Across the tracks to the south of the train station and oasis is downtown Oasis Palms. This business district consists of six all-brick buildings most of which were built in the 1880s by Cameron Smith with bricks sourced from Philander Colton of the Mormon Battalion in San Diego.

The buildings on the west side of Main Street in downtown include a Barbershop/Ice Cream Parlor/Pool Hall mixed-use building, the three-story Hotel California in the middle of the block and a Saloon and package store on the corner.

The statue in the town square was of Wilbur Smith. Wilbur was the eldest son of Cameron and Malika who enlisted in the Union Army. Initially Wilbur served in the 1st California Regiment before being transferred to the 71st Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, where he participated and died heroically in the Battle of Gettysburg.

At the end of the Main Street facing the town square and water fountain is the Oasis Palms Metropolis Theater. The theater was constucted in 1929 and featured a dramatic Beaux-Arts and Art-deco exterior. While the theater was small with only 50 seats, the dramatic facade and exterior lighting created an impressive night-time site to visitors.

The east side of Main Street housed the town water tower, Smith’s Hardware store and the Oasis Market which served triple duty as a market, Post Office and Pharmacy. The Market was the defacto hub of all activity in Oasis Palms.

Directly south of the Oasis Palms train station is the oasis “discovered” by Capt Cameron Smith in 1840. This ancient oasis was well-known to the local indigenous people for a millennia before Smith arrived. Smith was led to the oasis by a local guide who was a strikingly beautiful California Native American from the Hutto-pah Mojave tribe. This guide Malika, would later become his wife and would co-found the town of Oasis Palms with Smith.

This oasis provided 10,000-year-old virgin water to the town that came directly from the Fenner Aquafir located deep in the ground below Oasis Palms until the spring mysteriously ran dry in the 1980s.

 

Whether you arrived to Oasis Palms by train or by automobile the first structure greeting visitors was the Oasis Palms Train Station.  The Oasis Palms train station is one of the older buildings in town. Built in 1898, to serve the Santa Fe Mojave Limited passenger train service it later served the Midnight Limited and the El Capitan.

The Oasis Palms welcome sign on Barco Road was erected in 1945 to promote tourist traffic visiting Oasis Palms from nearby route 66. Tourists were directed from billboards at Amboy and Cadiz to take the 10-minute detour down Barco Road to visit Oasis Palms. The sign was fashioned after the sign was installed at the end of Route 66 at the Santa Monica Pier in Los Angeles in 1941. In reality, the detour to Oasis Palms was more like a 30-minute drive but most tourists were not disappointed with their visit to the Barco Plataue.

The Oasis Palms train station was later expanded to include a second passenger platform where visitors would arrive on the nightly Santa Fe Midnight Limited trains bringing thirsty visitors from Los Angeles. Years later, after WWII the Santa Fe El Capitan service would stop each day on its way from Los Angeles to Chicago.

 

Oasis Palms was just like every other town in mid-century America, advertising clutter was the rule. The next project was to begin decorating the various buildings with the signs that identify the various businesses in Oasis Palms.

The signs were designed in Photoshop based on historic photos (when available). Since the build era is the early 1960s, signs on the older businesses in downtown were weathered more than the signs on the newer businesses up on the hill. The signs were printed on matte finish heavy-weight photo paper and then glued to 1/4″ foam board. The sign edges were then backfilled with lightweight spackle, sanded and painted to match with acrylics. Bamboo skewers and toothpicks were painted and used to act as sign poles.

The Oasis Palms welcome sign is similar to the sign at the base of the Santa Monica Pier. The sign in Santa Monica was unveiled in 1941 and marks the unofficial end of Route 66.

The “Liquor Box” package store was promoted by a sign of Scooters Rye Whisky which had been distilled and bottled in the Oasis Palms caves starting in 1905.

The Oasis Market sign was based on the Balboa Market Sign in Newport Beach, CA the Hardware Store sign was based on the Gardner’s True Value Hardware in Lonepine CA.

