17 Progress Phase III 01
View from the front door: The change is obvious and immediate the moment you look into the building from the front door. Bang! There is the main Helix in its final location. leaning against it is some of the 1 1/2" square steel tubing welded into the legs for one of the end caps. The steel "F" legs can be seen from the end of the incomplete bench with the lower level bench top/horizontal shear panel in place. Self tapping wafer head screws are used to join the plywood to the steel. they require a 3/32" pilot hole in the steel and we countersink the plywood so the screws are flush with the surface.
Capture Date: Jan 10, 2014 01:05 PM•Views: 683
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17 Progress Phase III 02
The "F" steel leg units are clearly seen here. A full sheet of 1/2" plywood on edge is screwed to a pair of legs to form an 8 foot long section of bench. This vertical sheet acts as a vertical shear panel to keep the legs upright and parallel, preventing any twist into a trapezoid shape. The top of the bench is also an eight foot long by width of the bench sheet of plywood to prevent shear horizontally. Spline roadbed with cork on top will support the track; the bench "top" is mainly a structural member. No upper level bench tops are yet in place. They will be laid across the top of the "F" bars, and spline roadbed with cork will be on the upper level also. The upper level of this bench is intentionally much more narrow than the lower bench top. The upper level will be the minor yards of Sinclair Oil and Rawlins, and the lower bench is for the very large Green River Yard. Note that all of the legs have steel bolts screwed into plates in the leg bottoms for levelers.
Capture Date: Jan 10, 2014 01:05 PM•Views: 637
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17 Progress Phase III 03
This is the back of the bench just shown. The aisle on this side will have a riser like that at the right of the new carpeting still in rolls at the right of this photo, so this aisle will be used to access and work the upper level. The last photo was looking down a lower level aisle.
Capture Date: Jan 10, 2014 01:06 PM•Views: 632
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17 Progress Phase III 04
This is looking down the lower level aisle again, and the end cap can be seen that connects the two benches. Below the lower level benches on each aisles can be seen the Oregon Short Line (OSL) hidden track. This track junctions into the main on the left hand lower level just out of the picture in the foreground, then turns nearly 360 degrees and drops down rapidly to under the mains and continues away from the camera, wraps around the end cap and continues on the right, now well below the lower bench, the 1 x 6 framing for which can be seen near the right center extending out to the end cap.
Capture Date: Jan 10, 2014 01:06 PM•Views: 627
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17 Progress Phase III 05
This is the OSL corked hidden track road bed that has been swung out to the outer edges of the tow benches to maximize the radius of the 180 degree curve. The riser on the far side of this end cap can be seen through the opening that has not received its final sheet of Masonite covering. Compare the lower elevation of the OSL track here with that in the next picture.
Capture Date: Jan 10, 2014 01:07 PM•Views: 613
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17 Progress Phase III 06
This is the other side of the same aisle and the OSL is swung outward to make the 180 degree curve at the end cap as large as possible (about a 49" radius). Before laying the track here, Allen Montgomery shown bend over working away, laid temporary flex track on this section to test the curve and the elongated S curves at each end.
Capture Date: Jan 10, 2014 01:07 PM•Views: 620
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17 Progress Phase III 07
This is a better view of the S curves used to bump the track out to the "outside" (back) edges of these two benches to maximize the radius. The red painted lines on the floor are the bench outlines. The aisles are 41 inches wide for the whole layout except for two 36 inch "pinch points" about 32 inches long each. The cross aisle through the end cap openings was originally 41 inches, but we used 4" to mount the yellow switch panels that control the Tortoise machines in Cheyenne. During operations we found that this aisle was very crowded and will be more so when this bench is done, so we widened that aisle from the 41 less 4" (37") by 12" so that it is now 49 inches wide.
Capture Date: Jan 10, 2014 01:07 PM•Views: 619
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17 Progress Phase III 08
View of the next bench from the other direction to be built showing the steel legs clamped temporarily together. The helix is now in its final location near the front doors. This and the next bench to its left are narrow benchs (24") compared to the 35" Green River bench. The 24" benches are for the Red Desert region of southwestern Wyoming where there are few towns. (Creston, Wamsutter and Table Rock on the upper level and Thayer, Point of Rocks and Bittercreek on the lower level, and these are mostly scenic locations).
