Back in 2017, after the last Minn-Rail op session of the weekend, I took time away from the layout in order to design & build a proper Wi-Fi throttle. That project lasted until earlier this year.
I’ve since returned to working on the railroad itself. Starting with a general cleanup (as flat surfaces tend to accumulate stuff), and then I embarked on a track laying campaign.
Laying track over the summertime here in my basement isn’t a good idea — it’s not terribly well humidity controlled, and I get some significant expansion/contraction cycles. The inner track really buckled badly – I get that prototypes sometimes have bad track, but this was ridiculous. So that had to be pulled up and replaced.
Next I started working on the pier tracks, which really are the entire reason the railroad exists. Simple logistics dictate that I can’t have as many as I’d like, nor can they hold as many cars as I’d like, but I can fit in 9 pier tracks, each holding two car spots. I think that’s enough to get a good feel for what their operational interest is.
This entailed finally building the 3rd track along the Embarcadero, and setting up all of the switches to cross the street and then head into a pier bulkhead. Those bulkheads are THE defining visual characteristic of the San Francisco waterfront. All of the piers north of the Ferry Building shared a common appearance, although some have been modified and modernized over the years.
This was the result of a couple of hours searching for a good picture of a pier bulkhead, figuring out the proper scale, and then printing out a copy. I’m pretty happy with the general sizing & appearance, and now I need to edit in the proper pier numbers (21 through 33) and build up a more complete structure instead just the simple building front.
The rightmost (rearmost) track is the one that’s mostly new. There’s now an additional runaround track for the North job. At the far end of this picture is the set of curved tracks pictured above, now much less wonky and having stayed that way through several seasonal changes. Those two tracks head over to Pier 43, where the car floats from the Santa Fe and Western Pacific dock. The ATSF float also services the Northwestern Pacific float dock in Tiburon.
The three mainline tracks in the foreground of this photo will curve around towards the left, and head to the South end of the railroad, terminating at a set of tracks at King Street, where the Southern Pacific leaves us a bunch of cars, and we can drop our interchange cars for the SP as well.
I’ll update soon with some pictures after the construction was completed.
Building the State Belt Railway 