Page 14 - September October 2017

Single-tank SD7s SP 5288 and 5289 served as helpers at San Luis Obispo in 1953; here they are a year later, switching the industries at Quisling
limit myself to posing still-shots for now. It will be a while longer before I can see a Cab Forward at home, running with a decent number of cars behind it, or watch (and listen!) as Trains #98 & #99, The Coast Daylight, race through Guadalupe non-stop, in a long streak of orange and red.
My favourite Coast Line train is the venerable Coast Mail, Trains #71 and #72. It stopped at just about all the depots between San Francisco and Los Angeles, northward and southward, every day, including at Guadalupe. Some- times, the big steam power on the train would switch cars too, and there will be a recurring option on my new layout to detach a 4-8-2 or 4-8-4 to pick up yet another express reefer-load of delicately-packed strawberries. Be still, my beating heart.
Brian Moore
One of the main features will be a reasonably accurate if condensed version of the depot and tracks at Guadalupe CA, where the SP inter- changed with the Santa Maria Valley RR short line, and today’s UP still does. For decades, the main freight train that switched Guadalupe was the Guadalupe Local that ran from San Luis Obispo. Since there were no turning facilities at Guadalupe, most engineers chose to run there tender-first, south out of SLO, invariably with a 2-8-0. The small SMVRR steam locomotives also brought interchange cars into Guadalupe yard, tender-first. I can happily replicate both trains
at Quisling, with similar tender-first arrivals and smokebox-first departures.
With only a small fiddle yard at home, it’s not pos- sible to run the type of bigger trains that operated through Guadalupe at Quisling, so I’ll have to
Finally, here’s two more of the Southern Pacific’s heavy steam locomotives that will share duties on the Coast Mail: “defrocked” GS-4 #4434 and GS-1 #4405
SD&AE 103 meets up with another long-term-allocated Coast Line locomotive, SP 2829
14 ROUNDHOUSE - October 2017