Talkin' Trains- Live at the Work Bench! 07.20.2026

[00:00:01][music] [music] Hey, [music] [music] [music] hey, hey.

[00:00:28]Hey, hey, hey.

[00:00:31][music] [music] [music] [music] Hey, hey, hey. [music] [music] [music] [music] >> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey.

[00:01:48]>> [music] [music] [music] >> Hey. Hey. Hey.

[00:02:09][music] Heat. Heat.

[00:02:15][music] [music] [music] [music] >> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Heat. Heat. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Well, good evening everybody.

[00:04:51]Welcome into Talking Trains.

[00:04:55]My name is Paul and I have a problem.

[00:05:05]I'm addicted to ripping out track.

[00:05:13]I openly admit that I have this problem, but uh I don't know. I I think I might need to seek therapy in order to uh fix it.

[00:05:52]I think I got a soldered [music] connection there. I got to unsolder.

[00:05:56]But anyway, welcome into Talking Trains, everybody.

[00:06:02]I figured I'd uh try to have a bit of a dramatic [music] entrance today. Seemed like it might be fun. [laughter] Uh truth be told, this is this is kind of the next step. This is what needs to happen. Um [music] so that we're able to uh finish up the yard working gang mills. I've got to do a little bit of tweaking, just a tiny bit uh to the angle at which this bridge is sitting at.

[00:06:31]And that's going to allow me to come into [music] Gangmill's yard uh at a much more friendly uh turn radius than I am currently. I don't know why it didn't occur to me to do it this way in the first place. Uh but uh we just got, like I said, a small small amount of tweaking to do uh on the angle of this bridge. Uh but first, I have to get it disconnected. Uh, and I think I have some repairs to do as well. [laughter] Uh, while the soldering iron heats up though, I'll say hi to everybody that's out there so far. It looks like Garrett was here first. Bill was here right behind him. Brandon there as well.

[00:07:12]Dennis number two.

[00:07:14]Steve, [music] Mr. B and Ironwood, welcome in. Mitch, welcome in.

[00:07:24]Corpse Master, welcome in to you. Joey, welcome in. Happy to see you guys again. Yeah. Uh, I was actually looking for a tool, which is why I went back to the, uh, the prestream [music] uh, screen that I couldn't find. So, I ended up just kind of giving [music] up and, uh, finding a tool that would work in [music] itsstead.

[00:07:51]Okay, here we go. Come on. Pull free.

[00:08:05]So, to make a long story short, this this yard lead in Gang Mills is actually a pretty big reason why I justified the uh the total redo of Gang Mills itself.

[00:08:20]Uh, and that's because this yard lead itself has never really has never really been >> [music] >> um ideal. Uh, it's a very tight turning radius and um, you know, it just caused all sorts of derailments. Uh, the the portion right here, you can kind of see uh, let me make sure you can [music] kind of see it right here, is never quite been level.

[00:08:49]uh which [music] has caused a bunch of problems coming on and off the bridge with couplers. Uh so it's just going to be best now that we're redoing Gang Mill's yard to completely redo the yard lead as well. Now the challenge with that becomes that uh I've got some beautiful scenery on one side of this bridge. [music] You can see kind of on the other side of the backdrop support here. Uh actually I'll just walk you guys over there. Hang on one second.

[00:09:17]I'll put two through the wall and then I'll walk over.

[00:09:29][snorts] So, right on the other side of the wall is is uh the run out to Penan.

[00:09:33]On the bottom side, I've got these beautiful scratchuilt uh grape vines, nice little vineyard down here, and this whole hillside worth of scenery. So, the challenge becomes um [music] trying to at least make an attempt to take keep this scenery intact uh while I'm doing this work. I've got a a line drawn out here with a straight edge that I should be able to take the um the sawzaw and kind of just cut on this line as best [music] as I can um and and remove the the 6 in of foam that I've got here and hopefully hopefully [music] leave this hillside as intact as possible. I I I don't know if there's any way I'm going to leave it completely intact. [music] Uh, I I think there's going to inevitably end up being some damage. Um, I'll take out what trees I can. Uh, there's a couple of them I'm pretty sure I can I can pull out and and salvage, but a lot of them are glued in because quite frankly, um, you know, I never really anticipated doing this. I never really anticipated that this was going to get reworked, but >> [music] >> um, you know, that's that's a lesson I've learned along the way, right? This was this was very early scenery. um not a lot of op sessions in and uh you know if I had uh if I had one thing to to tell my uh 2022 self uh when I was putting in this [music] scenery, I'd say get a couple op sessions, get get more than a couple op sessions under your belt before you're doing scenery. Um because, you know, unfortunately [music] this is going to have to come out. Um or at least, you know, we're going to we're at risk of needing this to come out.

[00:11:22]We'll see if it if it ends up needing to or not. But [music] um with the bridge out of the way, the next step is is officially uh going to be uh making a nice stressful cut along that line. [laughter] Construction equals investment and investment equals progress. Absolutely.

[00:11:43]Absolutely. All right. So, let's see.

