P&SR: Santa Rosa 44 Fourth St. Depot Addendum

 I found the scan of the 1928 layout of the P&SR depot at 44 Fourth St in downtown Santa Rosa. The scan came from a Street Railway Journal, but I'm afraid I've lost the reference at this time.

And here for quick comparison is my plan to make it fit the space I had.

 

I tidied up the rough and ready 180 degree picture I presented before, adding the backdrop elements that were missing. Overall, not a bad interpretation, though the trackwork will require some home built crossings and several of the turnouts have to overlapped to fit into the prototype arrangement.
  
Unfortunately, like the real thing, this project has been abandoned into the mists of time.

Petaluma & Santa Rosa Railroad Today

 
I have been very lucky in my life to have been able to go to America and visit friends and family on several occasions. On one such trip to the West coast I took the opportunity to drive around in our hire car and visited places where there were signs of the Petaluma & Santa Rosa former existence. Also taking some time to drive to the Western Railroad Museum in Solano county to see their restored P&SR car number 63 running on the track they have there.

I can't recommend the museum too highly. Nice people, who were enthusiastic and welcoming. I was also able to access their research materials too.

This is the front of the Holman car that the P&SR used that survived to be restored. As you can see it is painted a bright yellow, and I understand from talking to people at the museum that the colours are based on what they found when scraping the old paint back to bare wood.

Front three quarters showing the vestibule end.

Now showing the combine baggage door end.

Provenance doesn't come any more solid than this builder's plate in the floor of the car.

The interior is nice and airy and one has got to love all that wood paneling. No plastics or vinyl overlays here.

No doubt Health & Safety would have a hissy fit today at the lack of ergonomics and safety features for the driver, but everything else is just there because it has a function. Spartan simplicity

One last shot of the driver preparing to drive away after changing ends. We stopped at the end of the line and got out, took our photographs before making our way back on a rather pleasant day reliving past interurban glories.

During our trip, mooching around and doing the usual tourist things, like visiting the Redwoods etc. and we ended up at Russian River, which is at the top end of the Bodeiga Bay area. I think we drove pass Bohemian Grove when we found these two box cars.

I took pictures and thought nothing more about the subject until I found a reference to these freight cars that said that they are actually old P&SR boxcars in the Northwestern Pacific Railroad Historical Societies magazine Headlight.

So how about that for serendipity?

   

P&SR: Santa Rosa 44 Fourth St. Depot

Pale yellow represents the baseboard, grey roads, building are in brown, the orange square is an intrusion into the room, the track is red/black, and blue lines represent the backdrop.

I drew up this plan the layout as strictly a home railway to please me.

If our world is like a stage, then the size of the stage sets certain limitations of  the scope of the production. Playing to the strengths and diverting attention from the weaknesses of any scheme will produce a more satisfying result. If you don't do this, I think you will find that the effort of making the layout will result in a less than enjoyable outcome.

Not living in America, I didn't want to fall into the trap of building a model of other people's models, thereby ending up making a pastiche of the real thing. So this layout was designed using prototype drawings of the track arrangements to arrive at the final track plan.  

Prototype Considerations

Choosing a time period to model that P&SR is critical to modelling the railroad, since the changing appearance of the overhead lines has an impact on the appearance of the right of way.

If passenger traffic is your forté then modelling around 1912 would maximize the opportunities to model this side of the operations as this was the era of the "Great White Cars". After 1918 the line was renamed and underwent some investment in new locomotives, and the overhead was upgraded from simple pole to catenary. Passenger service starts declining in the 1920s and the "Depression" affects revenue traffic in general. In 1932 the passenger service was stopped and track arrangements changed in light of the this service abandonment. The period between 1933 and 1941 is arguably the high period of electric freight operations, and has the advantage that there were no two identical locomotives on the line. From 1947 the P&SR became a diesel powered railroad using small General Electric diesels.

The site at Santa Rosa stretched over a length of approximately 1050 feet, or 12 foot 3 inches in HO scale. The length of the space available for my use is 11 foot 10 inches by approximately 2 foot, so a good match. However, the left-end of the layout would be compromised if built as above, because of the need to curve the tracks through 90 degrees to reach the fiddle yard/staging tracks.

I'm limited to a through point-to-point scheme, because of the space available. However, Santa Rosa is a small town depot, so this limitation is less problematical. Also, on the P&SR, operations and train lengths were very ad hoc in nature. From reading around the subject it seems to me that the track had to serve many functions, and as far as I can tell there was no formal yard on the system. Though I can see how track at Petaluma and Sebastopol could be used as such.

However, on reflection, if I were to build this layout now I'm pretty sure I would rotate the whole layout by 180°, like this.

  Again pale yellow represents the baseboard, grey roads, building are in brown, 

the orange square is an intrusion into the room, and the track is red.

The key to interesting operation is to give those viewing the model railway the feeling that there is a sense of purpose to the whole affair, and in my mind, any layout that doesn't have purposeful operation undermines the whole point of building it. Therefore this plan for a layout that has 6 industry points and an interchange, and since it replicates the prototype fairly closely it will at least have the same sort of problems the prototype had. I have some knowledge on the P&SR's operational pattern, which suggests that I shall be choosing the Gravenstein apple-growing season, since this more than doubles the number of trains that are run each day.

