Restart #2

Very sadly, a few short weeks after my last post a major family tragedy occurred.  Our, sweet, wonderful 22-year old daughter passed away suddenly and unexpectedly of an undiagnosed heart condition.  There are no words.  A kinder person has never walked on earth.

Last year was very difficult for us, but youngest daughter and her boyfriend encouraged me to get back into the model train hobby as a mental health tool, and I've made good progress.

Things have changed.  We'll be moving from this house in the next couple of years - we'd planned to retire here.  I'm going to rebuild the N scale layout to be modular for movement to a new house.  

As I worked to re-gain familiarity with my N scale stuff after what was a 10 year break I found my old technical blog posts incredibly helpful.  I'll keep future posts short and on technical topics, with the primary audience being my future self.

Rip van Model Railroader

Back. Getting ready to start the railroading after many years off. Finding the old blog very useful in understanding the things I did all of those years ago and how my old railroad works.

Have redesigned the indoor layout entirely, keeping most of the staging but nothing else. Simplified it - one deck, not two, so no helix, but there will be a second shelf for the branch line. The second "joint line" won't happen. I'm pleased with the new layout as it solves some design problems that kept bothering me about the old one and is something I will realistically be able to complete.

Funds are a big issue now, but happily finding that I bought all of the track needed in advance - in fact will probably resell some of unused the Peco switches and flex track in order to pay for more stationary decoders. Also happily, in the ensuing years I kept buying new rolling stock and locomotives as they came out, then stored them unopened after noting them in my Roster spreadsheet. Eventually it accumulated into quite a large collection. Haven't bought any for a while now, and don't think I'll need any more ever - in fact may resell some of the unopened items once I take full stock of it all. I will need decoders for the new locos.

I see Digitrax has released a component to allow smart phones to be used as throttles via WiFi - will be getting that, saving the costs of any additional throttles (and may also resell some of my Digitrax throttles as a result).

The outdoor layout did see another couple years of construction that I didn't post about, including a version 2.0 and 3.0 of the pond and some actual roadbed - will document that next spring.

Back to Modeling

During the week after Christmas, with a little help from my kids, I finally cleaned out my office and train room. The train room, in particular had been a dumping/storage place for a couple years now and had been severely neglected. That's why I avoided photos of the train room itself last year, and just focused on the staging section.

New Years Day I restarted work on the layout and am now nearly complete with the middle tier of staging. I should complete tomorrow then I'll post the latest pics and get started on the lower tier.

So where did the time go the last few months? Well, I didn't get the outdoor bridge much past where I was in the last post, and as a result of not doing any strenuous lifing my rib healed fine by November. Beyond that the time period from mid-October - Christmas was a blur. This is usually the case to a degree, as we have 3 kid birthdays, one mommy birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Halloween all packed in, plus the usual holiday season events like recitals and plays to attend. This year was even more of a blur than normal due to a work project that required lots of travel and 9 straight 60 hour weeks (including 3 weeks working from home with H1N1) then a two week vacation to Hawaii in early December. The vacation was indeed a nice break, but it required lots of prep time and it also meant that all that other stuff was compressed into an even shorter time window.

So, short story long, no train stuff got done from October 13 to December 26. Looking ahead I want to be realistic about the time I'll have available and the time it takes to get stuff done (I'm usually way too optimistic on both fronts). So, thinking about the iNdoor layout I'd like to have the lower tier complete by February 7 (3 weeks from now) at which point I will once again be able to run trains roundy-round across the main layout and between the top and bottom tiers. Initially just getting trains going consistently will probably require a week just of track cleaning and ironing out track bugs. From mid-February until end April I'd like to do two things. First: get the electrical cabinet all set up and wired. (The cabinet has been assembled already by my son). Second: get scenery at least well under way on the section of the layout adjacent to staging. I'd like to have enough momentum built up that I won't completely ignore the indoor layout during the summer.

For the outdoor layout April, May and June will be about a) normal spring forest maintenance, including removing pine beetle trees, fighting again with the scrub oak, and doing some more tree thinning, and b) completing the bridge rails, garden pathways, planters, and electrical for the garden. That may be overly ambitious, depending on how many trees need to come down, but I hope to make it more acheivable by deferring the planned gazebo to 2011. If I get all that done by end June that means I can start on the roadbed and track in July with the goal of having a well built working loop with a few sidings by the end of the summer. During the track-laying months I'll also try to polish up the remaining work involving the pond and waterfall.

Colder than Boulder

An early cold spell hit last weekend, to the point where we went 2 days without a temp above freezing. Good news is that the pond withstood the freezing without any issues. I did take out the pump to prevent ice damage, and realized that I'll need to be able to easily remove the pump from the skimmer box after the skimmer box is installed permanently. I plan to drain the pond by the end of this month.

I've been building the list of materials I'll need for the railing and outdoor lamps. We have a 10% off certificate for Lowe's and I plan to get everything at once to take advantage of that. But otherwise I've been working on neglected indoor house projects. And this cold spell is a reminder that I need to spend this coming weekend doing the annual winterizing of the house and cleaning of gutters. Sigh. So, not likely to get the railing done by hallowe'en, but I'll still try.

Safety issues and replanning outdoor work

I mentioned briefly in the last post that on September 20 I fell off a beam when working on the south ramp. I bruise my hip, primarily, but also the area under the left armpit. It was a careless fall, done with my hands full of planks at a time when the work for the day was near completion, and I was tiring. However, at the time it seemed minor. I was able to complete the work that day and catch a business flight to a customer city that night, barely noticing anything was sore.

