Another B&V Out There?

Doing some online research, I discovered a reference to another model Bakersfield & Ventura. This one was a track plan published in the Model Railroad Planning annual in 2016. I immediately ordered a copy, which I received yesterday.

The other B&V was designed by Bryon Henderson, and built by Larry Kedes. The concept is similar to the John Armstrong San Joaquin & Southwestern track plan in his book, 20 Custom Designed Track Plans. It assumes a route from Ventura, following the real-life Ojai branch of the Southern Pacific, then continuing north along the route of Highway 33 -- different routing than what I am assuming based on my research. Because the owner wanted connections with the Union Pacific as well as AT&SF and SP, the concept also assumes that UP acquired an early, real-life shortline that ran from LA to Santa Monica, then also gained control of the Hueneme, Malibu and Port Los Angeles through Malibu to Oxnard.

The track plan is focused on the coastal portion of the route, from Ventura to Port Hueneme, and north only as far as Ojai. So it's really representing an entirely different part of the B&V than my version.

Sadly, it appears that Larry Kedes has since passed away. Sorry I never got a chance to meet him and see his version of the B&V.

Comments

B&V Harbor Scene

I've been assuming that if and when I build another B&V layout, it would represent the mountain portion of the line. But in the real world, what little track the railroad built was down on the coast around Oxnard, Port Hueneme, and the southern part of what is now Camarillo. I've been putting together some cardstock buildings from Clever Models for my Lockwood & San Emigdio On30 mini-layout. The ones I've selected for that project have been mostly small wood and corrugated metal structures typical of a remote mining area, but Clever also makes a lot of buildings more appropriate to urban, industrial or harbor areas -- in fact, they sell a collection of six or eight buildings called "The Waterfront" that includes some larger industrial or warehouse-type buildings and a small coastal freighter. Which got me thinking, why not do a shelf layout of the B&V at Hueneme harbor? Here's a preliminary track plan, a "flipped" version of the classic G...

Side-Tracked

The other day, as my wife and I were rearranging some furniture in the living room, she made the comment that it might be fun to put a small train display on a side table where she normally displays some potted plants. She had in mind my Lockwood & San Emigdio On30 diorama, which she's watched me work on the last several months -- but of course, the suggestion got me thinking in other directions. Since the purpose, at least in part, will be to entertain the grandkids when they come to visit, it makes sense to have a continuous lap. Since the tabletop is only about 25 by 54 inches, that limits me to a 10 or maybe 11 inch radius, a bit more if I overlap the tabletop a few inches. I'm thinking On30, so that's too tight for any of the equipment I currently own. There are some people doing wonderful work in On30 building mini- and micro-layouts with these kinds of curves and smaller, using the Bachmann 0-4-0 and 0-4-2 Porters, Davenport gas-mechanicals, and other small switc...

I haven't had much to say here for some time, as I have been building a couple of small On30 layouts, but I've recently been thinking about jumping back into H.O. with a Bakersfield & Ventura project. I don't know that I will ever have the space to build the largish B&V layout I posted about a couple of years ago, but I could probably manage a 4 x 8 representing a small piece of it. I started looking at Iain Rice's Lilliput Logger plan, with the idea of building a version in On30, but Rice originally designed it for H.O. My slightly modified plan would work either way, with nothing more than changing the track spacing on the sidings. With H.O., I could also lower the elevation at Stauffer a little, to ease the grade a bit. In this draft, haven't even bothered to change the station names. The On30 version represented a narrow gauge line connecting to the standard-gauge B&V in Lockwood Valley, somewhere around the present-day Grade Valley Road, and running...

Bakersfield & Ventura Model Railroad

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