[00:11:46]Oh, man. All of these are glued in here crazy crazy well. So, I Let's see what I'm going to be able to salvage.

[00:11:56]To be honest with you, this hillside um I did before I started planning on doing late fall. So, there's some green trees in here that should probably be pulled out anyway.

[00:12:07]>> [music] >> Uh, so I guess this is I mean if I'm looking at you know uh the silver linings of it all, I guess that's one of them that I can pull out some of these green trees that don't really belong anymore. So that's good.

[00:12:26]I have had quite the crazy uh afternoon and evening. I uh I [music] went and bought the plywood for the base of Gang Mill's [music] yard. Uh it's actually sitting un unsecured uh on the support for that part of the bench work.

[00:12:47]Uh and you guys are propped on top of it.

[00:12:52]Um, but the Home Depot that's on my way home from work, for some reason, was 100% out of uh sanded/inch ply. So, I had to [music] sprint uh home and uh let the dogs out and throw them in the truck [music] and run to the next closest uh Home Depot in order to get the sanded ply.

[00:13:18]And then I get there and the guy who [music] cut it was nice enough, but uh well, let's just say unfortunately I have one piece of sanded ply cut to [music] 22 in in width and one that's cut at 23 and 3/4 uh in width, which is not fun.

[00:13:38][laughter] But uh I don't know. I digress. There's uh there's only so much we can do, right? [laughter] But, uh, we're here now. I made it home.

[00:13:49]Had a chance to eat dinner. And, uh, we're in good shape. Ready to, uh, start, uh, start some mass destruction here. So, let's see.

[00:14:01]>> [music] >> I think you guys are probably I'm going to probably put you guys back over here just because I don't want you on unsecured plywood [music] as I'm making this cut because that might vibrate a [music] little bit too much.

[00:14:17]And just make sure you've got a good angle here.

[00:14:22]And like I said, we'll we'll see what we can do about uh leaving this hillside as intact [music] as possible. I've got all the trees that uh are removable out and [music] we can kind of just go from there.

[00:14:35]Throw some safety glasses on. I'm going to see if I have I've got a couple of different pairs of safety glasses and of course the ones I grabbed initially are all scratched up and just seem [music] to always be foggy no matter what I do.

[00:14:48]Let me see if I There we go. There's my better ones.

[00:14:58]All right, before I start cutting, let me let me just see if anybody else popped in here.

[00:15:06][snorts] This is [snorts] why we all have stand in structures. [music] Yeah, I'm learning those lessons, Joey. That's for sure. [laughter] [snorts] Bobby, welcome in. Happy to see you.

[00:15:32]Teddy, welcome in to you. Happy to see you as well. All right, let's let's uh let's bite the bullet here. Let's see how well this is going to work for us.

[00:15:40][music] [snorts] >> [snorts] >> All right, there's my initial cut.

[00:16:24]All right, let's see what's going to lift out of here now. I think this at bare minimum this top piece of foam should lift out.

[00:16:35]There we go. And now [music] you can see the sins of past Paul coming through.

[00:16:42]>> [laughter] >> Gang Mills yard is uh kind of the probably the most poorly thought out part of this entire layout. Um at one point I actually was genuinely [music] convinced um that I was going to have like a 3% grade coming off of the the bridge [music] um to drop it down uh in height a little bit. I quickly learned that that was not going to fly as as as well as I thought it was. Um, so that [music] changed pretty quick.

[00:17:16]Uh, and we added another layer of foam.

[00:17:20]And then it turned out that was still too steep of a grade. Uh, so we went up another 2 in. And that's why there's 6 in of foam here. Uh, because quite frankly, I just did not plan things out well enough. That's really [music] all it comes down to. Uh, so as I've been, you know, contemplating these other changes to the layout, I've been trying to plan them out better because it does stink to be [music] um reworking things constantly like this. And quite frankly, it's not something that I want to continue having to do on a regular basis. So, let's hope and pray that uh this is the last time we rework at Gang Mills Yard.

[00:18:05][clears throat] Okay, those actually came out pretty easily. I've got a nice clean uh for the most part. I've got a nice clean cut here.

[00:18:16]Um let's see what's my game plan here now.

[00:18:23]I think my game plan needs to be uh getting the shop vac in here as soon as we're done cleaning things out. I think I need to go this this piece of foam needs to come out now.

[00:18:37]That way, whatever I do, I've got solid wood to secure things into.

[00:19:05]All right. Just this little chunk left is all I need to cut out of here.

[00:19:17]Go.

[00:19:25]Okay, there's most of the foam gone. There's most of the mess made. [laughter] The next step is kind of going to be figuring out how I want to rebuild it.

[00:19:48]Honestly, that's uh it's really what it comes down to. Um I do need to obviously run the shop back in here. Let me just see if there's anything else I want to cut out before I do.

[00:20:04]I think I'm pretty happy with it.

[00:20:12]That should allow me to do everything I want to do as far as reworking the angle of the bridge so that I can actually get a 30-in radius in there.

