Southern Pacific Side of Oakdale Junction Layout

Once again, the use of modeler's license is taking place on my Oakdale Junction HO scale layout. This time it is with the industries that are established on the Southern Pacific Railroad side of Oakdale. Another industry that I am fascinated with regarding railroading in the 1950's is with packinghouse operations.

I like the look and operations of refrigerator car operations, especially those used in fruit and vegetable deliveries. By adding some packing houses in town, Southern Pacific crews will have the opportunity to switch Pacific Fruit Express and other refrigerator cars. Sometimes they will be dropping off empty cars to be loaded and other times they will be picking up loaded cars for transport to off layout destinations. There will even be the need to spot the cars at the ice house to be iced prior to loading. The excitement of operating this type of freight traffic is why I like the 1950's era of railroading.

Meat Packing Industry Served by Sierra Railway

I am obviously not modeling Oakdale Junction 100% correctly on my HO scale model railroad. There never was a meat packing plant in Oakdale served by any of the three railroad companies that operated in the city. However, in my version of history, a meat packing industry was established in Oakdale and the plant was served by the Sierra Railroad.

I need to use some modeler's license on my layout to serve my interests in this hobby. I really like the look and operations of handling refrigerator cars and livestock cars in the 1950's. So this is why I added the meat packing industry to my layout. Most of you will realize that I am using the commercially available Walthers Cornerstone kits to model this industry. Without the opportunity to switch the stockyards, ice house and packing plant itself, there would be no switching work to be done on the Sierra Railroad portion of my layout. I now have added operational interest to my layout so that the Sierra Railroad crew has something to do other than switching the interchange track in town.

Oakdale Junction Layout Successfully Moved

A few weeks ago, my family and I moved from one residence down the street and around the corner to another residence. My HO scale Oakdale Junction layout which was erected in the living room of the old house is now in place inside the two car garage of the new house. I am pleased with how it is set up in the garage.

I initially built the layout in three sections anticipating future moves. I specifically measured the dimensions of available rental trucks (U-haul types) so that my layout sections would fit inside of them. Unfortunately, the rear door does not extend all the way to the roof, and this measurement is not listed on the dimensions of the trucks. Because of this, I did have to remove the backdrop panels to get the layout sections onto the rental truck. I was not too upset by this as I had wanted to re-do them in a different manner anyway when I moved to the new residence. Now that the layout sections are in place inside the garage, I will be able to re-do the backdrop panels in the manner that I want.

For some reason, the small corner layout section now does not line up with the two longer shelf layouts. I have to add shims to the legs of this corner section to raise the table base to line up with the track on the two longer shelf layout sections. I also have to replace/re-lay some of the Atlas flex-track sections that span the connection joints.

There are still lots of boxes from the move inside the garage that are in the way of me getting to the layout to work on it. Once I get to unpacking these boxes, I will be able to work on the layout. I have not attempted to connect any of the track wiring to any outlets in the garage. On the surface, the track and track feeder wires all appear to be intact and do not look damaged as a result of the move. I have high hopes that (electrically) everything will work once I get the layout plugged in.

The advantage of having the layout set up in the garage at this residence is that I will now be able to have staging yards attached to each end of the layout. This was not going to be possible when it was set up in the living room of the older house due to space restraints of the room. Now that we have pretty much settled into the new house, my goal is to unpack the boxes in the garage over the next few weeks and get back to working on the layout.