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The Walla Walla Traction
Company,
September 2000-August 2001
The impending birth of our son Eliot had
my wife Mary and I thinking of a baby’s nursery in the summer of 2000. We
had two spare bedrooms to choose from, both filled with
 boxes that should
be in the attic. Several were full of model railroading equipment. Mary
suggested I do something with all “those trains” rather than stick 'em
above the garage—display them, or perhaps, build a place to run them? She
didn’t have to twist my arm, and in fact insisted I build in the larger of
the two bedrooms. We agreed the railroad should only be part of the room’s
purpose—it’d be nice to put a futon in there to bunk guests on, and keep
the layout high enough so we could build bookshelves and place a desk and
computer underneath the bench work as well.
Construction Basics
The toughest choices had already been
made, that of what to model. I started construction on the Walla Walla
Traction Co. in August, 2001, and with several hours a day to work on the
railroad while Mary was at work, made rapid progress. A curved 1/8” Masonite backdrop was installed, primed and sealed and painted light blue.
Small cumulus clouds and a rolling low hill backdrop typical of Eastern
Washington was painted using cans of Krylon spray paint and hand-cut
stencils. Five pairs of Lights of America shop lights (less than $10 each
at Home Depot) hung from the vaulted ceiling 21” above track level,
providing lots of light for operations or digital photography. Most of
the time, the layout is operated with only one tube in each fixture.
Speeding up construction was the choice of
bench work (“Barrow Boxes,” or dominos as popularized by David Barrow’s
“South Plains District” portable layout in a 1995 Model Railroader
series) and the use of double-slotted shelving system brackets to suspend
the railroad form the wall.
 The brackets provide a solid foundation for
the railroad, and the use of the 72” vertical hangers made provided 18 linear
feet of shelf space and lots of flexibility in configuration.
Track work
Basic track work and wiring was completed
by late October. I used Micro Engineering Code 70 and 55 flex track and
Peco Electro-Frog Code 75 turnouts on the visible portions of the layout
along with one curved Shinohara Code 70 turnout. All visible turnouts were
hand-thrown. Hidden staging track was Atlas Code 83 flex and turnouts
powered by Tortoise switch machines. Track was laid atop 1/8” thick cork
sheet cut to fit, and both track and cork were glued to the layout using
latex liquid nails. In November, an EasyDCC command control system was
installed and operations began, just in the nick of time, as Eliot was
born on January 31. The rest of the winter and spring was spent tweaking
track work, building structures, pouring roads (I used charcoal tinted
Polygrout, an acrylic tile grout), and laying ballast and ground cover.
Track plan and
Operations
The track plan featured three distinct
switching districts:
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The Potlatch lumber mill, behind which was hidden
a three-track staging
yard of approximately eight 50-foot
cars each;
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A classification yard, four tracks,
including a grain elevator, three-car ice dock and small engine facility;
and
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A produce district, with packing houses,
a cannery, and team track.
Formal operations using a car card
forwarding system began in March, 2001. I added my own data base for
industries on the WWT to those supplied in the
Shenware Waybills program,
which I downloaded for a 120 day test. For each of the 150 cars available
to the layout, I created a four-cycle waybill. Car storage was provided in
two four-drawer bathr oom
cabinets purchased at home depot. In each drawer, I glued 6 furring strip
dividers, and placed foam rubber weather stripping at each end of the
slots to cushion impact to couplers as the drawers open and close. Each
drawer holds around 14 cars.
The WWT typically operated with three
crews:
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The Interchange crew, which would bring
both UP and NP interchange jobs out of staging, swap cars, and return.
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The “Mill job", on duty 0630, which
would switch the Potlatch Mill, other industries, and handle some work in
the yard;
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The “Fruit switcher", on duty 1000, which
spent most of its day switching the perishable shippers, in some instances
switching a shipper as many as three times. This job was responsible for
making up the interchange cuts in the evening.
