Apr10 Written by:Tom Farin
4/10/2008 7:01 PM
San Rafael - Roadbed Layout
On to San Rafael. As you may recall, my objective is to have a loop operational for a party scheduled in early October. The concrete roadbed for half of the loop, San Anselmo, is complete after last weekend. The goal for this weekend is to complete the loop by modeling the main line in San Rafael.
Here's the NPC San Rafael track plan from the 1890s.
San Rafael was a branch line that came from San Anselmo (top of the image). After passing through West End Station, the line proceeded to the B Street Station. Just past B Street Station the line branched to a small area of yard trackage including a turntable and engine house. There was a branch line to Union Station where the NPC interchanged with the San Francisco and North Pacific RR. Once past the branch line to Union Station, the main line continued to San Quentin Landing, a paddle wheel steamer dock in the NPC early days.
As the following photo shows, given my terrain, I'm going to model San Rafael as a loop. This view is taken from the opposite side of the walkway from the San Anselmo photos in the last two posts. The stakes mark the path of the main line and my flexible measuring device (garden hose with a tape band every 10') was used to measure the distance.
West End Station will be located at the upper end of the loop shortly after the line passes through the upper tunnel in the photo. The B Street station will be located in the lower part of the loop. The yard trackage will branch from just before the lower tunnel back in the direction of the photographer. Yards, turntable, and engine house will be located inside the loop.
There will actually be two lines running through the lower tunnel. The line to San Quentin landing will run through the right side of the tunnel (in this view) and continue on to a pond located inside the San Anselmo main loop. San Quentin Landing will be modeled in the pond. A second line is the main line from San Anselmo. It will enter this side of the staircase through the left side of the tunnel. From there it will turn left and continue down the hill toward Cazadero. I don't plan to model the branch line to Union Station.
That takes care of the prototype trackage. In the only non-prototypical segment, the loop will be completed with a cross over between the line to San Quentin landing and the main line coming from San Anselmo. That cross over will be on the other side of the walkway from this photo. The loop will be used for continuous running in this part of the layout.
The San Rafael main line in the photo is a total of 65' long and drops about 20" from the upper tunnel to the lower tunnel. The average grade is around 2.5%, well within the ruling grade maximum for the layout. I estimate the total size of the loop to be in the range of 120 feet. Construction of the yards in both San Anselmo and San Rafael will be delayed until after the 'golden spike' party. Weather permitting, they will be completed before the snow flies.
The plan is to dig trenches, install forms, and pour concrete roadbed for the San Rafael portion of the loop next weekend. I figure around 23 bags of concrete should do the job.
Update posted september 9, 2007
San Rafael Continued
The San Rafael portion of the roadbed (except for the last 10' - ran out of Rebar) was laid this weekend. A total of 33 bags of concrete and 200' of rebar has been used to this point. The large concrete pad at the entrance to the lower tunnel is the beginning of the San Rafael sidings that are shown in the track plan in the previous post.
This next shot looks back over the walkway down the line headed from San Anselmo. The Jog in the pad is the crossover mentioned in the previous post. A second line will extend from the left side of the crossover through the left side of the tunnel. From there it will eventually extend to Cazadero. The right side of the crossover will curve right into the center of the loop at the top of the photo where the lower pond from the water feature will be placed. As mentined earlier, the line will extend into the pond, modeling San Quentin Landing.
With the exception of a 10' section of the branch line to San Rafael that remains to be poured, the loop is complete. In the next week, landscape work will begin on both the San Rafael and San Anselmo portions of the line. I'll post photos as the landscaping proceeds.
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