Ogden & Cache Valley, Part II

[Onewolf]

After 4 years I am ready to get started working on the next version of the Ogden & Cache Valley Railroad (layout).

Here is a link to my website photo album for my prior Ogden & Cache Valley layout construction:

http://onewolf.org/Album/LayoutConstruction/index.html

Here is a link to the prior message thread here on the Modeler's Forum. Unfortunately many of the photos are missing because their link/source got moved when I reorganized the photo album on my website.

https://modelersforum.com/index.php?topic=1942.0

During Pandemic World in 2020 my wife and I decided to get divorced. At the same time my job (software development) went full time remote.  I decided to explore the possibility of accelerating my move to East Tennessee which had been planned for retirement/downsizing. My (ex) wife and I owned a lot near Sweetwater and she didn't want it so I "bought" it from her as a part of the divorce settlement. After several trips up to East Tennessee to talk to builders and to confirm that Sweetwater was where I wanted to build I decided start the process. It took a couple years to get my ducks in a row (including disassembling/demoing the old layout).  And man, construction prices went up 50-60% in those 2 years!  Yikes.  I sold/closed on my Florida house in November 2022 and moved into an apartment in Lenoir City TN while I waited for my new house to be built.  The house was ready to move in mid May 2024. Since May I have been focused on a bunch of stuff that needed to be done before I could start prepping the layout space.

The House: The main floor is about 2370 sq ft. I designed every square inch and the only change the architect/engineers made they managed to screw up.  It has a full walkout basement of 2400 sq ft (the 2+ acre lot is on a consistent 15-16% slope which necessitates the walkout basement).  The basement walls are 10 ft Van Hoose Envirocast precast concrete.  Envirocast walls are similar to Superior Walls, but much better. The basement walls are 8000PSI concrete and have about 5" of foam insulation. The floor trusses are 24" tall on 19" centers because I told the builder/engineer that I wanted no chance of any floor bounce.  I also wanted minimum obstructions in the basement so we came up with a design that uses a 16x6 main LVL beam with 3 support columns (keeping in mind the no floor bounce constraint).  There is one column in the layout area, one column in the basement 'garage' area, and one column inside a basement workshop wall.

Originally the only finished space in the basement during the initial build was going to be the 1/2 bathroom, however in discussions with my builder there were advantages to framing/finishing the workshop space (12'x18.5') as well. Therefore the basement workshop and 1/2 bath are finished and have HVAC already. I installed 2x2 random carpet tiles in the workshop and I will do the same in the layout space as well after the walls are finished.

I am currently installing electrical outlets in the unfinished basement walls (and ceiling) in the layout space.  There will be 16 unswitched (15A) wall outlets, 4 (20A) wall outlets on a single switched circuit (for layout command/control and layout lighting), and an additional 7 outlets in the ceiling (on a new 15A switched circuit).  I am using 72W 4ft frosted LED tube fixtures that output 8800 lumens each.  I currently have 11 of these and I plan to add another 10 on the new circuit/switch. I plan to have a lot of lumens available for room lighting because the open/unfinished ceiling will eat a lot of light compared to a white ceiling. The ceiling in the layout space (and basement garage) will be left unfinished to allow for ease of maintenance (electrical, hvac, plumbing, etc).

Once I am done with the eletrical rough-in I will have a drywall crew hang/finish the drywall.  I haven't decided whether I will paint the walls myself or hire painters.  After painting the walls I will install the 2x2 random carpet tiles (still the same $.50/sq ft as they were back in 2015).

[Onewolf]

Some photos of the interior of the house.

Every main room has a view out the back






The covered part of the back deck

[Onewolf]

The two unfinished walls in the basement garage area will be drywalled/painted when the layout space walls are finished.



I boxed up (and filled with peanuts) the 12 bay roundhouse. It will be interesting to see how well it survived the move and 18 months in storage.




