Bloggin' Umholtz

The Light at The End of The Tunnel

Running two loops of track around the perimeter of our living room did have its challenges. One corner of the room didn’t even exist. I had to hang two five-foot curves of track out in mid air. It turned out to be relatively simple to do using ¾ in plywood.

The real challenge came at the opposite corner. There I would have to tunnel through the hall closet. The tunnel however would just be for the outside loop. The inside loop would go along the wall of the closet. Sort of like one track tunneling through the mountain and the other going around it. I completed the inside loop rather quickly and began seriously thinking about the outside loop. I had built that closet. I knew where each stud was and I also knew that it had a double sill plate at 8 foot from the floor that corresponded just about exactly to where the tunnel would be. Blasting I’m sure was out of the question.

I pondered this for a while. Four years to be exact, give a month or two. Finally this past fall (1999) with chisel, saw and hammer I started tunneling. The gypsum rock gave way fairly easy to my efforts and I was beginning to have high hopes when my saw encountered the sill plate. Several frustrating hours later with numerous grunts, groans and Holy Huckleberries, I finally stepped back to admire my creation. This is the part where it is important to note that it is not a good thing to step back when standing on a stepladder. Mostly, all I could admire, was the ceiling and the underside of the top two rungs on the ladder. Dis you know spiders live there?

Linda asked, “What’s all the racket?”

“Just Tunneling Dear” I replied.

“That’s nice, did the snow melt yet?” were the last words I heard before I lost consciousness.

Having completed one side of the tunnel, the second proved to be far less difficult. It wasn’t long before I was able to look through the tunnel and see daylight at the other end. I chuckled. “Hon, look I can see the light at the end of the tunnel”.

From down below came a reply, “Can you also see the dust, dirt, insulation and wood on our coats because you didn’t empty the closet before you started working?”

Not missing a beat, I replied. “You know this railroading thing would be a lot more fun outside.”

Boy has dry-cleaning gone up in price.

To complete the tunnel I cut portals from two pieces of 2-inch urethane and used a file to cut groves that resembled joints between cut stone. I painted the whole thing gray and placed the portals at the ends of the tunnel. I hand bent a piece of track so it would lead into the tunnel and took my Bachman EBT caboose and rolled it through the tunnel. It worked just fine. Now all I needed was track for the rest of the loop.

Next installment: You don’t really want that flowerbed, do you?