The Santa Fe in 50 x 50 feet
Designing and building an HO scale version of the ATSF’s Third District in 1953
When I was first bitten by the model train bug, I needed to pick which prototype I would focus on. To help my decision, I surveyed all the railroads that interested me and made a chart of the things about them that I liked most.
I joined a model railroad club featuring a model of Kansas City Union Station and broad, superelevated curves. There was a viewing room where visitors could enjoy a parade of trains from various railroads. My first project there was to build a complete model of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe’s Fast Mail passenger train, including several custom cars.
Then I purchased a home with a large basement where I could build my dream layout. Only one problem: I’d never constructed a layout before.
My first design choice was to provide a comfortable setting with finished walls, ceiling, and bathroom. Starting in 2000, it took several years to finish the basement. I wanted to duplicate the sweeping curves at the club, so I set the minimum mainline radius at 48". I also set parallel tracks 3" apart instead of HO scale’s usual 2".
Construction
I cantilevered the benchwork off the walls using brackets made from 2 x 3 lumber, thus eliminating the need for support legs. The peninsulas were built by boxing in the steel columns that support the first floor and connecting those with joists.
I ripped splines from 1⁄4" plywood using a table saw with the help of Bob Cliff. Everything was covered with Homasote, which holds track spikes very well, glued to the benchwork with construction adhesive.
The backdrop is 1⁄8" tempered hardboard glued together with another piece of hardboard forming a lap joint. The seams were filled like drywall.
I chose code 83 rail for the main and — something new at that time — “Digital Command Control-friendly” turnouts. Some of the tracks in Flagstaff and Williams use code 70 and even code 55 for added realism.
The phone system I use is low-cost PBX hardware found on eBay with eight lines, enough to cover operation of the layout. Although not prototypical, the dispatcher uses a 1950s retro phone with a shoulder rest, while the towns get $5 phones from Walmart.
My DCC system is Easy DCC from CVP, which provides 16 wireless throttles and some tethered. I ended up with eight power districts plus some circuit breakers and auto reversers.
If you build it…
At first I built just the upper deck around the walls, without the long peninsula. I wasn’t sure if I could convince enough people to come help me operate a layout as big as I envisioned. If I couldn’t, this small portion of single deck would be more than enough to serve my modeling needs.
To my surprise, the layout was very popular and enjoyable. So I enlarged it by adding the lower deck, the long peninsula, and staging at both ends.
One of the things that seemed to be overlooked on many layouts of the day was staging. I decided to over-design my staging so I wouldn’t run short. Even so, it’s about at capacity today.
My next design choice was to follow the prototype with a balance of both
passenger operation and freight car switching, thus giving crews full exposure to what the Santa Fe was about. Freight is more of a challenge than passenger operation.
After reading A Quarter Century of Santa Fe Consists by Fred Frailey (RPC Publications, 1974), I chose to model the Albuquerque Division’s Third District. This was the only stretch on the Santa Fe where I felt I could represent both freight and passenger operations fairly. Yard design can be difficult, as somehow it’s never big enough or has good enough access. My comfortable reach-in distance is about 2 feet. Yard switching requires reading the reporting marks and car number to identify cars. With track centers at the minimum of around 2" in the yard, this can be challenging. Track centers farther apart would make the car markings easier to see, so I chose 21⁄2" track centers in the yards. It’s a tradeoff, since the wider the track centers are, the fewer tracks can fit. Even with the wider track spacing, having the adjacent track unoccupied works best, and the extra finger room is helpful to rerail and uncouple cars. The yard leads at Winslow and Ash Fork are very long in both directions. There are also four arrival and departure tracks in Winslow and two in Ash Fork. This is to allow running freight trains longer than the yard tracks, which are 55 cars long. I provide guidance in the form of a sign reading Switch Train from head End Only. This tells engineers to bring their train into the yard, clear the ladder track, then break the train in two and shove the rest into another vacant track. Freight trains aren’t allowed to hang their back ends out of the yard and foul the main. Internal yard management is left up to the yardmaster.
Designing from the prototype
Starting with the actual track diagrams and station site plans from the 1950s, I soon realized there was no way to match the size and scope of the actual prototype trackage. But I found I could design a configuration that gave the same feeling as the prototype locations.
