City Belt Line (N-scale )

[Slim Rail Mike]

     We are starting a heat wave here, so the rigging will wait until morning.
 Today a couple of gantries were made. They will maximize the volume above the lift platform.   





Another group of pulleys redirect the lines, from the corners, to be parallel with the line towards the winch. 



 Finial a yoke was formed from aluminum angle to even the strain on each line.

[Slim Rail Mike]

      Almost done with the lift.  I’ve put safety chains on the lift. Tomorrow I’ll add loc-tite to the double nuts. I’ve used a center punch to deform the last thread on the eye bolts, to prevent the nuts from vibrating off. Any suggestions for making this more safe.



All my works in progress modules.



Going up.



Up and secured.

[Slim Rail Mike]

  A little progress was made this week. Some space was cleared in the garage. The lift for module storage works. Rebuilt my modeling bench to be more compact. I started putting down some track, all be it temporary, and finial pulled a sting of cars behind an engine. Which has always been the point.
The new bench.


Module on the bench


Trains on module.

[Slim Rail Mike]

    W. R. Grace owned a steam ship line, among other ventures. The ships were freighter/passenger vessels. I don’t have much info about the company. I’m assuming they imported product into San Francisco. They had a vegetable oil facility on 2nd St. and Berry St along the Embarcadero , about a block from the SP 3rd and Townsend Depot.  It was very compact and was crossed with tracks. This is the inspiration for the W. R. Grace/ Berry St module.

   

Sanborn Map


1938 Ariel photo


Historic Photo looking towards China Basin from a pier. The viaduct leads to the second story on the China Basin building.


Historic Photo looking toward the bay.


The module.




Working out ideas with a mock up.  I’m trying to visualize the space. There will a sky board on the back and on the right side. A viaduct will hide the track passing through the skyboard. The paint can is a stand in for an HO gasometer model.

[Slim Rail Mike]

      The proposed streets are laid out in painters tape. A site plan was started by taping down some copy paper and a rubbing of the tracks was made. The street edges were marked, then allowances for side walks were drawn. Finial using an NMRA guage clearance for the tracks was marked.  The now smaller remaining space is W. R. Grace’s building lot.
 
      Now to see what will fit and still give an impression of the prototype. From the Sanborn map all the tank diameters were measured. Tank #9 was about 95’ across, too big to use. Tanks #10, #4, and #1 were 50’ in diameter, still to big. The remaining tanks are from 10’ to 40’ and are candidates for inclusion. Each cluster of tanks is surrounded by concrete walls.

   Not on the map but can be seen on the ariel photo  is a tank car loading rack on Berry St. This should fit in the narrow strip between the outside curves.

  The tanks appear squat to me so the paper mock-ups are about 5 scale feet shorter than the diameter. The containment walls I’m sure contribute to the short appearance.

[Slim Rail Mike]

I installed the missing ties in the track work, and gave the rails a shot of camo brown.  After painting I used a #17 blade to scrape the rail tops. Then the rails were polished with some 600 grit on a sanding stick. A train with all metal wheels and two center line cars was run to test and clean the track. One center line car with mineral spirits on the rolled the other car dry to mop up.

One set of points is sticking. So that and connecting the last two switch machines is what is being done this afternoon. One big plus for modules is how east it is to work on the underside.

   Picked up some balsa wood to try to use for the streets. So figuring out streets is next on the agenda.