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

[GaryHinshaw]

Looking really good there Mike!  Now help me out here: what corner of the room are we standing in relative to your track plan?

As I struggle to fill a one car garage with trains, I shudder a bit at the prospect of filling that space.  But I can't wait to see you do so!

[C855B]

Thanks, guys. Adam and I have been working like madmen and getting loads of stuff done. Robyn asks "Are you excited by the progress? Can you see your vision?" Yes... damn tootin'!

The view is from the southeast corner of the room... and the plan. I was standing roughly at the curve between Egbert and Gibbon.

Which reminds me... I haven't been slacking off on the plan. I'm still tweaking things, but nothing major new. I'll check it and see if it's upload-worthy.

[C855B]

Past couple of days have been preoccupied with 'lectricity and lighting. IIRC, I mentioned a while back that one of the objectives was to go all-LED. So far the results have been pretty good in the studio with LED downlights and GU10 tracklight fixtures. The trepidation has been with general room lighting in the layout room and to a lesser extent the workshop.

I have been shopping - endlessly, it seems - mostly for LED troffer fixtures as the prices continue to fall. When we started two years back, integrated-LED troffers* from major suppliers were running $200-250 each (versus ~$60 for the same thing in regular florescent). Today, in a few cases similar LED fixtures from the same makers are half what they were, and sometimes with more lumens.

* - Troffers are florescent fixtures that drop into grid ceilings. Commercial ceiling stuff.

However, over the past six months we seem to have hit a couple of plateaus - lumens-per-buck, and max available lumens in an LED troffer fixture. 5500-6000 lumens appears to be the best we're seeing from 2'x4' fixtures, and competitive pricing is around 50 lumens per dollar. One thing I noticed as well was the major makers (Lithonia, for example) were essentially taking their standard florescent assemblies and putting LED tube equivalents in them, typically three tubes at 1600-1800 per. So... why couldn't I do the same thing? - use a low-end commercial fixture and put LED tubes in it, since there are lots of online suppliers offering LED T-8 retrofit tubes. This turned out to be the solution, the main trick not being afraid to modify the wiring in the fixture to bypass the ballast.

As an experiment, needing lighting in the workshop we went to Menard's for some plain-vanilla T-8 quad (two pairs in tandem) fixtures, and they went on the bench for ballast-ectomies. I then ordered a bunch of "20W" LED tubes from http://www.t8tubes.com, and installed 16 tubes' worth in the workshop. These tubes were advertised at 2100 lumens each, bright for LEDs, versus 2600-2800 lumens for T-8 4000K florescent tubes. Now I've been suspicious of LED retrofit lumen claims for a few years after experiencing several disappointments, and just in general don't trust the online sellers where I can't see the product firsthand. Well, this time no problem:



It's friggin' bright in there! I suppose I can believe the claims now, and if their numbers are anywhere close, I have around 33,000 lumens. Lamps + fixtures ran roughly 58 lumens per dollar, about 15% better than the best price I could find on pre-integrated commercial LED fixtures.

The current lighting concept for the layout room has 20 troffers, so at 8400 lumens per fixture in a conventional 4-tube troffer the result should be 168,000 lumens in the 40x44 space. That's over 1000 lux (lumens per square meter). Compared to the surgery-bright 850 lux in the workshop, I now wonder if I ought to cut back the layout room lighting plan a little.

The main downside to this DIY approach is the commercial LED fixtures have the ability to be dimmed. I will have to reconcile whether dimming in the task lighting (versus effects and layout spot-lighting) will be something important in the grand plan. That decision is a few months away.

[GaryHinshaw]

Whoa, I'm running about 3000 Lux in TBC.     I find it bright when I first enter the room from darkness, but not all all too bright for illuminating N scale trains.  FWIW, for the first time last night, one of my operators mentioned that it was quite bright -- after a 3-hour session.  No one else has commented on it specifically, maybe out of politeness.  Personally I like the bright ambiance, especially for a SoCal setting.

