As a birthday wish... I worked on the railroad today. I started with the first trip to Home Depot to buy the wrong length Tapcons, some new Titebond Glue, a better 5/16" nut driver that won't round out when driving Tapcons, and some shorter deck screws.
I then began work. To make it easier, I moved my temporary work table—an actual park of the train old layout that will be returned back to its initial purpose—into the middle of the room where I could assemble and drill the brackets without crawling around on the floor so much.
When I tried to chuck my long, fancy 1/2" Bosch (made in Germany) hammer drill bit it wouldn't center and wobbled all over the place. it was actually doing that when I drilled the hole for the first bracket, but it didn't dawn on me why. So I looked at what was going on and realized that the Bosch bit was designed for their heavy duty hammer drill and it had four milled grooves on the shank to lock into the Bosch unit. But four doesn't go into three and the three-jaw chuck couldn't center the bit so it ran horribly off-center.
So it was back to Home Depot before I could go any further. They took both the wrong Tapcons and the lightly used Bosch bit. I then bought a hammer-drill bit that had a straight shank. It also didn't have to be so long. I had originally thought that I'd have to drill through the 2 X 2 and then the wall for more than 3 inches with this bit. But that's not how I'm doing it. I'm pre-drilling the clearance hole in the 2 X 2, marking the hole with a sharpie, moving the wood aside, pilot-drilling a little hole with the Tapcon drill, and then using the big drill to make the 3.5" hole.
As a result of experience being a great teacher, I got two more brackets mounted, and started preparing for the brace that's going into the inside corner on the back wall.
I then noticed a slight problem. On the existing layout pieces, the L-girder's bottom is 34" above the floor, but on my brackets it was only 29". I don't know where the error crept in, but it's not serious. For the first two I mounted, I will simply mount the L-girders onto a 2 X 2 bolted vertically in between the two horizontal braces high enough to match the height of the other girders. For the back two brackets, I just raised them off the floor so the horizontal braces are 34" off the floor. All of the load is handled by that massive wedge bolt and the Tapcon. Very little load is transmitted to the floor anyway (I hope).
For the setback wall, I was going to simply Tapcon a 2 X 4 to the wall that would stick out the same distance as the brackets, but I didn't have a 58" piece of 2 X 4 so I decided to make a short L-girder and use that. The line on the wall is at the 34" level.
L-girders are very strong and when properly braced have very little flex. I first clamp the 1x2 to the edge of a 1x4. I used enough clamps to try and eliminate as much warp as possible. I then install wood screws about every 8 inches. These will be removed eventually. After the screws are in I removed the clamps, remove the screws and take the two pieces apart.
Then you put on a layer of Titebond (or other carpenter glue) and resinstall the screws to hold it all together and aligned. When the glue dries the next day, remove the screws since they're no longer needed. You could leave the screws in, but a) they cost money, and b) when you're drilling and fastening the joists you will invariably hit one of those now-not-needed screws, so I take them out and reuse them.
Here's the newly built L-girder before I remove the screws.
I'll document this corner wall brace next work session.
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