Finding a train room (2)

 Converting half my garage into a train room.  The saga continues

The ongoing joke with my modelling friends, is where will I be placing all those structures I am making, as  I still do not have a layout. 

Anyone in the AR region of the NMRA will recognise this picture, as it is the background for the 23/24 membership card.  I took this picture of the XPT from the Kemp Street bridge at Junee in February 2023.  Al Harris (the membership officer) asked me if I had anything suitable as a background, and he selected this shot from the half dozen I sent him

Background.

The idea was to convert the rear of my 12 x 9 metre garage into a purpose built train room, measuring 9 x 6 metres.  The garage had been built around 1990, and the original owners, had provisioned plumbing in the slab, as well as windows, and doors for a room, and ensuite. 

 To save me repeating, I will refer the reader to my earlier post, posted in 2018.

 https://buildingwagga.blogspot.com/2018/02/qbx-004-iat-junee-roundhouse.html

Since then

Back in 2018, I knew there would be some delays, as there were some necessary steps I needed to do to clear the rear of the brick garage, primarily related with storage.

I obtained a 20 foot container, and positioned this down near my water tanks.  

In 2019, I had a 2 car garage installed, to hide the container

After fitting out with shelves, the parking space on the RHS was immediately taken up to house a dog trailer that previously was stored outside, and in my opinion, should have been left there.  On the LHS, some of the timber, and sheets of plywood for the future layout.

An addition to the brick garage put in by the original owners, was a brick wall, to enclose what I expect was for the original ensuite.  This wall had to go, as it was too wide for my planned ensuite, and if left, would have imposed on the aisle widths, and track radius

The bricks had been laid directly onto the concrete slab, which allowed their removal leaving no imperfections, apart from a ghost image in the floor 

Almost gone.  The bricks were recycled and stacked outside.  The mortar was broken up into small lumps, and filled some holes in my driveway.  Note the plumbing in the slab

In the middle of 2019, I had another unexpected delay.  That was the need to construct an N scale layout - an interpretation of the Bethungra Loop, for the local Broadway museum.  The space in the brick garage that I had cleared, became the work area. 

The Bethungra loop layout just prior to its extraction from my garage in mid 2020.  I wrote up this build in around 10 blog posts, which you can find if you put in "Bethungra" into the search area on the top RHS of this blogpost

Fires and Covid

The summer of 2019/20 was a disaster.  Whilst the closest fire was Dunns Road megafire in Jan and February, it had a major effect on the whole S.E NSW area. 

Here is a real colour image of the smoke from the Dunns Road fire, taken from my front driveway.  The fire front was around 50 km away.  The particulate matter count in Junee on Feb 4th 2020 was 9,132 - where 200 is deemed hazardous

Rebuilding from the fires, gave a lot of work to the local building firms.

Then came Covid.  Whilst the shutdowns did not significantly affect movement in NSW country areas, there was an exodus of people wanting to permanently leave Sydney.  And their destinations were the regional towns/cities.  Wagga Wagga seemed to be very popular, and the number of new houses being built just soaked up any spare building capacity......and it is still happening

Which made my small refurbishment unimportant in the scheme of things.

I had approached 4 builders directly - 2 actually showed up to inspect the work, and then disappeared.  Even an online request via hi-pages failed to attract any interest

Recent thoughts

Of course, in hindsight, the 2 car garage in the paddock could have been made larger, and it could have housed my proposed layout.  If I had known the issues of obtaining builders now, then it would have been perfectly acceptable.  I even contemplated simply building the layout in the brick garage, and not worry about  walls, ceilings, ensuite, kitchette.  Although that would have lead to other problems, vermin (mouse), dust, temperature variations, and the reality that the layout would forever be compromised, and maybe get abandoned

White knight

One of my mates, Brett has in the last month taken pity on my plight.  He recently was with the NSW Public Works department, but had left to take up an assessor role with the insurance industry.  He knew of my desire for a layout, and offered to assist me in the build.  As can be expected, he has a day job, but my room is something that can be built on occasional weekends, without a fixed schedule which suits us both.  Brett's skills are as a chippy, but has contacts from his previous experience, which is great

Bunnings delivering the first material.  Brett had arranged a material quote with Bunnings, which I paid for

Timber Framing, yellow tongue sheeting, and some other hardware as delivered to my driveway.  As rain was expected, I needed to move all this under cover - the 20 sheets of Yellow tongue proved to be a 3 hr challenge - who needs gyms

The wall framed out

And mounted upright.  Brett insisted that if I wanted 6 metres, then I would get 6 metres, so the wall imposes a little on the garage car space.  I am really happy with this compromise

Another change from my original idea was to install a doorway from the train room, into the garage area. The doorway will be a big benefit later, although it will affect the length of the staging tracks at that end.  

Next steps.

I have to arrange an electrician to rough out the wiring for the power points, room lights, and future air conditioning.  More timber will be needed to frame out the ensuites area, and for the plaster board sheeting in the walls, and ceiling.  I also need to further clear my train room area - there is still too much stuff in the way

Until next time, build a model (or two)