[00:20:30]All right. So, we're going to run the shop vac now. That's That makes really good content, right?

[00:20:41]Uh let's see.

[00:20:44]Oh, yeah. We got to plug over here now.

[00:20:55]I didn't really mean for uh so I put in a plug underneath the layout uh mostly just to run the lights for below gang mills, but it kind of comes in handy just to have an outlet here for for everything. So, it's nice to have. I don't have to have extension cords all the way across the basement.

[00:21:18]All right, I'm going to turn my mic off while I'm vacuuming so that you guys aren't subject to it. Um, yell at me if it seems like I'm done vacuuming and I forget to turn it back on. [laughter] All right, give me a thumbs up if you guys can hear me again. Um, [laughter] yes, riveting riveting content watching me clean my my layout.

[00:24:35]>> [laughter] >> ASMR vacuum videos. Yeah. [laughter] Okay. So, now the question uh becomes where the heck do we go from here?

[00:24:52]Um, [music] ultimately I think what I need to do is sort of build out uh supporting [music] bench work uh right here and kind of right here. I should be able to build off of this uh support there.

[00:25:10]Uh and and off of here. [music] Um so that means more riveting content for tonight. Uh where I'm walking up and down the stairs cutting things all the time. Uh but uh you know what? We're going to have to make things work here.

[00:25:24]Uh like we've like we've continually said uh on this channel, uh this this the summer's a busy time and uh sometimes the only time I get to be down here uh in the layout room uh in a given week is on Monday night when I'm streaming. And that means that, you know, unfortunately, uh, sometimes content that's not the most riveting, uh, ends up needing to be worked on in order to make sure that things get done, which is, you know, unfortunate, but, uh, you know, that's the way that's the way things work sometimes. So, here we are.

[00:26:10]All right. So, let me start playing around with where I want this to come in.

[00:26:18]I need to get the other support here.

[00:26:26]This is just going to kind of help dictate where it is that I'm going to put the put everything really. I I mean I want my plywood to pretty much come out to here uh at this point.

[00:26:44]Um almost thinking that this might have to go because I do need I eventually I need it taller than that anyway.

[00:27:06]So, it might be time to bite the bullet and just cut that [music] out of there, which is unfortunate because we just got done vacuuming. But, uh, hey, things got to happen when they got to happen, right?

[00:27:25]Oh, fun fun projects that, uh, need to happen.

[00:27:32]track plan itself is is really well planned out, but the uh the benchwork side of it is of course a little bit of a uh afterthought here.

[00:27:46]Cut a 30-in radius out of uh cardboard.

[00:27:48]Yeah, that's a great idea. I can definitely do that.

[00:27:54]Yep. Make the plywood. Yes. Yeah, that's a great idea. [music] Okay, let me get this support out of here. Unfortunately, underneath it's actually So, I put these supports in uh before I finished bench work, and the two screws underneath uh for this support are actually not uh not accessible anymore. So, I've got to cut it out.

[00:28:52]I got to finish it with the sawzaw because I can't get a good angle on it.

[00:28:58]Hopefully I can with the saw. I'm not going to be able to Good enough.

[00:29:55]Oh man, I thought I was done taking hunks of layout out of here, too. But alas, here we are.

[00:30:05]No, I was not talking while making the cuts.

[00:30:13]Can I stand up while I work? Yeah. Okay.

[00:30:16]So, uh making that uh cardboard uh mockup of a 30-inch radius curve was a great idea.

[00:30:25]Um in fact, at some point, I think I actually did that.

[00:30:33]I don't think there's a single chance I saved it, though.

[00:30:37]I might have an offcut from doing I do.

[00:30:40]Okay, here we go.

[00:30:45]I have an off cut from doing the loop which is a 30-inch radius though right here. So that can kind of give us the idea of what needs to happen here.

[00:31:02]Um, okay.

[00:31:08]In fact, come to think of it, this might just be the piece we need. If I if I flush this up, I think this is going to be the piece we need in order to uh build out this piece of bench work. Cool.

[00:31:27]I'll take that all day long.

[00:31:30]being able to uh reuse stuff. So, yeah.

[00:31:33]Um I I do need to Well, actually, I need to I need to get the angle uh for it to be flush up against think about this here.

[00:31:51]Make sure just so [music] that I've got the right point of reference that that's Yeah. I'm not going to be in there squarely, of course. Okay. So, yeah, I think the easiest thing to do is just going to be to square this piece up quickly and go from there. Um, I've got plenty to work with uh kind of on the the back side of it uh to to make things work, so I'm not super stressed about it.

[00:32:25]Plus, I think I really only want it to come to about right here anyway. And then I'll just go into standard bench work.

[00:32:32]So, let's let's kind of start to play with that and see uh what we need to [music] do. I'm just going to like I said, I'm just going to square it up here for now. And uh you know, if we need to make adjustments after that, I've got plenty of plenty of real estate to do that.

[00:32:50]Of course, I've just got to go get my circular saw from upstairs.

[00:33:31]All right, let me just out of curiosity flip this the other way.

