SoundTraxx decoders in all of my locomotives. Finally, 17 years
after starting construction of the layout, things were finally
in place to begin duplicating the prototype operations of the
Yosemite Valley Railroad.
In order to model the trains that actually operated on your pro-
totype, you first need to understand what trains were typically
run in the period being modeled. The Yosemite Valley Railroad
was operated under TT&TO (timetable and train orders) and
the first place to look for that information is an employee time-
table for the period. Timetables are not difficult to find at rail-
roadiana shows, on eBay, and so on.
Getting Real column - 3
The YV timetable covering August 1939 listed two daily first
class passenger trains and two daily (except Sundays) second
class freight trains.
The eastbound (toward Yosemite National Park) No. 2 pas-
senger train departed the Southern Pacific RR interchange in
Merced each day at 5:30 a.m. after picking up any Pullmans
destined for Yosemite National Park. It arrived at the end of the
line, at the western boundary of Yosemite National Park, at 9:40
a.m. It then departed El Portal as the westbound No. 3 at 7 p.m.,
arriving back at the SP depot at 10:45 p.m. Figure 1 shows the
general route of the prototype fromMerced to El Portal.
The two scheduled freight trains were the No. 8 and No. 9,
actually daily log trains which ran between Merced Falls at MP
24 (milepost) and Incline at MP 73. Merced Falls was the loca-
tion of the Yosemite Sugar Pine Lumber Company sawmill,
drying yards, and planing mill. Incline was the lower end of an
8,600-foot-long logging incline down which the YSPLCo low-
ered loaded log cars from the cutting areas back in the woods.
The crew of the No. 8 went on duty at 7 a.m., pulled out the
empty log cars, ran around them and added a caboose before
departing at 8 a.m. They arrived at Incline at 11:10 a.m.,
dropped the empties and grabbed their caboose, running
light for the nearby wye at Moss Canyon. Upon turning, they
became the No. 9 and returned to Incline to pick up the loaded
log cars there. They departed at 12:10 p.m. and were back at
Merced Falls at 3:50 p.m.
I share this level of detail for these two trains so that you can
better understand them. What I realized, once I studied the pro-
totype YV timetable, is that the passenger train passed Merced
Falls at MP 24 even before the log train crew went on duty. That
passenger train then laid over at El Portal and departed back
toward Merced 3 hours after the log train crew had tied up. So,
neither train had any meets while out on the line.
1a-1b. This map of the Yosemite Valley Railroad, from
a public timetable, shows its connections with the
Southern Pacific and AT&SF railroads in Merced and
the major towns and places along the 78-mile route
from Merced to El Portal, at the western boundary of
Yosemite National Park.
1b
MRH-Nov 2014
