Tehachapi, BC

[Ian MacMillan]

Great!  Thanks Ian.

The replacement for the Penn/Ohio is the light grey. The blended is definitely not it and is much darker. Although I am liking the blended more for representing CR's "dark grey" ballast. So the blended it is for me!

[GaryHinshaw]

The replacement for the Penn/Ohio is the light grey. The blended is definitely not it and is much darker. Although I am liking the blended more for representing CR's "dark grey" ballast. So the blended it is for me!

Thanks IMac, that's very helpful.  [You don't mind if I call you IMac, do you? ]  Would you say that the light grey is a good match to Penn/Ohio, or just better than the blended?

Lots of infrastructure updates to report:

* I managed to make a little more progress with benchwork, roadbed, & track.  As shown in WU, I completed the benchwork and roadbed at Summit, across the entry door:



The temporary roadbed that had been in place for a few months was easy enough to nod under that I decided to make this section semi-permanent, rather than pivoting. As a result, there was a premium placed on making the bench as thin as possible here to preserve head room.  The bottom of the bench is about 63" above the floor, and it's ~10" deep at the handle side of the door, so it's pretty painless to leave & enter, but still very sturdy.  Here's another shot from above, showing the other reason I wanted to make it permanent:



Turnouts!   There are three of them in the vicinity: the far one is the end of double track before heading onto the Tunnel 17-14 shelf (this mimics Cable on the prototype).  The other two lead to the two service tracks for the Monolith cement plant.  (Sadly, the actual summit town of Tehachapi is completely lost in my plan.)  There's too much going on here high above the concrete floor for me to want to fiddle with a mechanism, so this is the result.  The backside is a 1x4 that sticks up enough above track level to contain any derailments.  It's also well situated to host a welcome sign when the time comes.

* I finally painted the entry door to match the rest of the walls, replacing the dark brick red that used to be there. That was not unattractive, but it definitely clashed with the surroundings.

* I pulled the wires for the power bus around the other half of the upper deck (Tunnel 17 to the bottom of the Loop shelf).  I feed the bus through holes in the risers, but I still have a few reinforcing risers to add the the Loop itself, and in one of those 'first A, then B, then C' type deals, I wanted to get the 1-turn helix that sits directly under the Loop in place first (the green loop on the left in this image), so I can fashion custom risers that will support both, so I could feed the bus through them like I do with all the others.  So time to build some more tricky roadbed.

* Here is a progress shot of some of that tricky roadbed at the very back of the Loop shelf as it now stands.  This was taken from directly under Tehachapi Loop looking to the back of the shelf.  The tracks are as indicated:



This will all be obscured by the staging helix when that gets built, but there are no turnouts in this stretch, and these sections will still be accessible from the top and/or side relatively easily.

Cheers,
Gary

[Scottl]

Beautiful benchwork, but that last photo suggests it is all held up with a cardboard box!

[GaryHinshaw]

It is!      (Fortunately just the lowest level of roadbed there while I make sure some connecting bits fit correctly.)

[ednadolski]

The bottom of the bench is about 63" above the floor, and it's ~10" deep at the handle side of the door, so it's pretty painless to leave & enter,

Gary, may I ask -- how tall are you?

Ed

[Ian MacMillan]

Thanks IMac, that's very helpful.  [You don't mind if I call you IMac, do you? ]  Would you say that the light grey is a good match to Penn/Ohio, or just better than the blended?

Everyone at work calls me IMac..except for one guy who calls me EMac..because hes a tad slow and thinks you spell Ian "E A N"... He was hired for throwing people around...not smarts.

The light gray is almost an exact match. However. I have noticed that with this, as well as with the dark gray and blended I bought the color almost seems dyed to me. There are granules that sometimes appear to be translucent, like colored quartz.

[GaryHinshaw]

Gary, may I ask -- how tall are you?

Ed

183 cm, according to my BC driver's license.     In those units, the bottom of the duck-under is 160 cm.  By the way, when I first installed the vertical stringers on the wall, over the studs, I set them so the tops would all be level at 68" above the mean floor level, which is exactly my eye level.  All roadbed elevations are measured relative to that plane.

Everyone at work calls me IMac..except for one guy who calls me EMac..because hes a tad slow and thinks you spell Ian "E A N"... He was hired for throwing people around...not smarts.

And here I thought I was being so clever...

The light gray is almost an exact match. However. I have noticed that with this, as well as with the dark gray and blended I bought the color almost seems dyed to me. There are granules that sometimes appear to be translucent, like colored quartz.

Hmm, the translucent part is a drag.  Thanks for the info though.

[Coxy]

Great pics Gary.   I like the clean lines of what you have built so far.

Suggestion:If you paint the benchwork risers on the wall, the same color as the wall and door, the deck will "float" visually. It'll direct focus to the deck during the plywood pacific phase, or until you get to the point of adding fascias and skirting.