One option is to illuminate the layout shadowbox style and leave the human areas dimmer.  You can also have the lights on several switches so you can turn them on selectively, in lieu of dimming.  I have two columns of 5 fixtures and rows 1,3,5 are on one switch, 2,4 on another, so the ambient level is coarsely selectable.

Great progress!

[C855B]

Yeah, 3000 lux might be a little high. We talked about this before, and I didn't do the math when you mentioned total lumens you had for TBC. Here's a great table I found of recommended lighting levels. Like I said, the 850 lux in the workshop is plenty bright, but that's a 9-foot ceiling, so I might stay with the ~1000 lux target in the layout room given 14-foot ceilings and the inverse-square rule, yada yada yada.

I'm trying hard to avoid the shadowbox style. I've always liked layouts that are open vistas (same way I like 1:1!), and shadowboxes tend to break the layout up into mini-scenes. That's OK if your objective is separated scenes, but it's not my thing. Also don't forget the observation deck... I really do want the ability to view the entire domain from on high. Of course, shadowboxes and soffit lighting are going to be necessary in the far-future part of the layout with the upper deck, but for the time being two-circuit suspended track lighting with Hue bulbs is the game plan for a classy sort of stage lighting.

But anyway, hard decisions on lighting are several months away. I have a bunch of studwalls to build and a boatload of drywall to hang before worrying about what gets put down in the grid.

Oh... forgot to mention my general layout room lighting needs to be on a 3-way switch circuit due to two entrances. Your idea of separately controlling banks of overhead lights as a poor man's dimmer gets very expensive in my case since 14/3 armored cable runs about $1/ft., with each bank consuming 60-100 ft. of cable. An idea is to maybe wire a single 3-way bank for safety illumination and then leave the others conventional. I'll dwell on that a bit.

[GaryHinshaw]

Since you have time to make a decision, you might consider putting a diorama in the workshop and living with it for a while.   Also, see if adding diffusers changes your opinion. 

I totally agree about having an open plan, but I have seen some very nice shadowbox treatments.

[C855B]

A little bit more progress to report. Just before Adam left for school last week, he skeletonized the east wall of the layout room in prep for insulation and a bit of weatherproofing. The last of the old mottled blue-and-purple paint from the AA pool hall is finally gone gone gone. Here's most of the bare frame, with Robyn cleaning-up the formerly-hidden mess behind the old drywall:



The weather was fabulous over the 4th of July weekend, so I spent several hours on the lift making headway on exterior paint. After... what? a year?... I finally found a suitable method for applying the paint - an HVLP pot sprayer. The low capacity vs. the airless sprayer rig is not a problem since I have to get down to move the lift to get to each section within reach. Anyway, progress was huge since I no longer have to fight the sprayer, and it's looking like most will be doable in just two coats. The airless sprayer with the special paint was a disaster - too much paint too f------ fast! No control! I hope to make much more headway later this week after the ground dries enough from last night's storms to bear the weight of the lift on its too-small wheels.

Speaking of last night's storms... more leaks. Several. Dammit. I called the roofing guy and we agreed that it was blow-in around the ridge cap, since it was never a problem unless it was windy. He's ordered a wider ridge cap and we're going to double-seal it this time.

Other projects in the active queue are finishing the attic expansion flooring, countertops in the studio (new laminate just arrived!) and completing base and crown molding in the studio. This is interspersed with working on framing for the east wall you see above, which includes framing to fill the old door opening right about where Robyn has the ladder. Not difficult, just a lot of time with a tape measure, square and levels. Before I add the frame extensions to get from the 8' frame to the 14' new ceiling height, there's that bit of modification to the girts you can see - it needs to be tended to so it's slightly less "cobbled", courtesy of rush work on the portico addition.

[C855B]

Couple of quick notes in passing...