Conclusion

When I started out I had no idea what the tracks for the P&SR at Santa Rosa looked like. My first couple of plans were purely free-lanced speculations based on wishes to see a junction and my over-heated imaginations. Needless to say when I got some information about the area I started afresh.

Though I started building this layout, I ended up abandoning the project for reasons that quite frankly don't make a lot of sense to me now, though at the time they seemed reasonable. The baseboards were used as the basis for my P4 World's End: West London Joint Railway.

The reason for posting this is to serve as a reminder of why I liked the P&SR, and to publish some small part of the research I did on this project. As such expect more about my favourite West Coast traction line, especially as I have just ordered a new book that came out in 2009, which I missed the announcement of. A review will be written at some point.

Petaluma & Santa Rosa Railroad

Illustration from Street Railway Journal showing a map of the P&SR route.

Some Prototype Background

The Petaluma & Santa Rosa Railway began life in 1903, as a small electric interurban line connecting its namesake towns via Sebastopol, in Sonoma County California. The P&SR was approximately 31 miles long and it served the farms and local industries, of what was at the time, a rural area.

The P&SR had an interesting corporate history, being renamed the Petaluma & Santa Rosa Railroad in 1918, because it was unable to honour its financial commitments. After a prolonged period of ICC investigations instituted by the Western Pacific, and control over the P&SR was gained by the Northwestern Pacific Railroad in 1932. The new management promptly abandoned passenger service and concentrated on the electric powered freight. After World War 2 the overhead plant was considered so worn out that it needed replacement and the P&SR was dieselized in 1947. This was done using a pair of GE 44 tonners. Service declined during the late fifties and the remnants of the P&SR were finally abandoned in 1984.

The three main towns that the P&SR served were Petaluma, Sebastopol and Santa Rosa. Petaluma was the home of the system and it has some very modelgenic wharfside trackage, a steamboat connection and some major industries. Sebastopol was in the middle and this was where the mainline and branchline split. The former going North to Forestville, while the latter went East to Santa Rosa.

Connecting Railroads

Prior to the consolidation of the steam railroads the P&SR planned to play off its competitors, one against the other. However, due to the "Great Earthquake" of 1906 and the subsequent amalgamation of these steam powered competitors this didn't work out. For approximately the first 25 years there were only two connecting and competing steam railroads, which were:

Northwestern Pacific

Formed 1907 by SP & ATSF, it became a wholly owned SP subsidiary from 1929. Went through Santa Rosa via Petaluma from the South and Fulton from the North. A branchline also went to Sebastopol, which means that the NWP had three interchanges with the P&SR.

Southern Pacific

Ran into Santa Rosa from Sonoma on the "Valley of the Moon" branch from 1888 to 1934. After the SP depot was burnt down the interchange to the NWP was moved to Schellville. While the P&SR tracks crossed in Santa Rosa there was no direct interchange between the two lines.

After the depot burnt down and the SP abandoned the line, traders could used the NWP or P&SR to ship there merchandise. By this time though both were owned by the SP, so it was a bit of a "Hobson's" choice really.

Conclusion

The P&SR had several nicknames, ranging from the "juice line", "juicer" to the "poor & stingy". This should give you some idea of the change of attitude towards the company and the level of investment in the railroad's infrastructure. I became interested in this quirky little line through family connections to the area. Remember though, traction is juicy! Finally, there was incident that made P&SR and Santa Rosa famous, the "Battle of Sebastopol Avenue" in 1904. 

References

Borden, S. T., 1960. Petaluma & Santa Rosa Railroad. San Mateo, CA. The Western Railroader.
Demoro, H. W., 1986. California's Electric Railways. Glendale, CA. Interurban Press Special 100.
Demoro, H. W., Sappers, V. J., 1992. Rails to San Francisco Bay. New York. Quadrant Press.
Dickinson, A. Bray. , et al 1967. Narrow Gauge to the Redwoods. Corona del Mar. Trans-Anglo Books.
Duke, D., 2000. Electric Railways Around San Fransisco Bay. San Marino. Golden West Books
Gross, J., 1987. The Trolley and Interurban Directory. New York. Gross Publications.
Fickworth, A. A., 1992. California Railroads. San Marino. Golden West Books.
Heig, A., 1987. History of Petaluma - A California River Town. Scottwall Associates.
Hilton & Due's, 1960. The Electric Interurban Railways in America. Stanford University Press.
Kneiss, G. H., 1956. Redwood Railways. Berkeley, CA. Howell-North.
LeBaron, G., Mitchell, J., 1993. Santa Rosa: a 20th Century town. Santa Rosa, CA. Historia, Ltd.
Stindt, F. A. , Dunscomb, G. L., 1964. NWP Railroad, Vol. 1. Kelseyville, CA. Fred A. Stindt.
Stindt, F. A., 1985. NWP Railroad, Vol. 2: 1964 to 1984. Kelseyville, CA. Fred A. Stindt.
Trimble, P. C., 1977. Interurban Railways of the Bay Area. Fresno, CA. Valley Publishers.
Wilson, S. Sonoma County. The River of Time. Sun Valley CA. American Historical Press.