 Just my $0.02.

- Steven

[GaryHinshaw]

Cool treatment Steve - I'll keep that in mind.  I especially like how all the junk under the bench disappears with a quick paint job!

[Dave Schneider]

This is looking really great Gary. Could you repost the current track plan? It would be nice to get a reference from time to time and not have to search through 29 pages of your great work!

Best wishes, Dave

[GaryHinshaw]

This is looking really great Gary. Could you repost the current track plan?

Excellent suggestion Dave.  Here goes, first with an overview of the whole shebang, as currently envisioned.  The overall room is 10' x 20', with the unused garage door on the left and the entry door on the right:



The upper level tracks are grey; the lower level are green; and the staging is blue and/or gold.  The thick lines show the upper-level benchwork to give a sense of available space.  Recall that the Pass is situated at the south end of California's Central Valley and is owned by the UP (nee SP) as part of their Portland-LA north-south main.  BNSF (nee ATSF) has trackage rights, and the Pass is part of their Richmond-Chicago west-east main.  The traffic patterns of the UP and BNSF are somewhat different as a result, with BNSF tending to have more intermodal traffic moving east, while the UP has more resource (manifest) traffic moving south.

The upper level track represent the Pass from Tehachapi Loop up to Summit, and over towards Mojave at the south (east) end of the Pass. Railroad south is counter-clockwise on this level.  This is the section that is nearing completion of benchwork, roadbed, and track.  The signature scene is the Loop itself, but the massive cement plant near Summit will be a major hub of activity, and two stretches of single track will act as bottlenecks for the dispatcher:



The lower level represents the Pass from Edison (outside Bakersfield, still in the Valley) up to the Loop.  Railroad south is clockwise on this level.  The climb is a steady 2% past Edison (another switching hub), so this level is largely a nolix getting to the upper level, but a 1-turn helix under the Loop gains an extra ~3.5" of separation between levels.  There is one stretch of single track here:



Fun fact: the elevation just beyond Bealville is ~51" while the elevation at Tunnel 10/14, directly above it, is ~65".  The 14" elevation gain between them is achieved entirely within the confines of the Loop shelf, in a run that is just under 2 scale miles of mostly visible track.

The staging level is still a bit of a mess that I need to flesh out more carefully.  The north end of the line at Bakersfield is along the bottom, and the south end is represented by serial staging in a helix under Tehachapi Loop.  The connections at the bottom of the helix, back to Bakersfield, Edison, and/or additional storage are still rather sketchy.  I'm also quite interested in trying to incorporate a refinery type scene near Bakersfield:



Suggestions always welcome! 

-gfh

[GaryHinshaw]

Another update with more bewildering photos.  As noted earlier, I still had some chores to do to finish the roadbed on the Loop shelf; that is now largely complete and here are the photos to document it.  The main task was to add a few more joists and risers to complete the support of the Loop itself, but a secondary task was to hang the 1-turn helix below the Loop, which brings the lower level track up to the upper level.  After thinking about options, I decided it made most sense to make the needed joists also serve the function of scenery profile boards and hangers for the lower loop. 

In order to get the profile of the Loop hill about right, I fashioned some "contour lines" by soldering some spare copper wire into hoops that I placed on the central profile joist (installed a while back).  I then made a template out of manila stock tacked to a stick that spanned the gap:



(Note the reference photo on my laptop: a Roger Snyder ariel photo, taken from a similar vantage point.)  I cut slots in the stock so the hoops could pierce the card stock, and with these points identified I sketched in a profile that looked about right.  This gave me a template for cutting the 3/4" plywood, and after a bit of tweaking, here is the final result:



With these in place I was able to also install the lower loop (partially visible above), and run the permanent power bus the rest of the way around the Loop itself.  No more rats nest of temporary bus wires to hang myself on as I crawl around under there!  Here is a shot from underneath, showing the cavity that will house the south staging helix:



To get a sense of how the helix will look under there (and how a human might fit), I clamped in some boards that drop down to the lower level (~42" above the floor) and demarcate the left edge of the helix:



North staging is to be along the wall to the left with the yard throat being roughly where the bins and scrub brush are in this shot.  That general area is envisioned to be a "yardmaster's pit" where north & south staging will be managed.  It's cramped, but with the access hole in the shelf, you can stand up in there, and I'm imagining a rolling doctor's stool would make the job a bit easier.  But this is the area that gives me the most concern vis a vis the ergonomics of my plan...

Thanks for looking,
Gary

[jagged ben]

Gary, it's awesome to see your dreams finally coming to life.

[Scottl]

Gary, your layout process and approach are very inspiring to me.  I stared at the copper wires for some time, trying to fathom what they were, until I read the text!  I must say, you make a fine geographer.

[GaryHinshaw]

Thanks Ben - it's really fun to see it coming together.  Scott, I can't wait to energize those loops and finally make contact with the Mothership!