Before disassembling the prior layout:

[deemery]

My 6 stall (plaster) roundhouse and turntable assembly is boxed up and sitting in my basement.  Hopefully, I'll get to Phase II where I build the big yard and engine terminal.   I'm looking forward to seeing how you fill your space!

dave

[Onewolf]

For posterity, here are some photos of the exterior of the house.

My house is about 100 ft away from the neighbor on the left


And about 120 ft away from the neighbor's house on the right. They have some sort of tiered planter project going on.


The back side of the house.


I had to get grass seed down in mid June to keep the yard/dirt/clay from washing away. Given the drought/heatwave we were in I didn't think any of the grass seed was going to sprout, but the monsoon started in mid July which allowed some of the grass (and weeds) to sprout.  I will overseed in late Sept/Oct and again in March to fill in the bare areas.


From down near the back property line looking back up the hill to my house.


My back yard neighbors.  Their fence is the back property line. It's about 100 ft below the house elevation.

[ACL1504]

Doug,

Looks like you have everything under control.

Looking forward to your new layout.

Tom 

[cuse]

What a beautiful home. Congratulations!

The view off of the porch is inspiring...I can almost hear the steam whistles echoing through the valley

Good to have you back.

John

[Onewolf]

What a beautiful home. Congratulations!

The view off of the porch is inspiring...I can almost hear the steam whistles echoing through the valley

Good to have you back.

John

The Norfolk Southern main line between Knoxville and Chattanooga is about 1.3 miles away from my house (on the other side of the ridge) so I frequently hear trains going by. It's all at grade crossings and sometimes the train drivers go crazy on the horn button.

[Onewolf]

Link to photo album of the deconstruction of the prior layout: https://imgur.com/gallery/train-layout-deconstruction-D4hbEy5

When I disassembled/demoed the prior layout I was able to save all the electronics (DCC control, power boosters, circuit breakers, occupancy detection, turnout control, etc).  I saved all 115 turnouts, and all the flex track that wasn't glued down (Mostly Atlas code 100 in the lower/upper return loops.  The Peco code 100 I had recycled from the previous layout was permabonded/glued and was not saveable.  Almost all the visible track was glued/caulked and painted.  The track on the homasote (main yard, loco service) scraped up with some homasote stuck. The track on the Woodland Scenics foam roadbed pulled up LOTS of foam.  I was lead to believe I _might_ be able to use a pressure washer to get the homasote and foam off the approximately 400 pieces of painted flex track so I saved all of it.

Unfortunately the only item that seems to have gone missing during my move was the large plastic tub containing the painted flex track with stuff stuck to it.  So I will never know whether that track would have been saveable.

I have already ordered 200 pieces of Atlas code 100 and 400 pieces of Atlas code 83 flex track from Yankee Dabbler. Can't wait until I'm ready to start laying track.   

[Jerry]

Beautiful house!!  Looking forward to the new RR build.

Jerry

[Vietnam Seabee]

Very nice indeed. Nice "elbow room" from your neighbors...not like the zero lot lines in central Florida
terry

[Janbouli]

What a gorgeous house and beautiful sights.

[Mark Dalrymple]

Nice place, Doug.

Would love to see a plan of the lower floor so we can dream about what we might do if it was our space...

Cheers, Mark.

[Onewolf]

Nice place, Doug.

Would love to see a plan of the lower floor so we can dream about what we might do if it was our space...

Cheers, Mark.

Here's the basement floorplan/dimensions.

[Onewolf]

Here are very preliminary drawings of one layout design that basically works.  It needs a lot more refinement/details before it would be ready to start construction.

I really liked my previous layout design which was a 3 level mushroom, but I would like to keep the new layout as a more simple two level layout. For the new layout I want a want a large classification yard, locomotive service facility, and passenger train service/station.

I am dropping the base elevation of the levels by 2". The previous layout elevations were 42"/62"/82".  This new design base elevations are 40" and 60".

Lower level:


Upper level: