Make use of the Day Off

So I had today off since I had a quack appointment around noon - not worth going into work. So after the visit to my GP, it was time to attack the paving some more.

 

First I lifted and moved a pile of them to near the old chook shed for use later in putting down a decent floor in the little shed. It will do as a nice mower house I reckon since the chooks are now gone.

Then it was time to start lifting all the remaining ones and let them dry off a bit so as to make the removal of the dirt, sand and such before stacking them.

By the time I got back to the first one I'd lifted, it was dry and warm.

Then it was time to go move the remaining pavers. I added another layer or two near the chook shed and the rest went to down the side of the house.

So this left the old paved area nice and ready for demolition man to remove the concrete when I am eventually ready to arrange it - much more work to do emptying out the shed.

I suppose my next bit of work will be to move the stack of un-used tiles to the garage.

Don't Talk, Do It.

I've now been back at work for a week - a fella REALLY should have an easier way of getting money.

Anyway, while I was on my latest two weeks of holidays, I actually got two full days of work done, out in the old shed - amazing I know. I tell you, as soon as people hear you are on holidays, it's wanta a cuppa time all the time! But two days heading towards my empire is better than nothing.

Another reason that slowed me down was this thing called old age. We all travel towards it and hope it stays well ahead of us. But sometimes that blasted fella called Murphy, pokes his bloody head out and take a shot at ya. The other day I was getting ready to go out back and do some work and was sitting on the side of the bed and bent over to pull on my work boots, and that was it for the day and the next - I threw me blasted back out!  How at my age does that happen?  I mentioned it to both my siblings and they too get that sort of thing from time to time they tell me - geez this getting older sucks and does sneak up on one. All that is beside the point. 

First job was to get all the nuts, bolts, nails and all sorts of bits and pieces off the shelves directly in front of me on this photo.

They were all moved into the garage and onto my existing set of shelves for just that sort of thing. Next was to move all the timber and metal stock I had stored on the wall on the right hand side in the above photo and the left side on the photo below. I moved it to the garage and put it all on the floor first.

So I managed to get all the wall brackets that support the steel and timber stock one keeps around the place, off of the walls and into the garage. All the timber, steel and such followed as well. I tell you, putting Dyna-bolts into brick is easy compared to the Besser brick in the garage. The motor was so thin and not all the way on each brick, so I had all sorts of trouble requiring drilling more holes and then more holes in the steel brackets. But it got done. So here is a shot of the garage with its new brackets and timber stores and pipes and such back in place.

And here is the empty wall space in the old shed.

I was also able to destock the old steel shelves my dad had built me that were in the back room of the old shed and move them into the garage and stock them up again. Bloody hell - the old man sure made them solid. I think he welded them up in my old shed, as they were HEAVY. I had to get a second set of muscles from the bloke living upstairs to move the damn thing - 10 feet at a time - many rests required. But move it we did.

Here are the shelves before moving.

And here are the shelves moved and restocked with what I wanted to keep. I also moved and restocked my two other shelves in the garage so they are now all in their permanent locations. Here are the shelves in place before all the stock goes back on. The shelves at left are the good solid, last forever, steel ones.

With all the moving and sorting, I managed to get two more 200 kg trailer loads of junk down to my local tip as well. Besides the shelving moving, I have every now and then in the arvo, gone and moved some pavers - there are oodles of the blighters to move. So all the ones I have lifted to allow the new shed to be build have finally been moved today after the club visit.

Now I have to lift the remaining pavers and move them as well. None will be wasted as they can all be used on my new pergola once I have completed the commissioning of the new shed.

So progress slow as it is, is happening.

Planning Some More

Was chatting yesterday to a fellow club member - Scooter (Craig by any other name) who happens to also work in the same department as I do. I forgive him for being a Horribly Oversized modeller and not one of we Normal modellers of railways, as he is sometimes, I stress sometimes, worth talking to! While chatting away about all things railway, and some whinging about work, we came up with a few more ideas as to possible layouts for my railway empire.

So when I got home yesterday I went out in the dark with my trusty little torch and measuring tape to get a proper dimension of the inside of the shed. I have in the past just been going on the shed dimensions as sold to me, and they are of course outside measurements - 7 m x 12 m. So I unlocked the castle and took to it with a tape measure. I have then added the thickness of the lining I will be doing to the walls. Being about 1 cm thick should be close enough to cater for either 9mm or 12mm plywood lining of the walls.

So this gives me a usable area to design the layout, of approximately 6.740 m x  11.870 m (about 22' 1½" x 39').

I have added the door in its exact location as well, and taken into consideration that a helix is not the best thing to view when first entering a layout room, so it has moved. In fact my workbench has moved as well and I have reduced my shelf requirement by one. I reckon 2 sets of shelves should suffice. In fact I really think one may actually be the go in the end. This comes from the realisation that I have all that space under the layout to store all my storage boxes. These boxes are all 10 litre plastic tubs with lids that are nice and dust proof and sturdy. They can stack nicely under the layout and shouldn't need to waste my shelf space.

Now of course the layout is a double decker, but here are the nine plans so far for the benchwork layout. There are obviously so many, but these are some I am mulling around in the head so far.

I am crossing my fingers for the next 2 weeks as there are cyclones coming and guess what?  Yep, I have a couple of weeks of holidays coming up (yes I just had some, but I work sooooooooooo hard - hehehehe) and Murphy looks like he is going to try slowing me down in getting ready to demolish the old shed. We will see....we will see....

