Small reward, big effort

For weeks, I’ve been avoiding the big pile of boxes that the restoration vapers left in the basement in front of the layout. My darling wife, understanding that neither they nor she would put everything back where it belongs, instructed them to leave the boxes. Of course, unpacking boxes takes little effort. Running the cables […]

Drywall removal

Well, here we are, drying out the basement again. This time we chose to do some of the demolition ourselves. The contents were all out on Friday thanks to Laura and the kids (The Girl had a Pro-D day, and The Boy had been up in the middle of the night shifting boxes and furniture, […]

Not again!

Why are those balloons floating just off the floor like that? Remember the flood we had in January? Well, we thought we had fixed it all and capped off the floor drain. Tonight’s heavy rain has come in through the basement door instead. Because we discovered it at ten o’clock, we have really struggled to […]

Just about finished drawing #622

Tonight as I was drawing the step that the fireman would use to light the headlight (imagine that at night at -30 Celsius!), I thought I must be just about finished with the drawing. So, I dropped all the parts into an OnShape assembly to see what is yet to be drawn. I discovered the […]

Flood update – Game On!

Wow, construction sure goes a lot faster when teams of professionals show up and work all day, rather than a lone amateur burning the midnight oil! Today, all the cabinets in the train room were reinstalled. So, this weekend we can excavate Mt Flood and get some tools out. As we say in street hockey: […]

Update on the Flood

I was overwhelmed by the number of people curious about the state of our basement recovery at the Railway Modellers Meet last weekend. Today we made some serious progress, when Matt, the conscientious floor installer put most of the subfloor down. Like every other worker who has come to our rescue, Matt took one look […]

Excavating Mt Flood

There is not much more of this virtual modelling I can stand before I need to get physical again! What’s more, there are some parts of 622 that need to integrate with commercial parts. So tonight I took to the garage, knife and tape in hand, to dig through the pile of boxes that I […]

Flood update: but of course it’s under a stud!

As we don’t want another flood, the Boy and I spent more than an hour getting at the offending floor drain today. Naturally, it is under a stud (supporting an electrical outlet), and so, it wasn’t a simple matter to get at it. The hole is simply straight through the concrete, 3 1/2 inches in […]

Flood update: cabinets removed

Over the past couple of days, OnSide has made further progress toward remediating the flood. The cabinets were removed on Monday afternoon, and heaped in the middle of the floor. Most of them were moved to a warehouse yesterday, except the big one, which doesn’t fit up the stairs. The movers protected it and fixed […]

Packing away

Demolition starts tomorrow, and that is somewhat incompatible with fine models. So today, they all went into boxes. Most of my stock fits into some old cookie tins from Christmases past, which are now sadly devoid of cookies, but perfectly shaped for hold HO scale rolling stock. Some ancient rubber foam separates each piece, and […]