A look at the Shasta Pacific/South Fork Timber Railroad this morning before guest arrive for our open run day today.
A couple shots of the Redding Yards and town
The town of Canyon Creek
Smith Camp, mountain resort
Camp Six logging camp
The mountain town of Hyampom
The community of Bayside
The mill and yards of the South Fork Timber Co.
The new town of Fields Landing
Lucky guests that get to witness and open house like that!
Eric
Thanks Eric,
A lot of our guests seem to have very little interest in the trains but really enjoy the scenery and details and connections to local history.
It’s interesting what trips folks fancy, Rick. We’ve had visitors with interests ranging from the trains to the plants to the buildings. We’ve been luck that local clubs had tours on some of our travels, and we observed the same thing, both amongst other visitors and amongst ourselves!
Anyway, it was joy to visit remotely via your pictures!
Eric
A new building for Fields Landing.
We are talking about a Purity Super Market.
The Purity grocery stores were established in the San Francisco area in the mid 1920’s by the Nevin family and in a few years became a leader in the retail grocery business thru-out Northern and Central California. The stores were some of the first with everything under one roof, including meat, canned goods, fruit, vegetables, and other household items. The stores also incorporated new practices such as pricing every item in the store, and having multiple checkout stands.
As an aside; During the Depression, the controlling interest of the Purity Grocery store chain belonged to W.G. Irwin. Irwin was also a partner with Cleese Cummings in the Cummings Engine Company. Cummings, at that time, was trying to think of a way to save the engine company from failure. Cummings came up with the idea of putting their engines in the trucks used to deliver goods to the Purity stores throughout California. He thought if he could show how good the engines were, it would help business. The trucks performed well, and the overland trucking industry was born.
1933 Kenworth Cummins diesel—The first American production diesel truck and with the first vertical exhaust stack.
Stay tuned, more to come
Well I can tell ya’ right now you ain’t got enough parking!
You need to fix that first !
Intentionally or not Dave, you hit the nail on the head. Apparently Purity Stores were well known for their meager or stingy parking allotments for their customers, preferring they use city street parking.If nothing else it sure cut site development costs.
Wow, No it wasn’t intentional. However being in a midsized town that has seen many different grocery stores within it’s borough limits over the past 100 yrs that all pretty much required city street parking so I understand. However that is why you live in a town so you can walk to them?
Some further background information.
As the business became more successful after the Depression they wanted to present a stylish and unified presence to their customers so they hired the Architect Harry Weese to design a “Modern Grocery Store” for them. The company wanted something simple yet stylish to show the customer that the business was not constructing an expensively ornate building and passing the cost on to the consumer. At the same time the building needed to function as a grocery store and entice the consumer to shop.
Now Harry Weese was no slouch as an Architect, he had designed the Washington D.C. Metro Station among other notable structures. He came up with an idea to use what they call the Art Moderne style. This style represents the movement away from pre-Depression designs that favored ornamentation. Stylistic elements of Art Moderne emphasize curving forms, long lines, metal windows, and smooth wall finishes.
Weese’s design used a barrel truss roof system that we equate to a Quonset Hut, although his design pre-dated the military Quonset hut by several years. This design became the signature of Purity Stores from that point forward to this day.
The elliptic arch design can be seen in this banner ad, I think that this was the original Weese design for the stores
This banner ad shows a modified elliptic arch with “shoulders”, this ad is dated 1946 thus indicating a more “modern” design or upgrade to the store design. Perhaps this change allowed for more usable floor space and additional natural lighting but who knows?
Rick,
Even though I’m no longer active in the hobby I do check in here. What you have done amazes me. You must work 24 hours a day on it.
Paul, long time no hear, glad you still stop by
Thanks for the comment, coming from you that’s a real compliment.
24 hours a day, no, not quite. Although I sometimes think my wife feels that way about it 
Clessie Cummins, no “g” at end of last name. Good engines , less expensive and lighter than comparable Caterpillar , and well established before Cat even entered the market. A Cummins was in the last truck I owned, and it was a real love hate relationship. Sorry don’t want to hijack the thread
Pete, Of course you are correct, my mistake in retyping the information.
It is Cummins not Cummings.
Folks;
While writing concerning Cummins diesel engines, when I worked for Mack Trucks their engine catalog stated that their horizontal mount marine engines were also adaptable for Budd RDC cars.
Regards, David Meashey
Whats a catalog?
David;
In the represented case, it was an actual physical softcover book showing the various engine models, their proposed uses, and their specs & maybe their retail cost. Since one of my responsibilities as a technical writer included off highway vehicles (mostly very BIG dump trucks that would destroy a paved road) I was gifted the catalog.
Regards, David Meashey
Are ya ready for more background? If you lived in northern/central California in the 30’s through the 60’s this might be a little interesting but for the rest of you probably not so much 
The stores were a landmark business in many small towns up and down Northern and Central California. The Nevin Family liquidated the chain in 1972 and retired to a vineyard business in Northern California. Though the business is gone, all except one lone store in Fort Bragg, CA, that is not in the traditional building, many of the iconic buildings still remain scattered throughout many small towns in the state. These buildings are housing various new businesses but you can always tell they were a Purity Market by the distinct roof lines of the structure.
A few current pictures of former Purity Market buildings, remodeled and repurposed but still scream Purity Store building.
On a personal note I remember well as a small boy coming to town with Mom to shop for the monthly grocery’s at the Purity Store in Arcata, CA. and my unabashed amazement at all that was on display in this wonderland of more food then I had ever seen in my then 5 year old life. But, keeping things in perspective remember this was all well over 70 years ago.
All of the preceding information is just a long winded way of bringing us to the next build project for the town of Fields Landing on the Shasta Pacific Railroad. Hopefully we will get started on the building soon.
OK, getting started on the build. Will probably be a little strung out as we will be traveling 17 out of the next 24 days. Two class reunions and an Alaska Cruise, really looking forward to all three events.
Anyway here we go.
The designated space I have to work with, 14 by 24 inches. It seems like a lot of area but when I started trying to cram this building into the footprint things became a little tight.
I had decided to go with the more modern arch with “shoulders” as the basic design. Where I ran into problems was trying to design an elliptical arch that looked correct in the narrow width I had available. The upper area just looked too narrow so I opted for an concentric arch to give the impression of the correct look. I know, cheating again. I cut the face “beams” from ply and the main walls from 1/4 inch PVC board.
I laid out the concrete block or CMU, to be correct, lines with pencil and then embossed them using a box cutter blade. First the sharp edge then backwards to broaden the lines.
Maybe more soon.
Finally a little more progress.
Gluing up the walls after scribing all the block lines and gluing the Precision Scale tin roof sheets to the front and back arched areas. Trying to find a glue to fasten Styrene to PVC over a large surface is not easy. I ended up using a spray contact cement, used very lightly and let dry to a full tac so it wouldn’t distort the Styrene.
The wood arches were glued and screwed to the PVC wall panel using E-6000 and screws, of course. The table saw bed workes well for this because it is perfectly flat. I always use wax paper or tin foil under the glue joints to keep the PVC cement off the saw table.
The wood arches were coated and filled with putty and sanded out smooth to try to match the original pictures, the prototype were probably coated with plaster.
More later
Thanks for taking a look.
Rick where do you source the pvc for the walls? Why didn’t you use it for the ach too?