Layout room "general" lighting - decision has been made to "go commercial LED". One issue I found with retrofitting regular troffers is an important little rating known as "IC", or "insulation contact". IC-rated fixtures allow you to stuff (or lay) insulation directly against the fixture. Most home center regular florescent troffers are not IC-rated, requiring clearance around them for heat dissipation. You can order IC-rated fixtures, but at a substantial premium. However, Home Depot (for one) is offering a 6000-lumen LED troffer at a really good price ($119!) that is also IC-rated. Also happens to be dimmable, so there you go.

We are taking a bit of a break from the big stuff. Robyn (and the dog) didn't do anything to wake me this morning, and as a result I slept-in until 10. I had no idea I was so exhausted. The weather is perfect for more painting today, but truth is I don't have it in me to go up and down the ladder a dozen times. We need to make a Menard's run for a handful of large materials for the east wall (above), so we're going to make an afternoon of it and get the heck out of Dodge for a few hours.

[MichaelWinicki]

Don't blame you taking a day off Mike...

You and your Mrs. have been eating this elephant for quite a while now.

[C855B]

Ya' got that right.

Funny thing... unlike most long, complicated projects in our past, while we might lose momentum from time to time (exhaustion, weather, complexity, life interference), we have not lost enthusiasm. Every completed sub-project is celebrated, and stokes us for the next thing(s) on the endless list.

And it doesn't have to be something big, either. A couple of weeks ago I bumped into some miniblinds heavily discounted online, in metallic colors to go with the studio theme. She took the measurements, I placed the order, and in a very few days they arrived and I put them up. FanTAStic! The full look is stunning. We may not be interior decorators in real life, but we seem to play them on TV. Every little accomplishment is usually an "OMG!" as the vision continues to unfold. She started talking about who to invite for the premier party.

Today, even solved a long-term problem in conversation en route to Menard's. I have a bunch of recovered metal siding from the re-skin winter before last. It's taking a lot of space in the middle of the layout room. She proposed a rack under the layout, with the panels stored on their sides. Perfect, as one of the layout peninsulas face the double door to the workshop, so even the 22' roof pieces have a place to live and can be extracted when needed. All these little details add up.

[davefoxx]

Mike,

Am I seeing 2" x 4" or 2" x 6" purlins with a huge span between the rafters?  Is that strong enough to take a snow load?  It looks like some may be sagging as it is.

DFF

[C855B]

2x4s. I would have liked to have replaced with 2x6s, but it would have induced costly issues during the re-roof. That's apparently the way these things were built 40 years ago, or the way this particular builder did it. Which I guess is a way of saying it's not a problem, it's survived this long. When we replaced the roof 17 months ago, it was the original metal. FWIW, it had weathered a small tornado four years ago with surprisingly minor damage even considering that the roof was attached with nails versus modern practice of using screws, which it has now. The building across the street lost their roof fabric.

The poles/trusses are on 13' centers, so it's not like we're looking at 16' or 20' spans. That would be an issue. Also, not easy to see at this angle is the trusses are doubled 2x8s, so there's plenty of strength there.

Your mention, however, has been a smidgeon of concern for plans to add solar panels somewhere down the line. I currently have a game plan to put a single row of panels on each side of the ridge, 5 KW per line of panels. With everything still open, I am seriously considering adding a couple of rows of 2x6s between the trusses and near the peak for insurance. It would be easy enough to do with joist hangers.

[davefoxx]

Good idea.  Maybe you could sister some new 2" x 4"s to the existing 2" x 4"s and double those up, too.  I must add that I'm no civil engineer.

DFF

[C855B]

OK... you sent me on a wild goose chase looking for verification on roof specs. What we have now is borderline. FWIW, the working number for snow loads here is 10-15psf, which is fairly low. That the trusses are doubled on 13' centers makes the estimations difficult since everybody seems to spec 4' or 8' single truss spacings.