 

While the wiring of the block signals and crossing gates continue, here’s a short video testing a Santa FE F3A freight engine (Lionel 6-18128 circa 1996) on the upper loop a.k.a. “Lucky’s Folly” of the Oasis Palms Scenic Railroad.

 

The goal of the kinetic functionality of the Oasis Palms project was to represent the town of Oasis Palms allowing up to three trains to be circumnavigating the town simultaneously. We also wanted to facilitate the manual operation of the trains or to allow a microprocessor to control autonomous operations. To achieve these goals, the layout was built using O-Guage 3-rail Lionel Fastrack using power blocks and isolated rails. The Oasis Palms layout has been wired into seven (7) separate power blocks and twelve (12) isolated rail sections. The isolated rail sections are monitored by JWA Insulated Rail Signal Drivers that feed signals to lighting, crossing gates, and an Optocoupler connected to an Arduino.

O-Guage 3-rail Power Blocks
Since the 1930’s Lionel has used 3-rail AC power to operate its O-Guage trains. In conventional operation, the engines are controlled by powering the track. If you apply power to the track the electricity goes into the locomotive through a center rail pickup and the wheels complete the circuit on the common rail and the train starts moving.  In order to allow operators to run more than one train at a time layouts are typically split into power ‘blocks’.

Power blocks are created by creating gaps in the center rail of 3-rail tracks. You can then power each section individually to control a train to move over the block. Power block A and the train moves until it gets to block B, power block B and the train continues, stop a different train on block C and it will sit while the first train laps it on blocks A&B. Using this functionality with logic allows an operator to control multiple conventional trains. Lionel & MTH trains built since 2010 use Bluetooth and other technology to allow the operator to control the actual train. Track power is left on high (18VAC) and the trains move based on the Bluetooth instructions sent to the engine. This control is great for manual operations but does not allow for the autonomous operation of multiple engines that is desired for this installation.

O-Guage 3-rail Isolated Rail Blocks
Isolated Rail Blocks are unique to O-Guage 3-rail operations. This allows the use of the third (typically the outside) rail to detect the presence of a train in the Isolated Rail Block. When a train is present, the wheels and axle transfer the 18VAC common [-] signal from the inner rail to the outer rail. Monitoring the outer rail allows devices to be switched when a train is present in the block. Items that can be controlled included crossing gates, lights, and signals. Typically when the train is in the block the device is turned on, when the train exits the block the device is turned off.

JWA Insulated Rail Signal Drivers
For the Oasis Palms layout, Isolated Rail Blocks are also used to communicate the presence of a train to the microprocessor. We are using an isolated outside rail block that is being monitored by a JWA Insulated Rail Signal Driver to communicate with an Optocoupler connected to an Arduino microprocessor. For gate crossings, we are using an isolated outside rail ‘sub-block’ with a JWA Insulated Rail Signal Driver to tell our Optocoupler and Arduino when a train is at a gate crossing.

Custom DC Relays
The challenge with using sub-blocks is to pass the block signal from the block to the sub-block and then back to the block when the crossing is cleared. The solution to this challenge was to use “DC and a Diode” to power our block signals and crossing gates. The JWA Insulated Rail Signal Driver is monitoring the AC current on the isolated outside rail block and they operate relays that are turning on and off DC power to a Optocoupler feeding the Arduino, the block signals, and the crossing gates.

Optocoupler and Arduino
The Al-zard Optocoupler takes the 12VDC ground signal from the relay and sends an Arduino-friendly 5VDC hi/lo signal to the Arduino. The Arduino uses this information to determine what blocks are occupied with trains and then applies logic to power specific blocks and switches to release and hold trains around the layout. The Arduino is programmed with multiple scenarios to change the sequence of the trains to keep the activity interesting to the casual observer.

The kinetic element of this installation is the electro-mechanical railroad operation, city, and cavern lighting designed to depict Oasis Palms circa 1963. The layout is wired to allow conventional toy-train manual operation and automated operation using an Arduino.

Power (yellow), common (white), isolation (green), and gate isolation (purple) rail drops soldered to the back of the Fastrack is fed through 1/4″ holes drilled in the foam deck every 18-24″.

