Didnt get a whole let accomplished this weekend, but I did get some plywood at Lowe’s for the helix and lower staging yard. I did get to start laying turnouts for the staging yard, I stuck with a simple straight ladder design as a compound ladder wasn’t going to benefit the space in this particular location. 4 turnouts with feeders down, 6 to go. I also cut a template for the helix sub road bed and started tracing those out. These are 1/8th pieces, so I’ll need 20 pieces for 2-1/2 revolutions around the helix up to the lower level. 36” radius, single track at 2% grade planned. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Thanks, Vince. My goal is to have the staging yard done by the end of the holidays. I have about 500 cars in totes I’d like to get on rails again. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
A great goal! I have way too much equipment to fit on my layout. I'm holding out for that retirement basement layout...
Two staging tracks done, but I couldn’t help myself, another 30 cars out of storage. I even sorted the card cards and waybills. Each staging track will be able to hold an average of 20 cars, with a pair of locomotives and a caboose. Coal trains up to 24 cars. Based on an average of 45’ car lengths. Anyhow, it’s Christmas Eve so that’s enough work for today. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
On the evening of Christmas day, we returned home from a family gathering earlier in the day to find the house cooler inside than we expected. Temperatures dropped into the single digits that night. The next morning, with the heat turned up to 75, it was a chilly 58 degrees inside. I managed to get a HVAC tech to have a look later on Saturday and confirmed my suspicions. Auxiliary heater coils failed, so we only have the external heat pump running. System is 25 years old, so we’re going to address some other indirectly related issues and have the entire system replaced in a couple months. (Heat pump does well enough when it is above 20 degrees outside). Anyhow, the new air handler in the basement needs to be placed where I was finishing a room for my wife’s hobbies. So I let her have part of the planned layout space, and I’ll take over that was originally her space and just railroad right on by the new blower unit when we have that done........ so all construction on the layout has come to a screeching halt..... again. Back to track planning stage again. I’m going to keep lower staging where it is, so my goal is to finish it. Beyond that is at a standstill until at least March. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
That is never good. At least you still have some heat! Hopefully the fix and change of space will turn out okay.
It is to an extent. This previous (and original) owners of this house built an addition on in the mid 90’s and put in the current HVAC system. However, the installer messed up the ductwork going into the addition by using 3 - 90 degree angles to reach the addition. So our master bedroom, master bath and 5th bedroom/sitting area/ study get virtually no air flow through the duct. Cold in the winter, warm in the summer. Relocating the air handler will eliminate one 90, and then the remaining 90 degree angles will be replaced with curved sections. Supposed to help the airflow problems in the addition. So the end result should be a significant net positive, minus the $6500 price tag. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Reconfiguration underway. I removed the walls around the layout side of the current 25-year old air handler unit. The new unit will be placed beyond where the current unit is in the next room. I’m going to remove the stud wall next to the unit as well as the paneled wall to the right. All of this will open up for the layout. I already have a semi-refined draft track plan on paper, now working on getting it on XTrackCAD and fine tuning it. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
The first section of the lower staging yard is substantially complete. With the straight ladder arrangement of the switches, the other end of the staging yard essentially mirrors the lead end. The main track is on the left, which will likely go through the non-load bearing block wall into the 7’ x 7.5’ bunker for another 10 tracks of staging, 19 in all. Each track is designed to hold 2 locomotives, 20 cars and a caboose, about a total of 12’ long each. Contemplating extending tracks 1-6 as far as I can, potentially allowing southbound traffic from Charleston to exceed 20 cars if needed. (Yard operators / dispatcher would have to check availability of staging prior to assignment of train). Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Last night and this morning, I sorted and paired waybills with their car cards for the 250 cars stored in lower staging. Waybills were made myself in Excel. I borrowed an idea from the late Lin Young’s Grafton & Greenbrier Railroad: Certain rotations of each waybill is color coded to help identify destination. Orange indicates the Little Kanawha or Buckeye Subdivision, which splits off at Grantsville and runs west to Columbus, OH. Red indicates a car bound for the N&W through Charleston to Dickinson, WV and beyond. No color indicates a car destined for an industry in the Charleston area. A while back, I bought an old typewriter to use for typing data on the car cards. I like the look it gives. I do need a new ribbon, however. A couple of years ago, Chuck Hitchcock (MMR 116) was downsizing his collection and I came across a list of cars he was parting with. I was greatly inspired in my formative years by the appearance of his Santa Fe Argentine Division in Great Model Railroads in 1992. I bought 4 cars from his collection, one of which is OOCX 301, a 10k gallon tank car. Here I typed an extra note of the back of a car card to denote its origin. I have a few other “special” cars (gifts from friends, tribute cars, odd and unusual) that also received extra data on their cars. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