[00:33:38]See where we're at with that.

[00:33:49]Hey Chris, welcome in. Happy to see you.

[00:33:51]We're making a mess of things tonight as per usual.

[00:34:02]Okay, there's that kind of flushed up as best I can.

[00:34:10]Man, guys, I I kind of feel like this is too good to be true. Am I missing something here?

[00:34:18]this this angle. This is a 30-inch radius that I've got traced onto this board and it it this just seems far too good to be true. It how is it just ready?

[00:34:37]I do need to um you know just mark the underside here uh so that I can get a good angle there. And then I just got to uh I just got to cut a couple 1x4s to support it underneath. Put some pocket holes in the 1x4s. And then we'll sink them into the plywood below there. That should hold it pretty well. There's some 1x4 to support underneath the plywood in a couple of different places. And I'll make sure I hit that with the with them.

[00:35:06]But hey Andy, welcome in. I haven't seen you in a while. Happy to happy to see you here.

[00:35:15]Evening all saws all. [laughter] Love it.

[00:35:20]Take it as the universe giving you a sign. Yeah.

[00:35:24]Built enough karma today apparently.

[00:35:27]All right, man. I Let me look at this from the other angle and just make sure I'm happy with it before I go cutting things.

[00:35:44]I mean, it it might need to, you know, ultimately sit like here instead of where it is.

[00:35:57]But that's also my my bridge supports also adjustable as far as that's concerned.

[00:36:08]Okay.

[00:36:09]So, let's see here. What's I'm just trying to genuinely make sure that I cross my tees and dot my eyes before I make that cut.

[00:36:22]Um, I do have a little bit more work I want to do. Reworking the angle over here. Oops. Sorry to move you guys so fast. Uh, coming onto the bridge. I, you know, obviously this is this is kind of the new angle I want it at. Um it's not what the trackage is currently laid in for. You can see, you know, um the angle's not ideal there.

[00:36:47]Possibly I I suppose I may [music] want to um I may want to have that ready to go um before I'm finalizing things on the other side of the bridge.

[00:37:06]What do you guys think? How How are we?

[00:37:08]Uh how are we feeling?

[00:37:16]Yeah. Um there should be a straight piece under I I mean I've got enough width here um that I'll be able to make that happen, you know, when I'm laying track. Uh for right now, I think I think I've got that pretty well covered. Uh where I'll be able to make that happen with the width of the plywood that I've got going. Um but that is my my ultimate plan for sure.

[00:37:48]Get your full track line figured out.

[00:37:49]Yeah. Okay.

[00:37:56]All right. So, in that case, we're going to turn our attention to this side of the bridge uh briefly before we we do anything else.

[00:38:08]Let's just see what we need to do over here. So, that's this is for reference. Um this is kind of the angle it was at originally.

[00:38:19]you can see uh coming onto that side of the layout about an inch over uh and you know just causing me to have to have a much tighter radius. Uh so the game plan now is to uh adjust on this side of the bridge ever so slightly uh in order to to better accommodate that which unfortunately uh could mean just a little bit more track work needs to come out over here uh in order to accommodate that.

[00:38:49]I think I need to I don't know if I need to. Yeah, I need to cut [music] back uh the 1x4 that's supporting this I think a little bit in order to make that work.

[00:39:06]Um again, that's where we want to be.

[00:39:23]Trying to decide [music] how I want to I may need to rip this entire piece of flex out behind it in order to really accommodate this the right way.

[00:39:38]I'm not entirely sure.

[00:39:42]Cutting bridges with a Yeah, absolutely.

[00:39:50]A helper cap. Not sure I'm familiar with that. Interesting.

[00:39:58]Okay.

[00:40:01]Well, I can't remember if that's a full piece of flex track right there or If the length of it is cut down a little bit. It's cut down a little bit. Okay, good. So, if I pull this full piece out, [music] um, no matter what, I'm able to replace it with, you know, one one replacement piece, which is a good thing.

[00:40:34]Okay. I I don't think I really have much of a choice but to do it this way. Uh, so let's go ahead and and get to work on it. Thankfully, I've got uh I've got help on the way too here. I I should mention um got a got a work session happening on Saturday this week. So that hopefully uh when everything's said and done, we should be uh able to to get through the gang mills portion of this layout expansion pretty quickly and uh finally be back to the backdrop project, which was kind of the main plan for this summer. And uh you know, as I got to really thinking about that project, it occurred to me that if I wanted to do this expansion, I needed to do [music] the expansion first. Uh otherwise, I was going to be doing some rework with the [music] um the backdrops themselves. Uh had I chose to do those after the fact. So, we had to make some difficult decisions in terms of uh what the critical path of this layout build was going to be. Okay.

[00:41:48]So, I've got a joint back here that I'm going to uh try to cut this out from.

[00:41:55]Let me see if you guys have a better angle over here. You can see we're over at Himrod Junction now. Um, I've got this big tall tree that I should probably pull out of here, uh, so as to avoid breaking it if I possibly can.

