Slow and Steady

Well the progress has been slow but steady, the section of wall with the return loop has been swung into position. The legs for the wall have been secured to the floor now that everything is sitting where it is meant to. Getting the return loop level took some considerable time, just due to the way it screws together.The outer staging has been secured into place, it went back together very well, it lined up exactly with the existing screw holes and the track bed lined up perfectly as well.

A panoramic shot showing the complete peninsula for the door.

 Just a general view of the return loop area

 The outer staging is in the bottom right of picture, the return loop is up the top sticking up to the left, the bit of track work that you can see in the lower left of the picture will sit above the return loop.

A view inside the peninsula. The return loop track is at the bottom right of picture.

Progress Report

The reassembly is ticking along as you can see by the photos. It is becoming easier to move around the shed as things get put back together.

The staging tracks have been secured in place at the end of the aisle. Final adjustment of the wall on the right is still required.

Panoramic shot from the shed door. The piece of wall on the left will be spun 90 degrees and butted up against the the wall section that ends in the middle of the shot

Staging tracks on the outside of the peninsula are sitting in place, waiting for final assembly.

Staging tracks on the outside of peninsula, looking down the other side.

Now Where Does This Piece Go??

Well a picture tells a thousand words.. After the big move I shut the door on the shed and forgot about it for a few weeks. I was just over working on the shed. It had been a pretty intense 7 weeks to get it ready. Unfortunately I didn't have time to paint it, at the very least I was hoping to get it painted in an undercoat, but as you can see that didn't happen. It will happen at some stage but now I have things to paint around.

Here is a panoramic shot taken from the door the day after the move. What a mess/puzzle!

My first job was to roughly install some fluro tubes, These will follow the layout around, but i'm not sure where the edge is yet, so a temporary installation will have to do. This was the the first section installed. It runs along the back wall of the shed (left of picture) and it has the grade down to staging. Putting this section up gave me a small amount of floor space through which to walk and use.

A bit later looking the other direction along the back wall (right of picture) I've put the first bit of top deck on because it was a really awkward shape, and was always in the way.  I am holding off putting any more of the top deck on until I have finished the staging tracks. It's all to do with access.

I was able to get Norm Bray to give me a hand to position the two bits of internal wall. We had to unpack the shed, move stuff around and then repack it. There just isn't the space in the shed to move bits around to their final locations. Thanks Norm!

Here is a shot from the door looking at the other side of the internal wall. It's slowing coming together. Fortunately Brendan took lots of photos whilst he constructed it, and these have been invaluable in putting it back together, as have our hand written notes on the timbers.

I had this great idea that I would use the existing screw holes to put it back together. It worked really well until I looked along a long straight section of track going down to the staging and discovered that I had built a roller coaster. The screw holes work for the horizontal plane, but not for the vertical as the undulations in my slab floor and in a different location to Brendan's slab floor. Doh!

Anyway with the use of a laser level, some brute force and ignorance I got the subframe back to level, now I just need to adjust the track bed.

The bench work across the far wall has been found and installed.

I had a small disaster here. although the photo does not clearly show what has happened, that section leaning at 45 degrees is now about 4 feet to short. There was a join which was not adequately supported  and when I pushed it into place it let go. All the staging tracks were torn apart on the join, Grrr something else to do.

The Move

With the settlement of Brendan's house fast approaching and my shed being as ready as it was going to get, we looked at the winter forecast and picked a day. Monday the 8th of June was to be the day of the move unless the weather turned nasty.
In the week leading up to the 8th the weather forecast was regularly checked. The forecast kept changing, but as the day got closer it seemed to settle down to windy with a chance of showers late in the afternoon, but being Melbourne we took a "we'll see on the morning" approach.
Also during the week preceding the move some dis-assembly work was undertaken. Brendan had to remove an internal wall in his shed to allow everything to come out in large pieces, and of course part of the layout was attached to this wall.
To actually move the layout we ended deciding to use a car transport trailer with a solid deck. I hired this from the local servo and it turned out to be perfect for the task.
Well on the morning the weather that was dished up was very windy but dry. We can work with that. So at about 8:30am we started, I can't say how many trips were made, probably about 10. Due to the fact it was only a short trip we didn't try to cram everything onto the trailer at once, so we loaded to try and cause minimal damage whilst keeping it in large pieces.

Here is one of the loads already to go

Most of the track has been removed at this stage. We are about to pull apart the curved wall and remove the track from within it, to get this view Brendan had to remove an internal wall from the shed which ran left to right across the foreground of this picture.

Early evening and we are still going, just one more internal wall to go, everything else has been removed and transported to it's new home.

Brendan's shed, minus the layout. Just debris and lights left.

To get those internal walls into my shed we needed to remove the end wall cladding and center purlin. This is why I had to leave part of the internal wall unfinished, We just slid the internal wall framing out of the way. In the back ground you can see the jigsaw puzzle that is now my railroad empire. The shed also has "aircell" insulation in the walls which makes a fair bit of difference to the internal temperature vs outside temperature.