1200 Miles West

Yes, I have a problem.  I am addicted to tools.  I do not discriminate - woodworking, metalworking, heck even yard work.

My frantic “We gots to go to University NOW!” was the result of me spying a nice deal for a MIG welder on Craigslist this afternoon.  A real Lincoln Electric including an Argon/CO gas cylinder.  Apparently my timing and tactic of offering slightly more than asking price was perfect because the seller said he got over 20 emails in the first couple of hours.

The transaction went smoothly other than Erin running extremely late and almost blowing the entire deal.  the seller was a nice kid on his way to grad school. He bought the welder to work on an old car but never really had the time.  The welder was in great shape.

Why do I need a welder one might ask?  Well, I have dreams of building a living, breathing live steam locomotive some day.  Like the kind these grown men play with at the Colorado Live Steamers just outside of Denver.  A welder is but one tool of the list of tools I need to pull that off.  A lathe and a mill among other things are also on that list.  Hopefully, over the next several months (spaced out lest I be sleeping in the garage with my beloved tools), I can spy more good deals on Craigslist.

My steam engine is not a weekend project.  I actually acquired the plans and some castings almost a year ago.  It will take quite a while to gather the tools and materials not too mention 100’s if not 1000’s of hours of turning, milling, welding, silver soldering, riveting, threading, bending, and cutting.  Good thing I have a patient spousal unit.

FAQ:

Does this mean I am not playing with my trains in the basement? - I will continue to work on my basement trains.  They each scratch a different itch.

Does this mean I am not building a garden railroad?  - Well… I can see the possibility of a small loop in the backyard at some point but this year I will be focused on Arbors and Trellis’s.

Will you drive the steam engine in the backyard? - The steam engine I want to build is big enough to ride on - about 4′ long and will weigh about 500 pounds.  It won’t fit in the backyard.  More than likely I will join the Colorado Live Steamers where they will have 2.5 miles of track.

Don’t you have enough hobbies - Woodworking, Model Trains, and now Metalworking? - Well true but you’ll notice that they follow a pattern - I like to build stuff with my hands.  Not sure why the force is strong but I enjoy it and get better with every new project.

When will you have time?  - Good question.  A little here, a little there, over the course of a lifetime it adds up.

We weren’t impressed by the city of Pueblo, however we did get out of the car and walk through their collection of trains that was part of the Pueblo Railway Museum. The museum wasn’t “open”, but we were able to walk through and look at the different trains.

I’m not sure that we’ll be heading back to Pueblo anytime soon, but at least we got to enjoy the trains while we were there.

During our drive into work on Friday, Mike and I discussed options for what we could do on Saturday. They were predicting the temperatures would reach 70 degrees, so we figured we’d take advantage of the warm weather and head down to Canyon City to ride the Royal Gorge Route Railroad.

We bought our tickets online and elected to sit in the vista dome portion of the train.

Upon boarding the train, we found our table and sat down. They offered a full drink menu, along with snack/sandwich type food. We had eaten breakfast at Le Peep on the way in, so we just nibbled on some chips and salsa during the ride.

We spent the first 30 or so minutes inside the train car, but then headed outside to the open air car to enjoy the sun and the views.

We made it outside in time to see grab a few pictures as we approached the Royal Gorge Bridge.

Here’s the view from under the bridge.

The entire trip lasted about 2 hours and while we chatted about heading up to the bridge to walk across the Royal Gorge, we didn’t make it. Instead we headed to Pueblo to check out their restored depot and their collection of trains.

In order to have the freedom to build my model train content without polluting the 1200mileswest blog beyond recognition, I have moved the train content to a new blog called Building Model Trains. The new blog can be found at http://www.buildingmodeltrains.com.

I will continue posting general interest stuff on this blog of course.

A few minutes on godaddy.com combined with Erin’s help netted me a couple of nice domains - mikesmodeltrains.com and buildingmodeltrains.com. A quick Word Press install ( It is so easy, even I can be a pro ), some DNS work by my hosting provider and friend Andrew Kerr of servershack.com and I was off and running.

Trains are running! It was nice to dust off the pieces after several months of being packed up after the big move. It took some effort to get things wired up again and the electronics were a little cranky but after 30 minutes or so the chuff of steam and ding of the bell were alive again.