[00:42:06]Yep. Okay, perfect.

[00:42:09]And, uh, I've got my isopropyl.

[00:42:12]I can't remember. I don't know if I, uh, had adopted the policy of using Mod Podge for glue when I put down this particular piece of trackage. So, I don't know how well this is going to pop out of here. could be ugly. [laughter] Uh we'll we'll have to see.

[00:42:35][snorts] How much of an easement do I need? Um, not I don't think a ton.

[00:43:26]All right, here we go.

[00:43:46]Unfortunately, this piece of flex is definitely not going to be salvageable.

[00:43:50]I got couple of leads there. I got to cut.

[00:44:01]Andy, I'm not going to lie. I'm waiting for Heath to pop in here and yell at me for ripping out more track.

[00:44:14]There we go. Okay, so that's out. Um, next step is obviously just kind of retconing our uh road bed for lack of a better term.

[00:44:30]Um, does seem to well come out nice and easy, so that's good.

[00:44:40]Yeah, let me bring my garbage can over here.

[00:44:48]Um, I can't say that I've seen Dennis out there tonight.

[00:44:53]Um, but I'd love to know if he's planning on streaming tonight. I just looked at the clock to check what time it was.

[00:45:06]And uh, you know, tearing out track work is time consuming. So, seems like we've we've burned through about the first half of our stream already.

[00:45:56]Not going to lie, this part of it stings a little bit more than the rest cuz this is this is scenery that I'm incredibly proud of that's that's coming out right now. But again, I I just want to make sure that my operations are as bulletproof as humanly possible as we [music] lead up to the convention. So, got to do what I got to do here.

[00:46:25][panting] [laughter] [panting] All right.

[00:46:54]>> [panting] >> Okay, suppose it's time to pull the shop back over to this side.

[00:47:10]Hey, Chris. Glad you were able to pop in and say hi. Appreciate you.

[00:47:17]Oh, nice nice job on the fourth place finish.

[00:47:21]I heard the tractor pulls at Jennese County Fair yesterday while I was there.

[00:47:25]Didn't uh didn't get a chance to see any of them, though. Okay. Uh, I'm going to pull the shop back over to the other side of the room now and we'll get all that cleaned up.

[00:47:49]Yep. Uh, I don't know if you missed it, Dennis number two, but uh, I did put down some 91% alcohol. Um, that's actually what's in This bottle right here, I just reused an old OxyClean bottle for that.

[00:48:11]Came up nice and nice and clean for the most part.

[00:48:32]You're deaf to Heath's criticisms, Andy.

[00:48:34]Yeah, he's deaf [music] to mine, so I suppose I should be deaf to his, right?

[00:48:41][laughter] All right. Uh, I'm going to throw the mic or turn the mic off real quick while I'm vacuuming again. Again, if it seems like uh I'm done vacuuming and uh you guys can't hear me again, uh feel free to to yell at me in the chat.

[00:49:07][music] >> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Hey, Dennis.

[00:51:05]welcome in. Don't worry, there's enough trouble already be being caused by myself here. We don't need you to thanks, but no thanks.

[00:51:14]Um, okay. Now that I've got that initial vacuuming done, I can see that I might still need to scrape a little bit of gravel here. Let me do a little spritzing with isopropyl here, and we'll see if we can get [music] this roaded completely cleaned up. And one last go here.

[00:51:35]Dennis, are you planning on going tonight, my friend?

[00:51:43]Okay, that's nice and clean now.

[00:51:53][panting] >> [panting] >> Okay, a little bit more to do here.

[00:52:24][panting] Little here.

[00:52:35][panting] [laughter] >> [panting] >> Okay, hopefully that's enough here.

[00:53:11]Let's see.

[00:53:14]Run the vacuum one more time here.

[00:53:20]Make sure just a little bit more over here.

[00:53:46]Just trying to make sure I clear [music] the roaded itself as wide as possible.

[00:53:51]Um, just cuz I need as much space as I can to play with. All right, mic's going off one more time here.

[00:55:02]All righty, that should be cleaned up enough. Let me go grab a fresh piece of Atlas flex track so that we can start to excuse me. Kind of play around with uh everything that we're trying to do here. Oh, perfect. I got one single loose piece. I don't have to undo a twist tie to get Okay, Dennis, I don't know if you answered my question. If you did, I'm not seeing it. [music] Uh, are you planning on going tonight, my friend?

[00:56:03]Just want to make sure I'm out [music] of here in a timely manner. If you are, oops.

[00:56:19]had to cut the ties off so that I could get these in. I have to chuckle. [music] There's a there's a guy that comments on my Facebook reels all the time that yells at me for taking the ties out [music] when I join track. And every time I tell him, "Look, buddy, if you got a better way to do it, I'm all ears."

[00:56:40]But as far as I know, I have to [music] take the uh the rail out in order to uh in order to do this.

[00:56:55]Uh no, I can be done right at 9. That's no problem, Dennis.

[00:57:00]Okay, so here we go.

[00:57:02]Uh next plan of action is going to be uh cutting down this fresh piece of flex.

