Construction on the B&B

When did you start on this railroad? If you count the room, we started in October of 1989. Took us one year to finish the basement and that is something I've never regretted. I recommend that highly to anybody. If you're going to build a railroad, don't build the railroad first and worry about the room last.

How does that make it more enjoyable for you? Oh, there's no question it is. It's a part of what we did is we've got a floor, we've got a ceiling, the walls are done. Dust is not a problem down here. This basement is completely independent from the rest of the house.

I've got it, I installed a air conditioning and heating system just for the basement. So, when I've got 10 guys down here during an operating session, I can make it snow down here if I have to, to keep everybody comfortable. Everybody upstairs is okay. And everybody upstairs is fine. So I don't have to cool the whole house to get the basement cool.

What about problem solving? Does that motivate you? That's a big thing. I love coming up on a problem. It doesn't matter how small or how big but coming up with my own solution for it.

Give me an example, if you would. Well, the turntables, probably a good example. I've built, this is the third turntable that I've built from scratch. And I've always had a problem with previous ones having proper support. They've always been lacking.

So I just kept trying to think of a good way to support the bridge itself to where it would operate right. And I came up with the idea of using the front hub of a bicycle for the bearing pack. I've got two adjustable bearings, you can adjust the tension on them, you can make it as tight or as loose as you want. Lord knows it's strong enough to support a person on a bike. It should be strong enough to support a turntable and a locomotive.

That's a great idea. I've never heard of anybody doing that. And it works great. And it's the kind of thing where when you get it done and it works, you kind of pat yourself on the back and say "Wow, that was great." And I came up with a solution And I thought of it. Now you mentioned, you headlight all the track, all the visible track and did all the turnouts and so forth.

And you've got what? I think you told me about 1000 feet of track or is that just main line and? That's an estimate, I've never really measured. But in that neighborhood that's a lot of tracks. I know the main line itself, if you go from point A around down to helix and back to point A it's 324.5 feet.

How did you get so much done so quickly? And I'm referring to handling the track. It took about a year to lay all the track. And it, you know, people think that the handling track is slow, it really isn't. When you get into a rhythm, you can do a lot of track in an evening.

When I was going strong and, you know, laying the track on a regular basis, I could build a turnout, assuming the ties and everything were already in, I could take raw rail have the turnout soldered, cleaned up ready to lay, have it laid, have a switch machine installed and working in about two hours. Goodness.