Winslow was the division point yard and a marshalling point for passenger operations. In 1957, three westbound Grand Canyon trains were consolidated into two westbounds, and the reverse for eastbounds, along with some other interesting passenger car switching. Every day, 14 passenger trains (not counting extra sections) all stopping for six minutes for crew changes make Winslow quite a challenge.
A station with a large hotel called La Posada, designed by famed architect Mary Colter and operated by Fred Harvey, provided first-class food and service. I scratchbuilt this structure from prototype plans.
Winslow was the home base for local trains to Winona, Flagstaff, Bellemont, and Williams, since the road freight trains made no stops there. The only exception is the hot No. 41 Hog Special from Belen to Los Angeles. This picked up loaded stockcars at Winslow, Flagstaff, Williams, and Ash Fork going to California. Reefer trains from California were iced here; I do this on the main. There was also a stockyard.
Canyon Diablo is a huge canyon in the desert. There were three bridges, but the first was soon replaced by a second with a gantlet track. This required a station to control traffic and was finally replaced in 1947 by a steel double-track bridge. The yard speed restriction over the span was then removed along with the need for trains to stop. The bridge on my layout is an award-winning model built by Gene Wincek.
Winona has a mountain of volcanic cinder they called a cinder pit that provided a low-cost dark volcanic cinder ballast in the ’50s. A local runs from Winslow to Winona with 25 empties and brings back loads for a westbound rockballast train.
This industry does live loading, which means a mechanical device loads scale cinders into empty cars. The wayfreight sets out empties in the east end of the
yard and pulls loads out of the west end. Eight empties at a time are taken up the loading track, then the engine runs around the cars and moves them one at a time under the loader. The loaded string is then placed in the west end of the yard for pickup. There’s some skill required to throw a switch and move the car under the loader at the same time to distribute the load evenly. There’s a catch bin under the track, so any spilled cinders never build up on the ties.
Flagstaff had a lot of freight operations in 1953. This is the most difficult yard to operate on the layout. The main line, with its constant parade of trains, cuts the town in half. The Flagstaff local has industries to switch both north and south of the main line, but by Rule 93 isn’t allowed to impede the progress of other trains. It takes the entire session to switch its typical 20-car train.
Bellemont is a military ordinance depot and was the reserve for Los Angeles in World War II. It’s designed to receive a 20-car train and sort the cars to the freight house and unloading track.
Williams also had a lot of freight operations in 1953. The prototype track
diagrams list the customers served by the railroad, including five oil dealers. I managed to model three of them, along with a stockyard.
This is where the branch line to the Grand Canyon began, and with it, passenger operations. There was a daily passenger train between Williams and the Grand Canyon, and in season on weekends there was tour-train business originating from both California and Chicago with an overnight stay at the Grand Canyon.
There’s another Grand Hotel and station operated by Fred Harvey there, called Fray Marcos. I scratchbuilt mine to match the prototype. The wye here leading into staging for the national park is similar to the prototype. There’s also plenty of local switching to keep a yardmaster and assistant busy.
At Ash Fork, the branchline wye to Phoenix is immediately to the west, with passenger operations and a tower controlling traffic. The reefer express trains originating in Phoenix were iced here, and there was another stockyard.
There was a large less-than-carloadlot (LCL) facility here with both openplatform and covered storage. Again, plenty of local switching was included to give operators a challenge and something interesting to do.
Although there was another Grand Hotel and station operated by Fred Harvey at Ash Fork, it fell in the aisle, so just a brick platform is modeled.
Operation
Winslow (mile post 285) to Williams (mile post 378) was an uphill line going west with a varying grade around 1.4%. Beyond Williams is the Arizona divide at Supai Summit. The double-track line splits going downhill with a 1.4% grade on one track and 2.6% on the other. There’s nothing but wilderness until Ash Fork at mile post 401.
I created two layout decks with Williams in the middle. The stretch with car switching is on the top deck at 56" high, within easy reach and close to eye level. The lower deck is set at 40". My operating experience showed steep grades can severely limit train length, so I didn’t want to exceed 1%. I needed 1,600", or 133 feet, of run to achieve the desired 16" of vertical separation between decks.