[00:57:09]uh [music] to match the bridge itself here, which I can I might not need to cut this ply or this uh 1x4 at all cuz I can kind of I can kind of just make things work here on the other side. And it still looks fine on Well, [music] I might need to adjust the bridge abutment a little bit, but I don't think I need to necessarily cut track or cut the Maybe I should. H.

[00:57:42]Yeah, [music] I'm gone. Just a little bit.

[00:57:53]Ever so slightly [music] is all it needs to be cut.

[00:58:01]All right, let me get that out of the way and then I'll start to play around with the angle here a little bit better.

[00:58:19]Yeah, hopefully he'll come up this year.

[00:58:21]That would be pretty cool, Brandon.

[00:58:24]Okay.

[00:58:26][snorts] I think that's really all I needed to do right there. That was it.

[00:58:46]I'm like, okay.

[00:58:59]All right. Got a quick vacuum to do. I'm not going to shut the mic off for this.

[00:59:10]All right, let's see how this looks.

[00:59:21]Yeah, definitely does for sure.

[00:59:26]Okay, that is much better.

[00:59:30]Perfect.

[00:59:33]Okay, so I think I've got my angle worked [music] out much much better than it was.

[00:59:42]Uh, I'll have a little bit of work to do to get things [music] level on this side, but for right now at least, I think I'm good to good to get um the Dremel out and cut this piece of flex to fit.

[01:00:09]All right.

[01:00:12]Where'd my orange marker [music] go?

[01:00:13]There it is.

[01:00:22]This one's drying out a little bit.

[01:00:30]There we go.

[01:00:41]making a mess.

[01:00:44]Orange paint pen.

[01:00:47]I'm just going to cut off frame here.

[01:01:02]Okay, let's see how this looks. That was a little scary.

[01:01:07]I just got uh a little piece of plastic [music] or maybe even metal just came up under my safety glasses and hit me in the cheekbone. Don't like that at all.

[01:01:34]Okay, there's that.

[01:01:41]Um, see, can I make this work? Yeah.

[01:02:03]I may have cut the one side just ever so slightly too long.

[01:02:10]Yes, I did.

[01:02:12]Fix that real quick.

[01:02:30]Okay.

[01:02:41]There we go. That's going to be perfect.

[01:02:45]And now I can kind of just kind of go through and uh before I secure this down, make sure I've got everything at the right angle over there.

[01:02:59]The vacuum might be quieter than the saws or the the reciprocating multi-tool. Yeah, it might be. Whoops.

[01:03:06]Maybe I should have turned the mic off for that. Okay. Hey, Tom. Welcome in.

[01:03:11]Happy to see you.

[01:03:18]All right. Uh, I think I'm happy with everything over here. Let me throw a couple of rail joiners in here just so that as I'm um, you [music] know, playing with things, things stay together a little bit better.

[01:03:34]Uh, I think it's pretty much where [music] I need to be right there.

[01:03:47]At bare minimum, I'll be able to make that work and [music] back fill with a little bit of scenery if I need to.

[01:03:56]Yeah, I think I could probably just bring that now that I think about it all the way up to the bridge itself.

[01:04:09]Right.

[01:04:12]Pretty much how it is on this side.

[01:04:16]And then those abutments will probably be kind of be a little bit inset into the scenery a little bit. Um so they're not really the right these are peers instead of >> [music] >> um uh abutments but they kind of fit the overall look of what's in penan better than your normal [music] concrete bridge abutments. Uh so I you know I just used them.

[01:04:41]Um okay so I can yeah like I said I can make that kind of work. Um, yeah. At this point, it's really it's time to get that piece of plywood cut.

[01:04:54]I've done everything [music] that I need to do as far as adjusting over here.

[01:05:00]And, uh, it's just time to mark and cut that piece of ply.

[01:05:07]Let me lost my uh my marker again. Whoops.

[01:05:30]All right, get a pencil here.

[01:05:54]There's a pencil.

[01:06:08]All right. So, here you have to do a little bit of adjusting here just to make sure that I'm going to end up with an accurate cut.

[01:06:21]what I'm needing to do.

[01:06:40]Thinking about what I want to do here.

[01:06:44]See if I can get you guys looking [music] at this here as I'm making the cut. Um because [music] one of the things I could do is cut it just wide so that it'll sit on this ledge. Uh so that I can ensure that it flushes up to the piece of um the full piece of one by or the full piece of/in [music] ply that it's supposed to butt up to um rather than you know cutting it there.

[01:07:11]And that might end up being probably the best bet.

[01:07:16]Um, so I'm going to go ahead and mark it uh just so just enough so that it'll sit on this edge when I make the cut.

[01:07:42]Make sure I like the line here.

[01:07:52]Does that look right?

[01:07:55]Looking pretty well flushed up to the bridge itself on that side. Let me make sure.

[01:08:08]Suppose actually before I make this cut, I can uh I can actually go back and uh put the supports in underneath first.

[01:08:22]That might be the wiser decision here.

