Well, I think I did put it up sort of backwards, but it's in the back of the building and other than you guys, no one, and I mean no one will ever notice. I have the diagonals running from the door center to the bottom hinge corner. It could prevent sagging, but it's not kosher.
Since we had the grandkids this weekend and #1 wanted to work on the trains, how could I refuse so I got a rare weekend work session on both Saturday and Sunday. He wanted to work on the retaining wall so we worked on it together and then he continued. We traced the grade onto the back of the Masonite so the top of the wall would sort of be at railhead height. We then worked together to set up a cutting fence and use the saber saw to cut off the excess. We taped all five pieces together on the cellar floor and measured off the 10" spacing between buttresses. I showed him how to use a carpenter's marking gauge and scribe off the distance from the top that the buttresses would end.
I set up a fence on the chop saw and he cut the 1.5" and .75" pieces to length. I showed him how to taper the tops of both pieces on the belt sander and he beveled all the parts. Then he set out to glue them together. That was Saturday.
On Sunday, he glued the buttresses onto the wall aligning the buttress top with the scribed line on the wall. This had to dry so he kept checking every ten minutes and went upstairs and played on the computer. After it was dry, I showed him how to trim them off at the bottom again using the saber saw. After trimming a few needed a sanding touch-up. We placed them back on the railroad to see how it looked.
With that, his work was done. He's now on a class trip to marine research island off the coast of Alabama. I was thinking about painting the Krylon beige sand paint today since the temperature was right, but the breeze was too high and it was threatening to rain, so I went back to work on the boiler house. I was installing windows when grandson was working on the retaining wall. On Saturday I built the clerestory windows using pressure sensitive adhesive to hold the glazing to the frame and Formula 560 to hold the frame to the building. I found that frames kept disappearing due to them sticking to my shop coat. Three of the them went this route.
On Sunday I was building the main windows using the same glues as before. I got 7 done and found myself one short. I could have sworn that I counted 8, so I looked in all the usual places. I simply didn't have it. I was about ready to call Andre and send out an SOS to have him cut me another one. After a snack I went to put my shop coat back on and there it was stuck to the bottom of my left sleeve. I didn't see it there since it was always out of my view. I built and installed the last window today.
The windows are sweet! The mullions are a mere 1/32" wide. In this picture I'm showing the floor officially installed, again with PSA. With the interior painted and windows in, it seemed like the right time to get the flooring in. I then turned my attention to the lighting. The plan was to have the LEDs facing upwards and reflecting on some white on the roof. I used some white duct tape and put the reflectors on the roof halves. I also used the n-gauge-track-as-bus-bar method as I did with the main building, but this time, I left it as track. All I had to do was cut the ties off the ends to expose some bare ends, and mount the whole deal to the truss.
The first thing I needed to do was combine the two inner trusses so they could be stable. Since you can't see them very well, I just CA'd some pieces of wood cut to the truss spacing and glued to the trusses. I cut the track to extend out each end about an inch. I thought I was using the warm white LEDs, but instead was using pure white 3mm LEDs. These are the ones that you find in the ubiquitous LED flashlights and give a blue cast. In this case, it will look like the building is lit with fluorescents. I tried first with just two LEDs, but it wasn't bright enough since it was mostly bounce lighting, so I made two parallel sets of two LEDs each. I went on line to the LED calculator and it was telling me a different resistor value than I was using. I used that value and nothing lit, so I went back to my 470 ohm value. Again nothing lit. It turns out that I had the + and - reversed (DOH!). I rewired it and both sets worked.
I combined both leads into one and again tested everything. To hold the track to the trusses I used my trusty twisted black iron wire over each rail and the truss member. I use a hemostat to twist the wires just like orthodontists used to do when braces were stainless with metal wires holding them to the bands. The black iron doesn't cross over the rails and there are no shorts.
Here's the assembly in the building. It's not glued in yet since the interior equipment needs to be installed. BTW: the floor is held down with PSA spread thin and evenly over the entire sub floor. Sticks like crazy and really made installing the floor very easy and quick.
I did a lighting test (or three), with lights off, just my table light on, and the room lights on.
My bounce lighting idea works as I wanted. It provides even floor lighting with no hot spots. It's also bright enough to see inside with the room lights on. With them off it's very bright indeed. I still have a few interiors details to add before equipment: framing around the loading door and a door to the corridor that leads to the main building. The steam and condensate lines are also running through the corridor.
