The 4th Law of Physics

12/8/20

Some of you know I used to teach physics. Today Doug Taylor and I used all 3 of Isaac Newton’s laws of physics and invented a fourth. In addition to Big Ike’s laws of inertia/momentum, force mass and acceleration, and equal and opposite forces, we invented a fourth. That is to say that if it doesn’t WANT to move, get back farhter and get going faster and it WILL move. We had to get back further and get going faster today because it was just the two of us and we huffed and puffed the last big chunks of layout up onto the L girders.

Doug contemplates the laws of physics and the mass of this piece. Yes, it needs to go up on the L girders

After 3 months of actual demolition, hauling and reconstruction, all major pieces of the layout are now in place. They are also in pretty much the same relative positions as they were in the old room. We have some areas that need to be extended and some areas that need to be slightly reconfigured to make angles match. The basic plan remains as it was.

Our basic priority was to get the lower level mainline chunks set in place. These served to define locations for the upper level main and it remained fundamentally the same. The logging line had to be the third priority and it will change a bit probably for the better – longer. With these pieces in place it became apparent that the clubs wishes for more switching can certainly be accommodated.

With major chunks of layout on the L girders there are several large pieces of upper level main that remain unattached. These pieces will have the risers removed so we just have subroadbed (plywood), roadbed (cork) and track left. We can take these track-boards and knit them together to create attributes of the former layout. Some new construction will be necessary as in new stringers and risers. When this is complete, we will do the same with the logging line. This requires that we keep the upper level main and logging line in mind as we set the lower level pieces in their final locations so there’s room for all of it.

Doug applies Big Ike’s 4th law — Shove really hard

Several areas of total reconstruction exist. The helix area outside of Philomath that gets us to the upper level, the Eagle Cove extension (leading to a paper mill?), staging/set-up yard, and 35 feet of new switching area. We will be arranging to get input regarding club wishes regarding these areas although many ideas have been put forward already. Lack of specific direction will not, however, impede progress on the rest of the layout. There’s much work to be done before switching areas need to be addressed.

Next steps involve creating custom cut parts to knit major sections together. This will involve some precision work and be a bit tedious. We will probably start with the big yard in the north room and work our way south to the yet to be defined helix area.