[01:08:23]Just so that it's kind of in one place and I'm making sure [music] I'm cutting it. Nothing's going to change. Actually, yeah, I'm going to do that because I'm already noticing that [music] things are changing around a little bit here more than I'd like. Okay, so ultimately I need it to be Oops. Let me just come over here so I can see it better.

[01:09:03]So, I need my supports to basically be uh about 5 and 3/4. It's actually It's actually closer to five and 5/8 looks like.

[01:09:23]Yeah.

[01:09:25]Okay.

[01:09:27]five and 5/8 for my 1x4 supports.

[01:09:32]Um, so that does mean I've got to run up to the garage to make some cuts quick.

[01:09:51]Wow, Dennis, that's I'm a little jealous there, man. Very cool. All right, I'm going to bring you guys up to the garage with me uh to make the cuts. You just won't be able to see anything, but you might still have audio. Let's see if you have it all the way out to the garage.

[01:10:10]Bronco says hi if you can still hear me.

[01:10:21]So, if you can still hear me right now, I'm genuinely curious if you can cuz I'm all the way out in my garage uh at the chopsaw and the receiver for this mic is downstairs.

[01:10:49]Oops.

[01:11:19]No side trips to the bathroom. Got it.

[01:11:21]Got it. Got it. Got it.

[01:11:26]Wow. That's That's pretty impressive range for uh for this road mic.

[01:11:41]All right. One more cut to make here.

[01:12:11]All right, got our cuts made.

[01:12:18]I'm heading back downstairs to where you guys are seeing but not hearing.

[01:12:42]pretty much entirely out the rest of the year, including one Sydney shakedown or did I jinx it today?

[01:12:57]Uhoh, that seem too tall now.

[01:13:06]Rut row.

[01:13:18]Oh boy, that's way too tall on this one.

[01:13:21]Okay, so we're going to have ever so slightly a grade. Yeah. And they're all just At least this piece is too tall out.

[01:13:35]Of course, this is the first time in my life I've actually managed to cut three pieces of wood. [music] the exact same length and all three are slightly too tall. [laughter] O Okay, so as I'm looking [music] at this, let me make sure.

[01:13:55]Let me think about this for a minute.

[01:13:56]How do I want to do this?

[01:14:06]I think what I might want [music] to do is just temporarily screw this in so that it's not moving around and I can get good measurements.

[01:14:27]Oops.

[01:14:58]All right, let's see here.

[01:15:10]Well, we can talk about ops around the [music] clock cuz you know arrangements were made last year.

[01:15:24]Been me to message you about that actually.

[01:15:29]>> [snorts] >> Okay. Again, just temporarily screwing this down so that nothing's moving as I'm trying to figure out what height I need things to be at.

[01:15:52]I should actually just put a level on the [music] bridge itself uh to make sure that it's level uh before I'm trying to set heights around it. Right.

[01:16:07]It doesn't necessarily need to be level um cuz there is a grade leading up to it slightly.

[01:16:17]Where is my [music] level? There it is.

[01:16:25]But if I level [music] it, then that's something good to work off of at least.

[01:16:39]Okay, it actually needs to drop [music] down ever so slightly in order to be level.

[01:16:51]That makes it closer. [music] Okay.

[01:17:56]Okay, let's see if that's relatively level. Sorry, I know I'm working off camera here, guys, but That's pretty dang close.

[01:18:10]Get a piece of scrap uh cork road bed and that'll allow me to really ensure that I'm getting the right height on that side for my support.

[01:18:23]Oh, do I even have a piece of scrap cork road bed?

[01:18:30]Uhoh.

[01:18:35]Pretty sure egg you somewhere here. Let me move you guys over so you can actually see what the heck I'm doing. Okay. So, right now, just playing around here to make sure that uh I can get the height of everything I need to have accurately here.

[01:19:16]Got a little bit of bridge repair to do that busted loose while I was working on it. So, for the time being, just going to use this to weight it down. Make sure it's where it needs to be.

[01:19:34]Okay.

[01:19:38]So, thereabouts is where that side is going to sit.

[01:19:44]Need to make that measurement and cut that support to fit.

[01:19:54]How are we? Yeah, we're way off here.

[01:20:06]All right.

[01:20:08]So, we've [music] got actually under five and a half. [music] Got five and [music] 38. That's what we want to make that support. Okay. So that's good because the other side is uh five and 5/8. So we're really only coming up um 28 of an inch in that little section.

[01:20:37]That's that's a very nominal grade uh over a twoft span. Uh, so yeah, but the thing is it's also occurring to me that this is a yard lead.

[01:20:54]Quite frankly, I think I want that to be Yeah, that's what I'm going to have to do. Um, [music] I need this whole section of track to be level.

[01:21:05][music] I need it to be dead level. uh because this is a yard lead and uh when people are working, I don't want cars to roll back down uh because it's quite frankly not going to be accessible from the other side of the layout. Um so this this section of track as I'm, you know, kind of just thinking through things here, [music] uh so bear with me, guys. I apologize.

