Start of a new era?

The model train club I'm part of meets in an old train depot. The building roughly 16 x 40 feet with a full basement. We use the basement for a meeting rm., small workshop, furnace rm. and a spot for the fridge/microwave by the stairs. The upstairs has a small entrance area and the layout itself. The layout about 16 x 30, a good size space, but quite small for a club size layout. For years the club has eyed building a pole barn behind the depot to allow us to build a larger layout and restore the depot to it's original condition. We put on a large model train show each year (we sold 400 tables last year) and put most of the proceeds into a building fund.

A few months ago we received an offer to become part of a new museum complex in downtown Lansing. Lansing doesn't have a real museum per se, more a bunch of small buildings down by the riverfront housing a variety of organizations. They want to combine forces and build one nice building. Someone in the consortium came to our train show, liked what they saw, and suggested to the group they invite us to participate; believing an operating model train layout would help draw folks into the museum. As you might guess, this would represent a huge change of course for our club and it has taken a few months to come to grips with it.

The museum folks have ambitious plans and needed a commitment from us soon, so we had a membership meeting this past week to decide what to do. I've prayed about this for a while now, not having a clear line of thinking pro or con in my mind. To my astonishment everyone quickly came to the conclusion this a great opportunity for the club and we voted to participate, asking for 6000 sq. ft. of space. This will give us plenty of room for a huge layout, proper workshop, dispatch area and room to spare for future expansion or rotating exhibits on various topics.

This will take our club to the next level. It will require a large time investment from all of us to help raise the funds for the new building, build the new layout and then man it during museum operating hours. We've looked into other clubs that have similar arrangements and they seem to work out well, but they do find it hard to man the layout during the day. We are going to take a hard look at the various automation options available today, thinking this will allow us to run with a two man crew vs. the 5 to 6 man crews the other clubs need to run their older layouts. With these commitments comes the opportunity to operate in a facility far nicer than anything we could afford to build on our own and a much more visible presence in the community. We've always desired to do more in terms of an educational component, but didn't have the space to do so. The museum will have a common set of meeting rooms available, which should open up all kinds of possibilities to do workshops and the like to help newcomers feel more comfortable with the hobby.

The backers of the new museum hope to have it built and operating by the year 2010. We'll see how it goes, the next year should give us a good idea whether the vision gains traction or fades into nothing.

A burst of energy

The many readers of my blog have flooded me with requests wanting to know how the meeting turned out (well, OK, I got one e-mail :-). Invariably when I allow myself to worry about something I eventually discover I need not have bothered. Sometimes, if I'm running late for an appointment I'll get anxious while driving. 9 times out of 10 it turns out the person I'm meeting arrives after I do. My recent meeting no exception. At the start of the meeting, someone asked how my trip went. I said I didn't end up going and mentioned the two reasons I outlined in my previous post. Everyone nodded and we went on with meeting, simple as that.

After the meeting I had an opportunity to meet with the lead engineer one on one for about an hour. We communicated much better in this setting and I felt we accomplished a lot. He's become much more engaged as has the consulting engineer. Between the two meetings we've had as a group over the past week a lot if ideas got thrown around to save money on the project without compromising our main goals. We also secured some more funding, bringing our budget up to $240,000. Between some judicious cuts and a more adequate budget it looks like the project going to turn out fine. We'll see for sure this coming week when the revised cost estimates and design come back.

I used to do a lot of side work for people. Mostly electrical work, but I also delved into plumbing, furnace repair and major appliance repair when called for. At the peak of my depression I had a couple jobs going at once in a city about an hour away, where I stayed and went to church every Saturday - Monday. When I moved my life back to Lansing I barely got all my stuff back home, let alone organize it in any way. So it has sat in a pile of cardboard boxes in the basement ever since. You may recall several months ago I put up a bunch of shelves in the basement. My ultimate goal to use these shelves for organizing all this stuff. During my vacation I focused first on the electrical stuff, then moved on to plumbing. It took the whole week to organize everything and put it into the clear tubs I bought. I also bought small organizers in various sizes with movable dividers (Thank you Meijer fishing department!!) to organize all the misc. small items. All said and done the electrical stuff took up about 9 tubs and the plumbing 5 tubs, along with about 7 of the small organizers. This took me till Friday night. Sat. I rested and watched part of Lord of the Rings Extended Edition. Sunday I had a burst of energy and set about taking advantage of the newly opened up floor space. My dad had kept two 55 gal. barrels made out of a heavy cardboard. I sawed these up into pieces and broke down all the unneeded cardboard boxes I had saved for doing the basement. This opened up space to set out pallets to keep the big tubs off the floor. I'm using these for packing supplies and my empty train car/loco boxes. Now when I come down the basement stairs I can see the floor and have room to walk around.

This weekend I took down the last set of the old nasty wooden shelves that came with the house. In their place I will put up another bulk storage rack. I plan to use this one for excess kitchen stuff that won't fit in my cabinets (like mixing bowls and the like), as my kitchen only has four base cabinets and two upper cabinets. As well as automotive tools and supplies, hardware items, etc. Many of these items are currently cluttering up my dining rm., so this will go a long way towards making the main living area more livable.

If you saw my basement now you would see it's split into two halves by a block wall. When you come down the stairs you first see the washer, dryer and a set of shelves with cleaning/cat stuff. Down at the far end you see two bulk storage racks, with the opening into the "root cellar" in between. Going into the other half you'd see 3 more of the bulk storage racks at the near end and the pallets I mentioned set up in the middle of the room across from the furnace. At the far end a pile of cardboard boxes and a table covered with paint cans. This end represents the last mile so to speak. I need to get my furnace/appliance parts into tubs, organize the hardware stuff (combining my stuff with the stuff worth saving off those old wooden shelves), figure out a good way to store the few pieces of lumber I held onto and dispose of any paint that has gone bad. Finishing these tasks will make the basement organization system complete and allow my to turn my attention to the 1st and 2nd floors. Having the basement done will allow me to bring additional items down there, and merge them into the appropriate tubs as I come across them, rather than dumping them on the floor or onto a pile.