JWA Insulated Rail Signal Drivers are wired to the isolated rails, they in turn are wired to relay boards that operate the block signals, and gates, and pass block detection signals to the Arduino which is programmed to continuously operate multiple trains simultaneously without intervention.

All of the wiring terminates at a drop-down panel that is accessible from the side of the layout.

For ease of installation and switch automation, Lionel Fastrack was selected. The track was procured and laid out based on the SCARM plans. The track was dry fit to make sure everything connected properly. After a train was able to successfully circumnavigate the town, the cave location, and the scenic flyover all the track was removed to prepare it for permanent installation on the layout.

The layout is split into seven (7) operating blocks to allow the conventional operation of up to three trains simultaneously. This will allow operators to demonstrate the Barco Mining Company hand carts that ran between 1885 and 1899, the Santa Fe passenger trains that visited Oasis Palms between 1897 and 1967, and the Oasis Palm Scenic Railroad that ran between 1952 and 1979.

The Fastrack was prepared for conventional block operation by removing the cross-over straps (to isolate the third rail) and removing select joiner pins in the center rails and isolation rails to allow for operations of the blocks and crossing and block signals. For long-term reliability, each piece of Fastrack was soldered together with jumper wires on the center rail and inner common rail to reliably deliver power to the trains. Power (yellow), common (white), isolation (green), and gate isolation (purple) rail drops were soldered to the back of the Fastrack every 18-24″ and fed through 1/4″ holes drilled in the foam deck.

The track was then weathered with a 10% flat black wash and had brown paint applied to “rust” the sides of the rails. To keep everything in place while wiring the underside of the layout, all the track was temporarily attached to the foam using 2″ long #8 screws. The deck was then turned on its side to facilitate wiring the electro-mechanical system consisting of seven (7) blocks with signals at each end, six (6) switches, and five (5) crossing gates.

To create the terrain that surrounds Oasis Palms, the same pink foam used for the deck was stacked and carved with hot wire tools and razor knives to approximate the plateau terrain. For space savings, the outer loop was compressed closer to town and it uses an exaggerated 4-degree incline to get the train from the town level to the scenic railroad level which was 30′ feet in the air. The left side of the deck has the caverns that housed the Barco Mining operation.

Volunteers built out Buttes and Mesas that were added to visually anchor the corners of the model. Lightweight spackle that has the consistency of whipped cream was used to fill gaps and add texture to the rock formations. This was then all painted with a base layer of dirt brown and multiple layers of accent paint to approximate the chocolate brown hue of the Ship Mountains of the Mojave Desert.

To achieve the effect of the Mojave hill terrain the paint steps included

1. Base coat of Dirt Brown,
2. Black wash using 10% flat Black paint+90% water,
3. Soft brush application of Dirt Brown on mid & high areas,
4. Dry brush application of Raw Sienna in the erosion crevises (desert varnish effect),
5. Dry brush application of 75% Dirt Brown + 25% Titanium White on high areas,
6. Dry brush application of Titanium White on the edges of rocks.

 

 

Once the table layout in SCARM was complete, the final size of the ‘ping-pong’ table grew 6″ wider. The extra width allowed room for the incline to the mesa that sits above the Barco mine tunnel. The table was built using simple 1×3″ L-beam construction and to keep the table as light as possible the deck consists of two sheets thickness of 1″ pink insulation foam.

For our L-Beam construction, we edge glued a 1×3 to another 1×3 and then fastened them together with Kreg 1-1/4″ pocket screws. For our frame, we used pine boards that were ripped down to 1x3s. But 3/4 plywood would have also been a good choice for the frame.

The pocket screws do a great job to secure the beam edges together making the frame stable and sturdy while keeping the framework as light as possible. After assembly, the frame and bottom of the foam deck were painted flat black.

The base of the table was designed to be a pedestal on casters but a temporary pedestal was repurposed from another project. The 2″ overall thickness of the pink insulation board provides plenty of stability while keeping the weight of the 5.5′ x 9′ table to a minimum.