Signal Hill and Brea Canyon Railway

Four years to build and four days to tear down.

I built my "dream" HO layout between 1987 and 1991 B.C. (before children.) It occupied a large family room in a house I was renting in SoCal. 15X16 feet, 17 powered turnouts, hard shell scenery, two throttle cab control, and as I learned, just about all of the model railroad that one person could possibly build and maintain. When I was in school, instead of paying attention to the teacher I would draw track plans for my adult days with 18 stall roundhouses, classification yards with 30 tracks, miles and scale miles of mainline, narrow gauge and interurban lines! In other words, a club layout. Ah youth! A job loss and a move forced me to tear down the layout. If the railroad still existed today, it would still not be finished. As you can see from the photos, I was just beginning to add scenery details, and trees. 

The Signal Hill & Brea Canyon used the time honored conceit of the connecting railroad over which real prototype railroads operated on fictional trackage that overlay real railroad routes. The story was, that an oil magnate of the Twenties was fed up with being gouged on his oil shipments, and built a railroad to connect with a another fictional railroad. This line utilized Brea Canyon to reach the Pomona Valley. The line was later sold to SP, UP, and SantaFe, and operated as joint operation. Ta Da! The period was the fifties, although the plan was to slowly convert it to about 1971, and run big second generation power.

An  SP freight climbs up from the hidden trackage on a  steep grade. The retaining wall and the roadbed supporting the curved switch junction, turned out to be quite the civil engineering project.

Signal Hill Yard, all locomotives shown were custom painted and decaled  by SH&BC shops.

Brea Canyon, the stock pen is a Campbell kit. The station is a kit of the SP Sparks Nev. Station.

The grade crossing at Brea Canyon.

The trestle was another Campbell Kit.

The one signal that I installed at the other entrance to the hidden trackage.

The End.
The marker lights were powered by a single AA battery which took up the whole interior of the caboose.