The top deck is flat without grades so a car being switched won’t roll away. The grade begins just west of Williams and ends just before Canyon Diablo above it.
The siding at Daze is used by freight trains to stop for 10 minutes to cool their wheels after the long grade. The prototype’s westbound descending grade here was 2.6%, and diesels with dynamic brakes requiring retainers based on train tonnage made this stop in 1953.
This is also the reason for left-hand operation over my entire Third District layout. The railroads wanted trains to ascend the 1.4% grade and descend the 2.6% grade.
I follow the prototype sequence of towns, and wherever you face the layout, you are looking north, with east always to your right. This helps operators avoid becoming disoriented.
Signals and operation
Signaling was appropriate but too much like real work for me. However, I found with short distances between towns and the double-track main that signals can be optional. Later I added a few static yellow boards (Rule 285, approach) to slow down trains nearing yard limits, and a stop-and-proceed red board with number plate (Rule 291) was needed on the eastern approach to Ash Fork. There’s a simple sign directing the crew to stop, walk around to the other side of the island, and then proceed at reduced speed. If the yardmaster wants an approaching train to stop, he simply places a burning fusee across the rails in the form of a red LED installed at the yard limit.
It’s 116 miles between Winslow and Ash Fork, so there’s no way to have a scale distance between towns. With Williams in the middle, I use the station time from the actual railroad timetable. Then I measure the time it takes for a model train to reach the next town on the 3:1 fast clock traveling at prototype speed and enter that time in the model employee timetable. The Super Chief took two and a half hours to travel from Winslow to Ash Fork, while on my model it takes only 30 fast-clock minutes.
We operate in timetable and trainorder (TTTO) fashion with clearance cards and train orders issued by a dispatcher using a phone system. All freight trains on the Santa Fe were operated as extras in 1953, so only passenger trains are listed in the timetable. Our train operation involves running freight trains without impeding the passenger trains. Harold Krewer created a realistic employee timetable using an Excel spreadsheet including some of the pages from the prototype timetable. It’s printed out on 11 x 17 sheets folded into a
41 ⁄4" x 11" document.
After attending some seminars at prototype modeling meets and consulting with other layout owners, I created a custom waybill and had copies printed out as business cards. It’s a simple generic waybill using an ink stamp to add the name of the town and a color code using a marker pen. I mark whether it’s on the north, south, east, or west side of town. I also block the cars in staging for the proper side of each town.
Staging simply involves flipping the waybills and blocking the trains. The manila car card holders are available from Micro-Mark. Passenger trains use waybills and car cards in the same way with only switched cars billed, and they are a different color.
The dispatcher uses a virtual JMRI panel created by Greg Bedlek. There’s a button to press for morning or evening trains. When pressed, all the trains show up as flags that can be positioned on the board to show train location.
Alternatively, a more traditional prototype train sheet was provided by Bob Perrin. This is simply a reduced-in-size prototypical train sheet. The train registers (Form 819) at Winslow, Williams, Ash Fork, and both staging yards are filled out only by crews of trains originating or terminating there.
Another item required to operate prototypically is the actual Santa Fe rule book from 1953. There are some rules specific to the district in the employee timetable.
Operating sessions
The railroad can keep a crew of 20 very busy for four actual hours — 12 hours railroad time. From midnight to noon is called the morning trick. During that period, the entire passenger fleet passes eastbound except the Fast Mail, which passes westbound. On the evening trick, it’s reversed. This is just as it was back in 1953, and it makes the model railroad almost self-staging.
We run all the passenger trains with accurate consists for the period — currently 1953, but I plan to move forward to 1954. Passenger operations changed seasonally and yearly, with the most traffic in summer and holiday rushes during winter. Looking at the employee timetable, 1953 was the last year No. 3, the California Limited, made a 45-minute meal stop in Williams, and No. 4 stopped in Winslow, with passengers eating at the Harvey House. In 1954, the San Francisco Chief began service and the California Limited was cut back, along with other changes.
The goal is to operate every two months, but at this writing it’s been around three.