Monday, April 25, 2022

One step forward, three steps back

The broad gauge yard starting to come together

The farm scene was the only sceniced part of the layout



 Time for an update on the new layout, and the news is there currently is no layout! I had been making good progress with about 60% of the track laid, when disaster struck at the end of January. We had over 100mm of rain in a 24 hour period, and the water just couldn't get away. I had around 50mm of water over the floor for about 12 hours. There was no damage to the layout itself but I did loose some magazines and other stuff that had been stored in boxes on the floor.

I had a builder look at the room and the consensus was the only way to stop it happening again was to lift the floor level. I had been having an ongoing effort to keep the room waterproof, and thought I had succeeded. The storm showed that not only had I not, but I had failed in a big way. The damage is very minor compared to what so many have suffered in this extremely wet summer, but is still very frustrating.

The layout is in the back of our garage  


So the decision was made to pull down the layout and lift the floor level by 100mm. Better to do it now while the layout is unsceniced and in such an early phase. It would be a much harder decision if this had happened in a few years time. This has now been done and the room is close to being finished with the floating floor back in and a new door etc. I can recommend hybrid flooring if you are concerned about your floor getting wet. I was able to reuse most of it and the most damage I had was a bit of mustiness.

I have used the enforced break from layout building to finish a number of model railway projects unrelated to the layout. It is also an opportunity to reevaluate what was working well with my design and what I could change to make it better. I suspect that when construction restarts in the next month that there will be a few changes.

Getting the concrete to the garage was a challenge