Industrial Archaeology in Fremont ~

We made another trip in search of the Niles Canyon Secret Sidewalk. Niles Canyon is full of history--everything from bandit hideouts to famous movie scenes, and two railroads.

We finally saw a bit of the secret sidewalk, but it was hot and our water was running low. But before turning back we investigated this old water tower on a small hill.

We did not crawl inside, but it was easy to take a picture. Looks like plenty of others have been in there, and even climbed up the ladder.

Nearby WP/UP/ACE tracks. SP/NCRR Tracks are on the other sider of the canyon.

The water tank might be for one of the railroads, but it's just as likely that it was built for a pottery plant which used to occupy this site:

Streetcar Suburb ~

Road grading, in the form of balsa and wood filler, is complete on the "country" side of the layout, and a suburban neighorhood has already popped up.

Following the "water soluable scenery method" (as explained in the book by Dave Frary, which I recommend--used copies can be found "dirt cheap" on abebooks.com) I found a reasonable "dirt" colored interior wall paint at a local hardware store. The color is called "My Guinea Pig" (Valspar #T578); for those of you used to thinking about colors in RGB hex values, it's c2a987. I mostly chose this shade because it was a match to the paint I had put onto the layout board when I first started building the layout (which was probably just craft paint).

Eventually, I should add some extra color touches, oil splotches, etc, not to mention adding weeds to the drainage ditches.

The sidewalk was made using the same methods I used for the "downtown" section, as explained in this post from back in 2007 (I really need to speed this project up!). The fence is built up from individual styrene "boards"--which is really not that hard if you have a NSWL "Chopper".

18' (N Scale) ~ Friday, September 03, 2021

All Ready Except for the Ribbon-Cutting ~ Sunday, August 22, 2021

Old Wheels in Santa Cruz ~ Saturday, August 07, 2021

This last Thursday we were back in Santa Cruz to join a group paddling around the harbor, which was a lot of fun (we saw a lot of otters--and met a stand-up paddler who was struggling to gently persuade an otter to stop hitching a ride on his board!).

On the way into town, we drove along West Cliff and inspected this old set of trolley (?) wheels (not randomly, I'd read about this online; here's an article).

The history of streetcars in Santa Cruz is complicated--there were horsecars, narrow gauge streetcars, and eventually standard gauge ones. I was curious which system these might have come from, so we measured the gauge.

I was a little surprised at 36", since narrow gauge streetcars were typically 42" (for example, the LA "Yellow Car" system was that gauge, and this is still the gauge of the surviving SF cable cars). But some research revealed that the early horsecar lines were true narrow gauge. The picture below mentions 3'2.5" gauge, but there were about 4 different horsecar companies and nobody ever claimed they were compatible. The spoked wheels look about right.

Here is a picture of a narrow gauge Santa Cruz trolley.

So, were these horsecar wheels? Or did the narrow gauge trolleys stick to the 3' guage? Or are these wheels from some some other line entirely? The area was once crawling with 3' gauge steam railroads, both mainline and logging lines. We'll probably never know for sure. But one thing to notice is that the axles don't have gears for connecting to electric motors. For that reason and because they're built fairly light I'm leaning towards the horsecar theory.

Woordrow Ave once had a streetcar line, and it still has a wide median down the middle that used to have tracks on it.

The end of the line was right at this corner with West Cliff Dr, and long ago there was a kind of mini-resort called Vue de l'Eau with this Victorian building complete with a turrent for enjoying the view.

AEM-7's at 4th & King ~ Thursday, July 29, 2021

Back at the Movies ~ Tuesday, July 27, 2021

New Commute ~ Tuesday, July 20, 2021

I have an office again. And while we were all w@h, they built us a cool new building.

Felix? ~ Friday, July 16, 2021

Hidden in Escondido ~ Wednesday, June 30, 2021

On our recent trip to the San Diego area, we stayed near Escondido, an inland suburb in north county (and and of the line for the Sprinter Train).

Looking for a grocery store, I found an outdoor history museum in a city park. The town's original Santa Fe depot is here (I don't think this is the original location). There is an RPO car parked in front of it.

A recent graduate was using this as a backdrop for graduation pictgures.

There are a few other interesting old buildings gathered here, like a blacksmith shop and Escondido's first library.

Escondido's downtown seems to be lively. Sue met an old friend at a tea shop, and there are a couple of other likely looking spots for entertainment on Grand Ave, the town's main drag.