Coxy's N Scale and Railroad Blog

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A pair of light engines? No. The BNSF Oakland turn has left its Oakland cars on the Richmond Pacific (RPRC) main adjacent to Safeway siding. The units have pulled forward to the switch to the BNSF Siberia Lead. The crewman will line it for the lead so that when the units pull the BNSF cars out of the siding (50 yards on the far side of the grade crossing), the train will run up the Siberia Lead and not into the RPRC yard.

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The RPRC usually leaves the BNSF pickups close to this end of the siding, mostly tank cars, covered hoppers, and boxcars. Today there are seven cars. On other days ther can be twenty or more waiting for collection.

The pair of units ease back down to the siding switch which has been lined for the siding by a crewman. The cars to be collected are on the left and the 133’s train is on the track to the right.

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The units are coupled to the cars in the siding. Something was problematic in making the hook today. The crew were conferencing around the connection to the lead car. It may have been an air hose that was not cooperating. In any case, they took fifteen minutes to get it sorted out and be ready to pull forward.

Modelers notes

• The semi-even cyclone fence and retaining wall on the other side of the train. I like the rust streaks on the retaining wall below the fence and noticeably below the base of each post.
• The land either side of the tracks is moderately flat but not like a sheet of plywood. There used to be track to the right of the train. You can see some track that remains in the distance that is still in use for car storage. The track that was on this end of the Safeway yard has been removed for some time and the right of way and the space remains. It would be tempting to fill this space in when modeling, a temptation to be resisted.
• RPRC keeps their right of way pretty clean of debris, trash, track materials or piles of dirt and ballast. There are a few ties to the left of the units against the retaining wall. I did see an abandoned baby seat on the ground in front of me too.
• The ballast beside the tracks has a lot of subtle variation in color which is an essential element in order to replicate in model form.
• Vegetation between and near the track has recently been sprayed and has yellowed off. Not so long ago it looked like a carpet of lawn!
• The reinforcing ribs on the outside of the switch stock rail adjacent to the points would be fiddly but a nice feature to model as it captures the light.

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This is a wider view of the scene as the air line is being charged.

We see GP60M’s occasionally in local service. They also show up switching the Richmond autorack facility once in a while, though a nicely maintained blue and yellow GP35 is more common. The Dash-8 is more common and will often be paired with an SD40 or GP30.

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I’m a sucker for the warbonnet scheme. It seems so unlikely on a locomotive, let alone a freight locomotive. Basically an american icon really. These guys showed up close to the time of the merger with BN. There are still GP60B”s running around though I haven;t seen them so much lately. They are more suited to TOFC trains and I have mainly been encountering stacks and manifests lately.

Modelers notes

• This is not a heavily weathered unit compared to other warbonnets. The nose is dirty from black soot. A pretty straightforward adjustment with an airbrush or chalks. it looks like the red is still strong underneath - not faded to the unappealing pink that many red and silver units now wear.
• Yellow reflective horizontal striping has been applied to the side sill
• The boxy dynamic brake blister is a great feature on this unit and is pretty black as are the radiator grills at the real of the long hood.

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Okay! Action! Ditch lights on, throttle up, these two effortlessly extract the seven cars to be added to their train.

Modeling notes

• Main details to consider include switch stand, wooden post guard rail separating the road from the right of way, telephone poles, wires, cellphone tower, scrappy vegetation nearby, virtually no trees.
• The sky is very clear and blue. Distant hills look a lot like paintings on glass, i.e. slightly translucent.
• Pilot details: very dark brown rusted color of coupler. Very thin faded (pink) M.U. cable
• Rear view mirror just as prominent as the cab sun shades
• Clean roof line - no antennae

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Ahhhhh! Bring back the 80’s!!

Modelers notes

• The telephone pole in the background takes HV lines at the top and directs them underground. This is a nice modeling alternative to a continuous line of poles. Note the guy wires on the right of the pole countering the tension from the suspended lines. Note also the white PVC pipe around the bottom 6-8’ of the wire to make them more visible.

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This is what it’s all about now - big GE power in the Heritage II scheme (which I like very much I should point out). I really dig those wings too. This guy was spending a lot of time puffing air from it’s condensation trap.

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Okay! Hold ‘em there. The last car clears the siding switch.

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Turn the crank and line the switch back to the main.

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The first crewman locks the switch in place. Thre car lengths further back, the second crewman is ready to make the hook with the rest of the train.

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The units are shoving back to close the gap now. They are running toward the camera in this shot and we are looking pretty directly into the sun. BNSF 656 is looking pretty clean.

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The lead unit slinks by my position, prime mover humming and turbo quietly wailing.

Modelers note

• It would be tempting to spray the unit from one end to the other along the trucks and fuel tank. But note that the trucks are a uniform grimy grey color while the fuel tank and air tank are mostly grime streaked vertically.
• Walkways look black on this unit
• Dynamic brake blister is more grimy than the rest of the long hood
• Long hood looks like it is weathered with graphite

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Another shot of the nose of 133. The joint has been made and the units are rolling the whole train back to bring the engines level with the crewman. Once they climbed aboard, the train was back on it’s way to the Richmond Terminal.

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Rather than take more shots at Marina Bay Parkway, I moved over to Meeker Ave. At this point, the Siberia Lead has deviated away from the Richmond Pacific yard. A self storage facility now separates the BNSF rails from those of the RPRC. In fact, the Siberia Lead crosses between the lockers and the office so they have a kind of private grade crossing complete with a sliding safety gate.

The railroad has planted a row of trees and shrubs to separate the track and trains visually from the road. The clearance on either side of the track is wider than it looks from the road.

Note the rose colored ballast starting to show up here giving away the owner of this track. This is heavy continuous welded rail (CWR) laid down a few years ago in preparation for stack train traffic to the Port of Oakland. The Safeway yard tracks were not relaid as part of this exercise so it is interesting to see big stackers with 4 or even 5 Dash-9’s tiptoeing along the RPRC track to Stege.

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How easy to model would this be?!! A narrow shelf, lightly ballasted line and either a row of trees or a metal siding wall.

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Okay, a couple more. I moved over to S. 3rd St. Not your safest neighborhood, but I was only here briefly for my shots of the 133. On the far side of the train is a palm tree nursery. The gates you can see are at Cutting Blvd. On the other side of Cutting (out of view) is the Simsmetal plant.

Modelers notes

• I would avoid modeling the palm trees even if they could be done well. I agree with Pelle Soeborg who recommends modeling the average not the unusual. The unusual draws undue attention that the model can seldom survive without the viewer becoming more conscious of the unreality of the model.
• Again flat area next to the rails but texture and color is everything - ballast, packed gravel, concrete, very limited vegetation.
• The ground on the far side of the rails slopes a few feet down to the tracks with a likely drainage ditch along the track. Vegetation is only along the top here, the rest of the slope is not yet vegetated.

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A nice shot of the old girl. Note the difference in weathering between the end of the fuel tank and the sides.

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Here are a few of the cars on this train. Lots of interesting color variations and rust streaks aside from the obvious graffiti.

At this point, I headed over to the grade crossing on Ohio Ave where the Siberia Lead ‘wyes’ into BNSF’s Richmond Yard. I couldn’t get there ahead of this guy. He was already gliding along the south leg of the wye when I made it through each of four red lights (there are only four lights between S 3rd St and Ohio!).

Witht he show over, I headed back to Longs and caught the Warm Springs Turn returning with a nice SD40-2 and another HII Dash8-40B. Today they brought back a couple of autoparts boxcars, a couple of tank cars and about 15 autoracks.