Gibbon, Cozad & Western - "The 100th Meridian Line"

[C855B]

Thanks, Alan. You should know.   Will do.

BTW, I was impressed with the primer's abrasion resistance after only a day of curing. Of course it was an alkyd, which we all know is a vanishing species. We'll see how well the acrylic color layer withstands the abuse, hopefully the primer will have enough tooth.

[C855B]

Prep for tracing and cutting the "blob" at the end of the Afton Canyon peninisula:



The bold line is the benchtop outline. Had to do this one out of the normal sequence (build frame, cut top to fit) to use as a template for bending the frame. Pounce wheel ( @Philip H ) traces this line into the foam:

[C855B]

Phase 1 peninsula benchwork frame is completed. About 3X more work than I had figured... of course. Terracing the frame didn't help matters, nor did the slightly irregular shape of the blob.

[Chris333]

With the dramatic lighting makes me think of that gopher .gif.   

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Oooh! I'm excited to see more layout coming along!

[C855B]

Oooh! I'm excited to see more layout coming along!

Me too. I may have complained the frame took more effort than planned, but even with the added complications it still executed in four weeks versus the two or three months each along-the-wall segment seemed to require to get to this point. Benefit from experience? Maybe, or that there was less fabrication. Track should go faster, too, since with the exception of a small yard this is mostly single track, so there's a lot more wiggle room if something doesn't convert perfectly from paper to reality.

Since this peninsula is a core LDE and especially because of firsthand (and recent) familiarity with the area, scenery and landforms are also clearer in my head than in the existing portions. So I expect geoforming to move along briskly.

[C855B]

Dry-fitting the benchtop/scenery base:



Shame to cover up all that insane metalwork, but if you want omelets, you gotta crack some eggs.   

Once I double-check turnout locations relative to panel joints I can glue things down.

[C855B]

First two slabs (furthest out) and the transition to the backbone are glued down. With this 4x20 section committed I decided to lay out Yermo to get a bit of roadbed down, if only to see real progress. The first 1:1 printout of the plan revealed a minor problem with track spacing in the yard, so after a couple of tweaks we have something reasonable and tracing can start.



The "cliff" is laid-out that way so I know where to go with the embankments done in cookie-cutter style from that point south. Kelso is a smaller yard on the right side, with the two scenes to be separated by a ridge.

[C855B]

Latest addition to the GC&W, completed this morning:



A dehumidifier, integrated into the central HVAC. If you recall "way back when", I noted running problems starting late April to mid-May, where the track required cleaning nearly every time I wanted to run trains. Winter months were no problem, rarely had to clean track. Suspecting the onset of summer humidity, I ran numbers using data dumps from the ecobee thermostat. The conclusion was a magic threshold, roughly 60% relative humidity, coinciding with the operation issues. I tried various tricks to force the A/C to "overcool" to extract the excess moisture, but that wasn't solving the problem, and Robyn was justified in her complaints that her studio was too cold all the time.

So the unexpected "CoVid-19 stimulus" was used to acquire a serious, heavy-duty dehumidifier.

Other progress on the layout is gluing down everything - one more panel to go - and the plan trace is laid out up to that last panel. Still some tweaking to do. Coincidental and arriving in yesterday's mail was John Signor's freshly revised "Los Angeles and Salt Lake" book. Thumbing through pages found a map documenting a short tunnel in Afton Canyon, the area I'm working on right now. It was evidently daylighted at some point, my job now is to determine "when?". The tunnel at Cima was bypassed in the 1960s, so if Afton was included in that particular engineering program, that's close enough to my modeling period to include it in Afton. I'd like that.

[CRL]

Of course you should include the tunnel, regardless of when it was daylighted. 

[davefoxx]

@C855B,

My experience with humidity in my basement and the corresponding need for track cleaning in the winter months (very little) versus the summer months (a lot more) matches your findings exactly.  I need to empty the dehumidifier bucket in my basement almost daily in the summer months and hardly need it at all in the winter months.  I have an oil-fired forced air HVAC that dries the house and the basement out bigtime in the winter.

DFF

[C855B]

Your mention of "basement" reminded me. There's a somewhat unique issue with our building behind the humidity problem. The studio and the rest of downtown is in a big "bowl", drained by a now-underground channel appropriately named "Sewer Creek". So the water table is very high especially in the spring, so high that I never successfully drained the basement in the now-razed apartments next door.

Anyway, the upshot is the ground moisture percolates through the concrete slab (NO basement!), finding paths through the vapor barrier. Early in construction I would arrive at the building to discover "sweat" on the surface of the older concrete portions, clearly emanating from underneath. I double-sealed these sections which solved the visible sweat, but it's clear in the analysis that the humidity has to be dealt with with pro-grade gear. 

[C855B]

Of course you should include the tunnel, regardless of when it was daylighted. 

After a few hours of research... 1957. Close enough to include on the layout without too much apology. No picture references, however, so I'll have to model the portals based on first- and second-hand photos from further up the line in Nevada.

[davefoxx]

Well, if there's no pictures of the tunnel in existence, who can argue with you?  Build it.

DFF

[C855B]

Murphy's Law says that one will show up the same day it's designated "finished".    Anyway, the issue is the period: daylighted in '57, I model 1970.

A functional representation will be just fine. I'll review my pix of the related canyon upstream for style cues. The tunnel location is difficult to get to, and pre-4-wheel-drive it would've been damn near impossible other than the tracks. Most likely image would be a snapshot out the back window of an observation car.