terminates and joins the world via the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific, which then continue to the lower level through the “farm town” of Manteca, and on to the unfinished yard at “San Francisco.”

Going the other way, the Sierra Northern starts from the interchange at Riverbank, climbs to Jamestown, which is a main industrial hub, with a branch to the third level terminal at Angels Camp. This top level also contains a logging spur at Camp 16 and a mining spur at New Melones. The main line continues from Jamestown through Sonora to its terminal with its lumber processing facilities at Tuolomne, which represents the real railroad's link to the facilities at Standard, outside Sonora.

This is a complex and large layout crammed into very little space. Over 100 freight cars are active on it and a purchased piece of software is used to generate and route cars between industries which I built or installed to justify those movements. There are also over 100 manual and electrically controlled track switches, and Ernie's excess rolling stock and engines, many no longer operable, are in a custom display case he built that overlooks the layout...it is six feet long with multiple display tracks on five or six shelves.

There is more than enough to do and build to keep me happily occupied for the rest of my life. Now about that boat...but that's another story.

"Girasole"
The Italian word for "sunflower"
It litreally means "follow the sun"

Scenes along the Sierra Northern "Empire": 

Part of the "lower" yard at Riverbank

Below is the engine facility at Riverbank:

Six stall roundhouse is seen beyond the turntable

Jamestown is a major interchange with the Angels mining and logging branch as well as having significant industry of its own:

Another of Ernies scratch built YVRR stations...this one in use at Jamestown

A view of the central part of Jamestown. The buildings are kits done by Ernie:

The west end of Jamestown.

And the east end of town:

Main line between Jamestown at top, and Sonora at bottom

This is Sonora, east of Jamestown on the SNRR main line. Not shown are the oil transfer companies on the east side of town which are the main industries:

Below are views of the end of line at Tuolomne with its facility for processing logs into lumber:

Log dump and Pond

Ernie's Scratch Bulit Sawmill
Note the incredible detail
The roof is removable to show the saws and tables