The middle picture shows the current progress of track laying. Track is now laid from the sawmill site to the tip of the canyon.

The final picture is of all the tools that I use to lay and wire track. It is a very precise operation and a man can never have enough tools.

1. Solder Feeder wires to bottom of rails.
2. Drill holes for feed wires to pass through plywood to wire bus.
3. Trim and fit track together with adjacent piece using rail cutters and rail joiners.
4. Drill tiny holes in a few of the ties for spikes to attach track to roadbed.
5. Connect feeder wires to bus using suitcase connectors. Suitcase connectors are the best and deserve their own blog post.

Due to the wonderfully snowy weather, I was able to spend some quality time in the basement with my trains. I have made some real progress on the benchwork. For the uninitiated that is the structure upon which my train layout will be built. The picture is down the long axis of the approximately 5 X 16 foot peninsula. The area in the foreground will contain a canyon and a spindly trestle bridge. The area to the left will contain a small town and sawmill area. The right side of the layout will contain a mountain logging camp.

The vertical pieces of wood in the center will support the backdrop. It is difficult to maintain the illusion of climbing hundreds of feet up in the mountains from town when you can see the town just a foot away. The backdrop will be painted with either just sky blue or if I can find a starving artist, a nice mountain landscape. I am hoping for a starving artist.

The grey stuff is a pressed paper product called Homasote that I use for sound deadening. The track is laid on top of the Homasote. Supposedly it has multiple applications but the guy at the lumber yard says that the only people that buy it are Model Railroaders.

There have been many questions asked about what I bought at the train show. Okay, maybe just Erin keeps throwing the question out there.

<= Here it is in all of its splendor. I bought a tank car for the garden railroad planned for next summer. The thing I love about the garden size railroad equipment is that it has real heft and mass. Note the beer bottle on the left for scale. I am thinking of building a special car for the cats to ride. I am sure they would be thrilled.

Thank you to all that voted on my basement utilization poll. The voters overwhelming supported a 100% train utilization plan. Overwhelmed with joy, I filled reams of graph paper with preliminary designs.

A few short hours later, I was jerked back to reality as I realized this was not a democracy and the weight of one spousal unit vote far exceed the support of all my friends and family.

Out of the almost 1000 square feet of basement space, I am thrilled to report that I have been allocated 23.7% in the form of the 13 X 19 square foot space highlighted in red.

We are lucky to have a walk out basement with lots of light in on the left side of the drawing above and plan to incorporate a bar and bathroom in the coming years. Combined with new backyard landscaping and a patio, I am sure finishing the space will add value to the house and be used frequently when entertaining.

All of our useless storage items have been awarded 24% of the basement in the form of a 10 X 24 foot storage room.

I will include a follow up post on the thought process for how to fill that space in the coming days. It is a good amount of space but I have had to leave behind two years of research on representing the West Side Lumber company fairly accurately. My new plans center around including as many interesting scenes as I can in my 237 square feet regardless of prototype fidelity.

I have been to MANY train shows in many different locations across the country. Many of them are a waste of time and energy due to a lack of quality layouts to look at. The train show I attended this morning in Denver was one of the better ones I have seen in some time. Kudos to the local clubs that brought their sectional layouts to the show. It is a lot of work.

The picture is on the left is rather poor due to not using a real camera but instead using my BB.

On a different note - Has Ebay killed the train show dealer? The quality of dealers not only at this show but many of the ones I have been to in the last couple years has been suffering. There is NO variety and much of the inventory seems to be same crap they have been dragging around since the mid 90’s. Guess what? We didn’t want your overpriced toy quality crap at the last show and we won’t want it at the next ten shows.

How about some quality stuff? On30 has exploded in the last couple of years but there was almost no items for sale. How about some O scale detail items and figures? How about scratch building material or scenery products? I am okay with the Thomas the Train booths as there are so many kids it only makes sense but if you are catering to the serious modeler, get rid of the crap!

I would have never guessed that my friends and family would vote to give Mike the entire basement to use as his train room. I could see 1/4 (which is what I voted for!) or even a half, but the WHOLE thing? Wow - I didn’t realize there were so many train lovers out there.

I guess I better find a hobby that doesn’t require any basement space.