In addition to celebrating the holidays, I did have the 7th anniversary operating session on the SP Exeter Branch . Since December of 2009, I've hosted 163 operating sessions and have a pool of 20-28 regular operators over the years. We have hosted a total of 115 operators including guests filling 778 jobs over the course of running the railroad. To date, I have never cleaned the track. I have cleaned the wheels on all of the rolling stock four times and the locos once. The DCC system has been reliable and I've never had to cancel or end a session early due to railroad issues. I'm pretty happy with that! And, in one instance I almost had to cancel a session due to a neighborhood power outage as the operators were arriving. But the power was restored just as the operators were walking out the front door. Everyone came back in and we ran the session.
In late October, layout owners in the Phoenix area hosted our third operating event called Desert Ops. We had operators from around the country and Canada. I hosted three scheduled sessions and two extra sessions. I had a few new operators, but most were return visitors. I believe they all had a good time. ...at least I hope so!
Onto the LA Division: Progress has been slow. Again!
I have been spending time working on new rolling stock to put in service on the Exeter Branch. In March, I plan to backdate the railroad to 1966. I've been preparing motive power and rolling stock for the change over. I will also be reworking some of the jobs. Additionally, it will require me to create new waybills.
Lately I have been back to working on the new railroad. After getting the last round of benchwork frames built and upstairs as noted in my previous post, I Initially put up two sections of benchwork. However, progress stopped for Desert Ops and I needed to make more legs.
So I finally got my act together and bought more elevator bolts and 1/4" nuts.I use these for the feet on the legs. A friend of mine cut up plywood squares for the feet to rest in. Thanks Frank Borkowski! I wasn't able to use my table saw as I had burned out the motor cutting plywood for risers.Frank took my extra plywood and cut the squares.
Next up, I broke out the drill press and drilled the cross members for the feet and used the Forstner bit to ready the plywood squares to be under the feet.
It was time to haul the welder up stairs. Moving the welder isn't much of a task except for carrying the gas tank. I'm not sure how much the tank weights, but it's pretty heavy. I know the CO2 / Argon gas doesn't weigh that much.
Once upstairs it was time to reorganize the welding cart and get to work.
I use a number of welding blankets to eliminate the pieces of hot metal sparking off the weld from hitting and burning the floor and walls. I used a number of welding blankets in the process. So far so good. To the left you can see the blankets strewn about and on the floor. Yes there is a leg in there to be welded.
The below picture shows the section with the legs welded in place. The right most leg is still clamped until the next section of benchwork to the right is added.
After finishing up welding the legs onto the two sections of benchwork that I had last attached to the wall, I moved on to mounting the next section of benchwork to the wall. As the wall that the benchwork is attached to is on a 45 degree angle, I needed to butt the two benchwork corners together and clamp.
Once mounted to the wall and the corners clamped together, I proceeded to mount the legs. As a refresher all legs are mounted every 5'. That's a guideline...
The picture on the left is the section of benchwork in place. You can see the clamp between the two sections. I found that once the corners were welded together they formed a solid bond and continuity between bnechwork sections.
The pictures below are different perspectives of the two sections of benchwork.
Next up was to mount the last section of fabricated benchwork. You can see the last frame in the foreground of the picture above. This will be mounted to the wall to the left of the left most section of benchwork seen above.
I decided that the last section would be mounted to the extreme left. That would allow me to mount to two walls (back and side). As a note, I'm using lag bolts with washers to attach to the studs. Most are done every 32" as the studs are all 16" on center.
I'd like say thank you to Eric Hall who has a number of good videos on his YouTube Channel that he's been adding on layout ops and layout construction.Eric's channel is: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVv15HtKtpEQYrq69XYfIdw I picked up a great tip from Eric. He dips screws or lag bolts into liquid dish soap before screwing them into wood. This helps the screw drive in quickly and you're less likely to split the stud. Of course you need to drill a pilot hole first!
The gaps between benchwork sections will be filled with newly fabricated benchwork. The steel comes in 20' sections, so I'm trying to add 20' sections first and then close gaps with filler pieces.
Now I need to order more steel before I can build more benchwork. In the mean time, I'm going to build mock ups of the upper level so I can validate my space between levels and the my upper level depth is workable. Rather than solicit opinions, I'm going to let the mock up help me with my decision. I'm planning on a 18" difference between levels.
Last up below, I decided to provide some pictures around the room to give perspective on the progress to date. Sorry about the lighting!
I hope you're enjoying the blog and I always welcome feedback, comments, and suggestions.
Happy New Year!