Originally, the WWT was powered by three
Bachmann GE 70-ton locomotives. Surprisingly good runners initially, they
didn’t make the transition to DCC command very well. All were eventually
replaced by a pair of Walthers SW1’s, which were powerful, smooth running,
and looked pretty damn good in the WWT’s yellow paint with black “scare
stripes.” WWT also rostered a wooden caboose for use on the shoving move
to the Potlatch mill.
"It’s
late summer in 1967. Down at the galvanized steel engine shed on the west
side of the WWT’s four-track yard, mechanics are finishing the paint on
the railroad’s newest locomotive, SW-1 61. The 61.
A sister SW-1, 60, awaits its turn. The two were purchased second-hand
from the EJ&E railroad in Chicago. The WWT's other two
locomotives, GE-70 tonners 70 and 71,were purchased new from General Electric when the wires came down in 1953
(coincidentally the year before Potlatch Forest Industries opened its
Walla Walla mill). While MU-equipped, it’s rare when tonnage necessitates
more than a single locomotive per assignment.
The day starts for the WWT
shortly after sunrise, when the 0630 Mill crew comes on duty. They gather
one locomotive and the railroad’s lone caboose, an ancient outside-braced
wood caboose numbered #011, and make quick work of building the train that
will switch the mill, often already built by the previous day’s Fruit
switcher before tying up. Usually consisting of less than a half-dozen
cars, the Mill crew will leave the yard and pull west to the junction
switch; then, with the conductor protecting the rear of the train on the
caboose platform (the caboose is equipped with a small whistle powered by
the train’s air line), will back the mile and a half to the mill, trading
empties for loads. The mill ships via both UP and NP -- finished lumber is
billed almost 50/50 between the two roads. Most of the mill’s inbound log
loads originate on the Northern Pacific near Moscow, Idaho, but this
traffic is dwindling due to the cost of shipping by rail (a new US 12
highway has made gyppo logger/truckers almost as cheap). The woodchip
traffic, however, is almost entirely Union Pacific, bound for Hinkle and
switching into trains headed for the huge Longview Paper mill near
Longview, Washington. This traffic is hauled mostly in old 50 foot
double-door boxcars--some wood-sided, outside-braced--with the roofs
ripped off them. A couple of the new Thrall hoppers are seen as well.
While the
Mill crew works at the end of the mill spur, the 1000 Fruit switcher is
coming on duty. Their first order of business is to switch out the UP and
NP interchange traffic that may have accrued in the yard (generally,
however, UP delivers their interchange in the morning and the NP in the
afternoon). The cars are lined up in spot-order for the crew’s work west
of town; traffic for the mill is set aside and will be switched in the
evening after returning from the fruit houses. When the fruit is running
hot, some sheds may be switched twice a day; these cars are hurried back
to meet the UP and NP connections. Three produce shippers remain on the west
end of the WWT: Davila Produce (ships the famous Walla Walla sweet onions
and various vegetables, and famous for its “Hot Mary’s Jalapeno Relish”),
the Produce Grower's Co-Op, and Birds-Eye (frozen vegetables).. An oil
distributor is also located along the produce district, which runs curbside of Wallula Avenue. The switcher may also work the Walla Walla/Umatilla Co-op
grain elevator."
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Walla Walla Traction Co.'s logo
promoting "Hometown Service" was used until 1967.
A "room view" of the WWT layout,
looking at the produce district along the room's north wall. This is the
view of the layout visitors get as the enter the room.
Under the layout view of
double-slotted shelf brackets used as support for 18" by 48" domino
modules. Slight upward angle on brackets is compensated by 1/4" wooden
shims.
The "original" WWT track plan, as the
layout existed from September 2000 to August 2001. Click on thumbnail to
view larger image. Artwork by Donovan Furin.
Car storage is provided
by two cheap particle board bathroom cabinets, total capacity of 112 cars.
My son Eliot is licking his chops wondering what car to pull out and strip
of all ladders, brakewheels and stirrups. Normally, a metal rod secured
diagonally across the cabinets keeps him out.
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