Capture Date: Jan 10, 2014 01:08 PM•Views: 625
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17 Progress Phase III 09
This shows the 12" riser extension in width to the Cheyenne Aisle making it 49 inches wide. Cheyenne is just out of the picture to the right and is very busy. On this side of that aisle is Laramie, a busy yard beyond the new bench here, and the Hanna coal mines will be on this new bench's upper level end cap. The OSL hidden track corked roadbed can be seen through the sturdy large radius curved fascia bench work.
Capture Date: Jan 10, 2014 01:08 PM•Views: 617
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17 Progress Phase III 10
Allen is working from the bottom up on the trackwork. The OSL single track is being glued down here before the lower level bench top is applied, then the upper level will be done last. You can see that the 1 x 6 box framework to support the lower bench top has only been built up to just his left.
Capture Date: Jan 10, 2014 01:09 PM•Views: 628
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17 Progress Phase III 11
A good view of the broad S curve on one side to maximize the OSL end cap radius while keeping the "hidden" track mostly at the front of the layout and fairly accessible from the aisle.
Capture Date: Jan 10, 2014 01:09 PM•Views: 651
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17 Progress Phase III 14
I model the grades of the UP across Wyoming by varying the HO tracks in elevation to match the prototype oscillations up and down across the prairies and mountians. I have a set of UP Profile Charts that give the elevation in feet above sealevel at many locations, and those charts have each milepost shown. So I can calculate the prototype grade and match the model grade to it, and it works out amazingly well considering the length compression of the model. I some places the model grades are 1.6x the UP grades (Sherman Hill--to make it so steep that helpers are required), but in others they are comparable. It is because of the attention to the grades that in our operations we change from Big Boys with helpers up Sherman HIll and the Wasatch Mountains to lighter power across the "bowl" of Wyoming with those two grades at each end.
Capture Date: Jan 10, 2014 01:10 PM•Views: 624
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17 Progress Phase III 020514 01
By this date (2/5/14) all three new benches are nearing completion. The main helix upper framework is across the bottom of this photo taken from an addition to the mezzanine bridging the 12 feet between the south edge of the mezzanine and the top of the bathroom walls. This makes about 150 sq feet more "floor" space on the mezzanine, and we have moved Allen's workbench up there with the roof of the two bathrooms as storage space fro modeling materials. The three new benches can be seen with the third one still needing the top level plywood sheet, and the steel leg sets exposed.. Greg keeps it painted as we progress. The
Capture Date: Feb 5, 2014 02:45 PM•Views: 583
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17 Progress Phase III 020514 02
Taken from a slightly different angle and from the level of the mezzanine from the new bridge between the mezzanine and the top of the bathroom walls. The 17 inch tall riser and the two steps up to it are visible on the far right, and the helix is more clearly in view from this angle. The upper helix leads are not connected to the upper level of the right hand bench across the aisle with the riser, because the right hand bench is not completed yet and is without the top deck at this time. We covered the existing layout and trains with thin painter's sheet plastic, and the east end of the Cheyenne freight yard is under the sheet to the right. Staging is on the lower level of the plastic sheeted bench.
Capture Date: Feb 5, 2014 02:45 PM•Views: 586
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17 Progress Phase III 013114 14
From the corner of the mezzanine this shows the east end of the Cheyenne freight yard under the plastic on the top bench which was completed first in Phase I. Under it is staging. The phone is one of the 8 connecting various locations on the upper level to the dispatchers on the mezzanine. There are 8 more phones on the lower level aisles which are at floor level. Note that every other aisle has a riser to work the elevated upper level (at a nominal height of 61 1/2 inches + spline for elevation control of the grades) and the alternate aisles have none to work the lower level from floor level. The upper level of the bench at the left here is for Sinclair Oil (refinery and Sinclair, Wyo) and Rawlins, Wyo. Around the end cap below the frame the tracks will wind across the grass lands prairie of Wyoming which will gradually change into the barren prairie of the Red Desert in southeastern Wyoming and up to the helix. W of Rawlins are the well known place names of Wamsutter and Table Rock on the Red Desert.
Capture Date: Feb 7, 2014 11:50 AM•Views: 582
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