Work Session Report

Thursday work session was a success. Doug Gurin, Mark Kempinski, Mark Anderson,and John Drye showed up for duty. Doug showed up first and he and I shared a pizza dinner.

John and Doug spiked track. When I lay my track, I spike every fifth tie or so, as frequently adjustments are necessary and having fewer spikes to adjust make things simpler. Once the alignment of the track is adjusted, I go back and fill in the remaining spikes. This is a tedious job and I am lucky that friends like John, Doug, Paul and Marty have helped drive spikes for me. As I posted earlier, four spikes per tie requires over 10,000 spikes to complete my layout.

The new spikes I ordered from Micro Mark are much closer to scale size than the Micro-engineering spikes I was previously using. They drive very easily. I recommend them.

My brother, Mark, built bench work in the workshop where Aquia Harbor will go. In the background of the photo you can see the hole in the wall, just above the workshop lamp, where the tracks come through the wall.

The Ikea Ivar shelves will serve as the supporting legs. The bench work will be 15 inches wide behind my workshop chair and then widen as it approaches the waterfront. The frame is made from 1x2s. Then we'll add 1 inch of foam to the top of the wood frame. The plywood road bed pieces will be glued to the foam. Where there is water, 1/4 inch panels of hardboard (Masonite) secured to the wood frames will form the water surface. Thus the tracks will be about 1.125 inches above the water level. This is much simpler bench work than the splines I used in the other room.

Mark Anderson worked on reversing the door to the workshop to make more room for the harbor area. This was not as easy as it could have been as the door frame was not square and the door would not close all the way. After thinking about it for a while, the two Marks decided to disassemble the door frame and square up the door. Unfortunately, the door casing splintered at the base and the sheet rock paper covering ripped where the casing was caulked. So some repairs will be necessary, but the frame did get squared up and the door closes nicely. Since there is carpet on the side where the door is swinging, the door will have be trimmed by about a half inch. We'll do that outside with a Skill saw when it is not raining so hard, as it was Thursday night.

The reversing of the door was clearly worth it, as it really opens up the left end of the workshop. Having the door swing into the room is no problem. Definitely an improvement.

Mean while, I was working on replacing the road bed between Brook and Potomac Creek. This area has been a problem child. Hopefully I have it resolved now.

Finally we had a design discussion on treatment of the area behind Brook to hide the return loop and the "huge" holes in the walls. Opinions were split, but most thought that making the track totally hidden with access from the bottom was a bad idea. Some type of "obscuration" that still allows access to the track seems to be the preferred solution. I decided to use flex track for these tracks to speed things up. We'll have to mock up some ideas and see how they work out.

The guys seemed to have a good time and want to come back next Thursday for more work. Alicia will be back then, so maybe we'll get some home made cookies.