Niles Canyon Railway needs an additional shop building (don't we all?). Basic requirements are:

Concrete pad approx. 110' long x 28'-30' wide
Thru track on centerline
Pad includes reinforcement along entire length, suitable for 35-ton capacity Whiting portable car jacks
Pad periphery suitable for attaching a lightweight steel prefab bolt-together shop building
Ground is currently well-packed crushed rock + Adobe clay soil, on level area
Optional service pit between rails

Rather than "reinvent the wheel" here, does anyone have drawings for a concrete pad available that could serve as the basis for our requirements? This would expedite getting a local Professional Engineer to modify the drawings as needed, and get a building permit approved. I'd be glad to pay reproduction costs, and/or other fees, to jumpstart this.

Thanks! - Doug Debs
cell 650-704-1487
<dougdebs2472@yahoo.com>

P.S.: Sketch below is just a rough idea of what is needed. Ventilation fans, window & skylight sizes and locations, etc are TBD.

The Thomaston Shop that RMNE constructed uses concrete track pads, about 8" thick and about 12 ft wide, under each track. The finished floor is 6" thick, and overlays the track pad to provide a 13-14" thick "jacking beam" the full length of each track (except for the inspection pit area). Suitable reinforcing steel was used in each layer. In almost 20 years of use, there have been no problems in jacking locomotives or car, using 35-ton Whiting jacks.

In our case, we used 14" x 8" tie plates, embedded in the track pad sections, with weld-on Pandrol "ears" and Pandrol clips to fasten the 131# rail. Turns out we used twice as many as needed.... 30 or 36" spacing would have been just fine.

I think an earlier article about our shop is still listed on the "Articles" or "Briefs" section of this site. I may be able to provide scans of the floor cross sections.

Howard P.

Howard,

Found the link in the Flimsies!

http://www.rypn.org/articles/single.php ... 230436.txt

Wesley

Very impressive link on construction with lots of details. I know this shop has been in use for some time. In hindsight is there any changes they would of made if able to do it all over? Seemed well thought out just wondering, as it goes hindsight is always 20/20 in any project.

Regards, John

Replying to John Risley (and anyone else interested):

Like everything, our constraints were mostly financial. I'd say we are 95% satisfied with the shop, and I give thanks every day that we have it. Everything I mention below would have added to the total cost, and we were at the limit. The site work was eye-wateringly expensive- we had to create every square foot of flat land. I greatly envy places with nice flat locations for shop and yard facilities, like IRM or Rio Vista or Strasburg.

What would I change? Add another 22 ft. of length- the frames are on 22-6 centers, so one more frame would have really helped. It is tight for length with two 82-ft passenger cars on the same track.

More of the electrical conduit should have been imbedded in the floor, and the utilities (compressed air, water, electrical, gas) should have been installed overhead before the track was put in and equipment filled the place. We worked around equipment and machinery in the building to install the utilities, over a few years, and we're still not quite finished.

We should have gone with 480/3 power from the beginning. Now, we use a couple of step-up transformers, and are looking into bringing 480 into the building.

Better exhaust fans and powered shutters. We have two 48" belt drive fans, one at each end peak, with gravity shutters. They're OK, not great.

"Snow guards" on the roof, from the beginning. We lost $24,000 worth of gutters due to cheaping out and not installing snow guards, and having them ripped off the building by sliding sheets of ice/snow. We have them now....

These are minor points, really. The Thomaston Shop has greatly increased our productivity and the quality of our work. Insulation is a must-- it keeps the place cooler in summertime.

Hope this helps anyone planning a shop building.

Howard P.