After I returned from the business trip Tuesday night I continued with the plank work, as described in the previous post. By Friday I noticed a chest pain. I was worried it might be an internal organ so monitored closely, but suspected it was muscular. By Sunday night, after I'd completed the planking and the setting up of the clay pathway on the south end of the ramp (which required a lot of digging and moving dirt via wheelbarrow) the pain was worsening, but I was now sure it was not an internal organ.

On Monday evening I moved a bunch of heavy flagstones (which we'd been given for free by a neighbor) to see if they would work for the pathway (they didn't fit, color-wise) and my chest ended up in such deep pain that I took a leftover painkiller from my last hospital visit 2 years ago.

On Tuesday the doctor confirmed my suspicion -- I'd cracked one of my left ribs in that fall on September 20. He also suggested that the initial crack probably wasn't too bad, but all the heavy work I'd done since had caused it to become much worse. The only solution is to take it very, *very*, easy for the next month or so.

So, I've since been learning what does and does not hurt the rib. I can lift some things -- up to 10 lbs or so -- with the right arm without trouble but have to be very careful with the left. Stretching or reaching usually has bad consequences -- typically light at first but then heavy pain 30 minutes or so later. The worst immediate pain is a heavy sneeze or cough. The doctor cautioned me that people with rib conditions are susceptible to pnemonia because they tend to control their coughs to avoid the pain, and thus don't adequately clear out their lungs.

Yikes. So this naturally means my outdoor construction plans for the rest of 2009 will be curtailed quite a bit. Fortunately my father and the kids have offered to help. In fact, today my dad and my son Daniel pitched in to help clear those flagstone I mentioned before and to put on some of the more tricky remaining redwood siding on the south ramp. Meanwhile, the kids all helped by doing all the lifting and cart-pushing today during our monthly "big shop" at Target. With their help the rib was fine all day.

Still, plans are being modified. My wife and I had already talked about moving the location of the planned gazebo from next to the pond to the other (south) side of the front yard for aesthetic reasons. Due to this injury I'll just formalize this change with the homeowners association and also move the completion date to the late spring. Also plans for any additional paths are moved to next year, as are plans for outdoor electrical circuits. All these mini-projects involve a lot of digging, which seems to be the worst activity for the cracked rib.

I will, however, finish up the bridge itself, with family help, and hopefully this month. There is a little more redwood siding to add, then the whole structure needs a second coat of stain for a really polished look. Then railings and, as a special feature, low voltage lamps at the top of each railing post. These won't be solar powered. The solar outdoor lamps are easier to install, as they are standalone, but the wired lamps are easy to switch on and off, which is a feature we want. I will create the low voltage circuit and wire it up to a transformer on the front porch, but won't make it a full circuit with switch and breaker until next year.

In some ways this can be a good thing. I mean, it is getting cold, making outdoor work less fun. At our elevation it's already started falling below freezing at night, which means I turn off the waterfall at night. So finishing up this month has it's advantages, and it also means that I can get re-started next month on the iNdoor layout.

However, this experience just re-emphasizes how a single micro-second of carelessness can have consequences that last a very long time. It's a lesson we all know but tend to forget. In recent years I've intentionally trained myself to be very conscious of this fact. For example, before starting a power saw I explictly remind myself that a single mistake with this tool can cause me to lose a limb permanently. For the table saw, which is by far the most dangerous, I more or less "shout" this mental warning to myself.

I did the same thing when I started to walk on the beams on the south ramp. However, at that key moment on September 20 I was tired and in a rush. I wanted to reach a project milestone by the end of the day, but also knew I had to pack to fly out that night for business. So I pushed myself and was getting a bit tired. And, for an instant, got careless.

I had a very similar thing happen to me under similar circumstances about 4 years ago and thought I'd learned my lesson. Obviously not. In the future I'll try to sense when I start rushing and will force myself to stop and think before progressing.

This mistake really wasn't so bad. The family has been terrific in support. And I have more than enough other stuff to do, so mostly the consequences are that I rearrange some planned tasks while I heal. But if I let myself be careless again the next mistake could be far more severe.

Back to Posting

Wow, over 3 months since my last post. When I started this blog I mentioned that I tend to work for several months on the model railroad, then get stuck and do nothing for several months. That's happened again, only this time there are a few differences.

First, I didn't hit a mental design block that made me stop working. In fact my next N scale tasks are all pretty straightforward -- complete the track on the middle tier of staging then move to the lower tier. In addition one of the last things I did on the N scale layout in early May was to buy the power cabinet -- so if nothing else I could get busy assembling that.

No my reason for stopping work on the N scale layout was that with May came warm weather, and with that came the annual spring outdoor maintenance. We live on a forested 1.66 acre lot with circa 500 pine trees, which in this area means 1) removal of pine-beetle infested trees (we had 5 this year), 2) general firewise clearance around the house, and 3) general outdoor maintenance (dead trees and branches, restaining kid's outdoor play structure, etc).

All that took a few weeks, and then I also tackled a long-standing task of removing the scrub oak from the lot -- about 10 condensed trailer-fulls of it in fact -- for better fire resistance and general upkeep. THAT took another few weeks.

And second, the OTHER big difference is that except for the distractions mentioned above, my biggest reason for stopping N scale work is that I'm now serious about the outdoor layout. Over the next few days I'll post about progress on that, including pictures. OK, it's not much to tell about yet in terms of trains, as the first major task is a waterfall, stream and pond. But it's progress.

(Oh, and there were other distractions as well. Son in hospital. 3 weeks travel out of country for job. Wife and Daughter testifying in Congress. You know, normal stuff. But now the momentum is strong.)

Editing

Over the past couple weeks I've been editing the past posts in my spare time. The changes were mostly minor: improved some formatting and a little rewording. These changes reflect things I've learned through regular posting. I've also added Label words for each post, so searching for posts on a given topic will be streamlined.