(November 2016)

As I am pulling out the boxes of track from beneath the bench in the garage, I'm finding they are wet. That's not good. Where is it coming from? My first thought is the window air conditioner is leaking condensation all down the wall and saturating anything in contact with it. Nope. Looks like it's the rotted bottom five courses of shiplap siding along the back of the garage. Great. I didn't want to have to do that now, but I guess now I have no choice. I have to get the new siding oiled and primed at the very least. I start by moving everything away from the garage and removing the trim pieces. All except the one on the side of the garage the fence is mounted to. The one I'm having a hard time getting to since the neighbor parks his trailer there when not in use.

Needless to say, it's another delay in progress on the railroad, but a necessary one. I take the time to replace those boards and the bad spots along the sides of the garage at the same time. And because I already have the house and trim paint out, I paint the carriage doors as well. As much as I love the bare wood look, it's time to make them match the originals. I like them just as much now that they're painted, but they seem to blend in now, not drawing your attention like they did before. With the garage looking so nice, Ann bought some of those "edison lights" for under the eaves over the patio. They look nice and throw enough light without being overpowering.

It was shortly after that Ann decided we were going to start on the bathroom remodel over Thanksgiving break. As much as I try to explain to her why that's a bad idea, she tries to convince me it's better to find out what we're looking at now, and be able to deal with it sooner, rather than wait until Christmas break and be stuck later. I finally agree and the demolition begins. Turns out it's a good thing we decided to start now. I thought all we had to do was take up the hatch flooring in the hallway and we'd have access under the house. Nope. The old oil furnace was still sitting down there, totally blocking the opening where the original register must have sat.

We pick up a metal shear and a set of replacement blades at Harbor Freight after all attempts to remove it as is fail. But before I can start cutting it out of the way, bit by sheet metal bit, I'm told I need to accompany the boss on a business trip to Baltimore. The week before Thanksgiving no less! I'm still a contractor, not even a full time employee! It all seems rather irregular to me and I'm having nightmares of being stranded at an aiport for the holiday and not being able to make it back home in time. Turns out those fears are unwarranted, and I'm able to start cutting out that old furnace the weekend before Thanksgiving.

And that turns out to be a good thing too, because now we can see just how extensive the damage to the bathroom floor and subfloor is. It starts close to the hatch and just goes from there. Turns out the idiots that installed the furnace thought a 2x4 lying flat on a concrete block support pier would be enough support for the two 2x8 floor joists they crippled when they cut the opening in the floor to begin with. That 2x4 was snapped in two, right over the block, and wasn't providing any support to either joist! The closer you got to the toilet, the more of the subfloor was missing! No wonder it felt as if you could plunge through the floor at any moment, because you could! Worse yet, most of the flooring under the bathtub was gone and the supporting joists rotted...

This means it's going to take a lot more than just replacing the tub and putting up new tile, and I now know there is no way in hell we're going to have the bathroom finished over the Christmas break. It takes us most of that just to get the demolition finished and a bare plywood subfloor installed. Now we're on the weekend plan, that is, spending every weekend working on the bathroom. The good news is I'm able to restore the toilet service for all but one night during the entire demolition and flooring restoration. Nick helped quite a bit with the demolition and we couldn't have done it without him.

(July 2017)

So after six months of solid effort on the bathroom, it's complete except for the window sashes, and I'm really ready to get back to working on the railroad. Every time I head out to the garage to do more on the window, I end up doing more on the railroad instead. The stringers that were just laying on the ground are now installed on posts. But I'm finished before I really get started as I exhaust all of the already cut slats and blocks I had left from last time. I need to get some more 2x4s and rip them into the raw materials I'll need to finish making more stringers. I'm laying the track as I go, mainly because I want to keep using whole pieces of track, without having to cut them and the only way to know they fit is to put them together and see where they stop.

(August 2017)

By the time I'm around the back of the shed and heading back out past the garage, I'm coming to the realization that I'm almost out of straight track! How can this be possible? I had more than enough at the other house, and that yard was bigger! Well, unless I left a box of track buried in the corner room at the other house, I'm kind of stuck. I can't loop the track around and back toward the upper loop to finish the lower loop if I don't have enough track to get me there. I have enough curved track to finish if I can somehow manage to find enough straight track to get me there. If Aristocraft stainless steel track was scarce back when I was buying it, it's such a rare commodity now, it might as well be made of unobtainium. Change in plan...

I'm rather upset with myself for not catching this sooner. I tried to plan out the entire layout using SketchUp, but it's rather limited when it comes to drawing out large plans in minute detail. It became impossible for me to keep track of everything, let alone even the guide lines to follow. I kind of gave up on it, thinking I would just have to sketch it out of paper to get an idea. I even tried a couple of free track layout programs, but none of them really handled garden scale very well, if at all. I guess I figured that since I had more than enough at the other house, it wouldn't be an issue here. It's not so terrible though. I'll just need to nestle another loop inside of the curves rounding the corner between the fences. If it will fit...

I manage to find the center of another 14' diameter solution. This time the difficulty is finding a solution that allows enough room to fit the 5⁄8 circle and 1⁄8 circle curves. The 1⁄8 circle curves are 20' diameter by the bridge, but would they fit here as well as the transitions to the 14' diameter section? It takes some doing, and even more time, but I manage to fit everything and still only need two cuts of very expensive and by now probably irreplaceable track. Thankfully I had already bought a pack of the "split jaw" track joiner clamps for fitting the bridge and to allow for "easy" removal. I'll need those to join these cuts now too.

And no, I didn't spend the money for the "bridge clamps" for the bridge. At least, not yet. At first we thought we'd need to take the bridge out every time we mowed the yard. But now that most of the yard is artificial turf that doesn't need mowed, it's just easier to use the weed whip to get the only place grass still grows in the yard, inside the upper loop by the bridge. But I digress... The cuts in the track will need those "split jaw" clamps too. Cutting the stainless steel track, even using the dremel with a diamond wheel, is taking its sweet time cutting the track, not to mention having to flip the track over to finish the bottom. The wheel is just a smidge too small to cut all the way through the 332 profile track cleanly.

So now that everything is in place and fits, it time to clean the track. I've been using dremel wire wheels to clean the track and connectors, then applying dialectric grease to the joints before cinching them down and mounting the track to the stringers. There are places I got a little "overzealous" with it and figure I can just wipe it off. Using a scotchbrite pad, I clean the entire loop of track by hand, mainly to get the railhead back to a bright luster where it may have been sitting out in the elements. Now for the big test! Let's wire this thing up and runs some trains!