Bogged Down and Slow Going

Yep, I took 2 weeks off to dedicate to emptying out the old shed and what happens? It rains.

I supposed I'd whinge at anything - it was way too hot and humid (and rainy) over the Christmas break (and too many family things to do) and now it's raining. Oh well, you get that on a big job, they say. Who is this "they" anyway?

OK, so I obviously did go to my train club on Saturdays and Wednesdays over my two weeks of holidays and besides working on the club exhibition N scale layout, spent yesterday playing with a new application for my iphone - two apps in fact.

(1) And the Oscar Goes To.

The other day I was reading the IT news section, yes it was about IT stuff as I don’t read the gossip rags, and I came across this - Oscar Award for Best Documentary goes to Searching for Sugar Man film shot on Apple iPhone.

I was intrigued. So I went out and got me this little ‘ol 8mm Vintage Camera application for my iPhone. So on Wednesday I decided to have some fun rather than working on the layout all the time as I seem to do. So I played with my trains yesterday and took a range of videos. Here are some videos I took using said application on my iPhone which makes everything look like it was done on an old 8mm camera and done years ago.

Old Fashioned View of RMCQ Layout for 2013:
http://youtu.be/cUEQx6CIiPo

Burlington Northern Passenger Service from Way Back - Parts 1 to 3:
http://youtu.be/CIJPVU7L4A4
http://youtu.be/25b2F3xQ014
http://youtu.be/VfXjQt6IAJM

The old Burlington Northern Passenger Train + The Circus Train:
http://youtu.be/WzXXkQXkgHg

Circus Train Comes to Town:
http://youtu.be/d7n8jy_N_xE

5 'ol Diesel Trains:
http://youtu.be/sNmqkBrP6Rw

Containers and Boxes from On High:
http://youtu.be/4ygW7AD_UUU

(2) I Take Up Art.

While on the subject of technology for phones, here is the result of another application I found for my iPhone called Paper Camera. Who said it was hard to be an artist?

Welcome to my old shed, hopefully soon to be demolished. I have more rec leave coming up in a month - two more weeks. Maybe I can get what I need done then. But at least today I did open the old girl up and completely fill my rubbish bin from empty to overflowing - I hope the rubbish truck can lift it tomorrow morning!

And here are a couple of shots from inside the old shed. I reckon this app it very artistic - there are other settings, but this drawing flavour seems more to my liking. Oh, and the lead photo up top is from this same app - call me Van Gogh perhaps?

Start the New Year off Right

The Christmas and New Year break tends to be quite hectic with family and stuff, but in amongst it all, I managed to get almost 2 days of work done towards getting me eventually into my new train shed.

The first order of the day was to clean up the lounge room a bit. So off to Office Works for a pile more of the 10 litre storage boxes - I've standardised on the StarMaid brand's Storemate style, as the plastic seems to be nice and pliable and so far in over 5 years or more, none have cracked up on me.

Here is shelving that used to contain all sorts of cardboard boxes and loose items, all now nice and tidy.

Next I hit the garage for a bit of a clean-up and chuck out of non-wanted items. This led to me actually putting a small 2½ cc internal combustion engine I found I still had from my hobbies of over 30 years ago on eBay - now I am a Seller! At least by the end of the day I was able to sweep the garage out and then turn the hose on it and make it dust free - for at least a short time until the car came in again.

A shot of some shelving up on high with a pile of train stuff boxed up and out of the way. 

Probably half of the stuff in boxes out in the garage are empty boxes for wagons. I tend to keep them on the off-chance I might one day sell a wagon - then I'll have the box it came in. The wagons actually live indoors in a pile of foam lines standard draws the club sells the makings for. This gives a standard easy way to lug them around to and from the club and shows. Here are the trays I keep the wagons in:

And the larger box that protects the trays and allows me to lug them around to shows:

Anyway, here is more storage above head height. The rafters make it easy to bolt hanging bars and then shelves to them. It was a good idea they had when they lifted my house all those years ago to give plenty of headroom downstairs. Sure allows me some extra storage space.

What the heck, here is another shot of storage boxes on shelves. Here you can sort of make out the length of the garage as well:

Finally - nice and clean and no railway items to bee seen down low:

Here is car in at the end of the first day - you can make out the shelves on the left are pretty empty, as all railway related items are in storage boxes.

The next day started with a trip out to Bunnings and the purchase of 2 shelving racks from the Handy Storage range.  I picked the 5 shelf version which is 1830mm H x 910mm W x 400mm D. These are neat in that they are all keyhole construction and hence only a rubber mallet is required to put it together. I also purchased a draw for each rack as well. Now all my tools and nuts, bolts, nails and stuff will have a new home.

I forgot to take a photo before the car came back in, but you can see the shelves in this shot and I even moved some of the tools into their new homes.

Some of the nuts, bolts and nails have made it onto their new shelves too. Many more to go - but at least I got it started over the break:

At the back to the left of the new shelves, will be another set of shelves from the old shed, to store a pile more kits from the old shed.

You can see that once I get more shelves and ladders up against the left wall, that the car will have to go live outside for a while. The plan is for a carport one day within the next 2 years.

So that's it from the break, but at least I've gotten into it and can hopefully keep up some momentum and get all the keepable items out of the old shed and into the garage really soon. Then the demolition team can be called to come in.  See you next time.