Anyway, you make a good point. If I can confirm an issue, the quickest solution is to go with your idea of sistering the 2x4s. If I do this with every purlin it's going to be 120 14' sticks (ouch!). I did notice quite a bit of new wood the roofer did to replace rotted purlins, and it was all pressure-treated, so I will have to ask him if that's a requirement or something he does in general. I am, however, a little concerned about the dead weight load PT wood adds. I also think I should get my P.E. buddy to help me with the calcs since my last structures class was 40 years ago and I never really used it in real life. I'm not current on materials, anyway.

Anyway, "real soon" is the time to fix it, before I get into the finish materials for the interior ceilings.

Oh... I should mention the sagging you might see is a bowed 2x4, not a sag from current or past loads. The curve pattern in the screws on the roof is a bit annoying, but a lot of the wood was like that.

[C855B]

Update time. We have just returned from an all-trains-all-the-time (or so it seemed) adventure to Denver and Ogden. Aside from the UPHS convention in Ogden which was pretty much a snoozer, we spent several hours meeting with the director and key volunteers at the Greeley museum/layout.

There. Maybe I have your attention now.

I made the arrangements for this meeting to get a handle on managing a modern large display layout, and engage in general discussion about small-town museum administration (seeing that I'm president of the local history museum). It was a fantastic meeting, and many thanks to director Michelle Kempema for spending the time and being so open about the nuts and bolts of making it run.

Top on my agenda was operational reliability, so I arranged to meet on a Monday, which they normally schedule as a maintenance workday and are closed to the public.

• There was no work being done on track or electronics on the main layout. It wasn't needed, a testament to care in design and construction.
• Three volunteers were cleaning wheels, for a total of about 15 man-hours. All locomotives are cleaned every Monday, with half of the rolling stock cleaned on a rotating basis.
• In the wheel cleaning process, each car is checked for free-rolling wheels and proper bolster clearance. Several cars per session seem to develop loose bolsters and need to be adjusted.
• Track cleaning is with cleaner trains run each day prior to opening. They use the CMX Clean Machine with denatured alcohol, the solvent of choice in all their track and wheel cleaning. I noticed a couple of fellows doing spot hand cleaning while we were there.
• They are able to deflect some of the "young fingers" problems with a small Lionel, Thomas-themed layout at toddler level, protected by Plexiglas. It is an automated layout run by dropping a quarter into a coin box. It was noted it was not a profit center, that all visitors with young children are given quarters at the front door and encouraged to feed the little layout and watch it run. Brilliant.
• OTOH, damage from adult visitors and even volunteers was noted to be a problem. They have some very nice ship models, and it was explained that almost weekly they are dealing with broken parts. We were regaled on how one volunteer managed to break off every external detail on a set of F units in rough handling. A volunteer.
• Michelle and I spent some time discussing their layout lighting. Apparently there were some initial design issues with insufficient control circuits that become a problem when they want special effects. They're still working on it.
• They have 80-100,000 visitors a year.
• Most of the facility is not ADA-compliant since it wasn't originally designed to be a public space. They accommodate this by waiving the admission fee for patrons needing accessible access.

The "not originally designed to be a public space" got my attention. Apparently the layout's creator - Steve ? - did roughly the same thing we are doing, buy a building and design a large dream layout into it. It's not a club. Volunteers are not actively recruited, it's a "build it, they will come".


Other than the trip and meeting - my head is full - not much new has been going on with the GC&W quarters. I've been poking around with structural fixes in anticipation of insulation and studwall extensions and hope to have the fixes wrapped-up today. A little more exterior painting is done, with the west wall probably two more days to finished once we get a break in the weather. Roofing contractor is on tap to fix some rain blow-in problems with the ridge cap. Robyn has been fighting a nasty cold she picked-up on the trip, so that's slowing down insulation. I may have to step in since it's already mid-August and we have two months before the weather turns. I don't want a repeat of last winter.