[01:21:27]Uh does need to be pretty much dead on level. not um you know I [music] can I can put a little bit of grade into the bridge itself in order to um in order to maintain that. So that's not a problem.

[01:21:41]Uh so in that case uh I really just need to make sure that whatever support is there Yeah. matches matches my benchwork over here.

[01:21:59]Right.

[01:22:00]Yep. Okay. And that 28 that we're talking about in the grade uh is going to have to be on the bridge and not necessarily in the track work saying I've got a little bit more foam work to do to to get this underneath. But this piece is pretty much dead on with this.

[01:22:23]Um so if I put the level down here.

[01:22:27]Yep. We're looking at pretty much [music] dead on.

[01:22:32]It could it could bear to be a little bit lower.

[01:22:36]But that [music] also, yeah, that's got to do more with where it's standing than anything else. Okay, so uh new plan of attack here. What do we got for time? We got 10 minutes remaining. All right.

[01:22:49]So, for the rest of the night, uh really all I need to do is cut out a little bit of foam here so that I can fit [music] that support where it needs to go. Uh and then from there, it'll be [music] a matter of putting a couple of pocket pocket holes into this support uh so that I can get it secured in nice and easy.

[01:23:19]Okay. So, really, I think I can just get away [music] with uh making a quick cut with the sawzaw and then I should have what I need here.

[01:23:31]Probably should have just cut this out to begin with at the beginning of the night.

[01:23:40]Let's see.

[01:23:43]Um, do I want that to be any closer to the end or do I want a little bit of No, I can. The closer I get it to the itself.

[01:24:02]All right, let's get this out of here.

[01:24:07]Hopefully I appreciate you guys sticking with me all night. I know this uh this sort of stream is very chaotic, but that's uh that just about sums up who I am as a person. So, you're signing up to watch the real me in this sort of situation. That's for sure.

[01:24:47]Okay.

[01:24:56]All right. Little bit of additional vacuuming left to do. Just when you think we're done for the night.

[01:25:04][laughter] Oh dear.

[01:25:18]A little bit of glue. I'm just trying to peel off here old liquid nails just so that my support will fit nice and flush underneath there.

[01:25:35]Nice. There we go.

[01:25:38]Yeah, I apologize if I haven't uh also been as as talkative with the chat as I normally am. This is this is a tough type of stream to be able to do that.

[01:25:47]So, again, you guys are fantastic for sticking with me.

[01:26:00]All >> [snorts] >> right, let me get the shop back back over to the other side of the layout. Now, of course, Actually, I might be able to just use it from where it stands.

[01:26:35]All right, mic's going off one more time. Probably should have turned it off when I was using the saws, but oh well.

[01:27:32]Hopefully that's the last vacuuming we need to do tonight.

[01:27:38]So, try to get things back mocked up here.

[01:27:43]Accidentally knocked that down.

[01:28:13]Trying to just [music] reuse the whole that I've already drilled. So, I know I've got this in the same exact place now that I knocked the bridge down. All right, there we go. There's that.

[01:28:38]Okay, hopefully able to do something like that.

[01:28:43]This bridge is going to need some major repairs by the time everything's said and done.

[01:28:50]Okay.

[01:28:53]So, that's where it's going to end up needing to be. Um, I'll I'll put some I'll probably back fill this little hole cuz I had it coming down in the last version. [music] Um, I'll back fill the hole where this bridge support is supposed to be uh so that [music] it's at the right height for everything.

[01:29:12]Uh but ultimately this support is now uh level which is [music] which is where it needs to be in order to ensure the best uh reliable operation. So we can kind of go from there. Um I'm going to get probably wrapped up here pretty shortly as far as the stream goes, but I'll uh I'll probably continue to plug away at this off stream for a little bit longer tonight. Um, I would love to have this full uh little [music] uh piece of bench work done and ready to uh [music] lay in the the actual plywood for Gang Mill's yard. Uh so that we can keep plugging away at all this. There's, you know, a lot to be done here. Uh and and honestly, we made more progress tonight than I think I [music] had thought we were going to. I'm pretty happy with where we are now. Um, you know, may have had to do a little bit more uh may have had to do a little bit more damage to the layout than I would have [music] liked, but you know, all said, we're we're in pretty good shape here, and it's not going to be it's not going to be too long before we're ready to rock and roll and uh have our first OP session on the new expansion. [music] So, I'm really looking forward to that.

[01:30:37]Uh there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Uh it might be a little dim right now, but uh you know what? We're in we're in pretty good shape. So uh I appreciate you guys tuning in. Uh there is the link in the chat there from Brandon for Dennis's stream. So be sure to uh tune in to Dennis uh as soon as we're done here. I appreciate you guys all tuning in. Uh we should be back again next week. No problems there.

[01:31:05][music] Uh, so be sure to tune in and I'll see you then. Take care everybody.

[01:31:14][music] [music] [music] >> [music] >> Hey, [music] >> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Hey. Hey. Hey.

[01:32:59][music] [music] [music] [music] >> [music] [music] [music] [music]