Last week, after 6 weeks of work, we got the bathroom basement completed - sump pit dug deeper with the 45-gallon steel barrel sump-pit liner put in place and backfilled with 1"-clear septic-bed crushed stone; trench 18"-24" deep dug all around the perimeter of the basement with 6" "Big-O" drain tile put in place and the trench then back-filled with crushed stone; excess clay all trucked out...... er........ bucketed out of the bathroom basement, through the baggage room basement, the waiting room basement, into the furnace room basement, up the stairs, across the tracks and dumped into the swamp outside;
How To Replace A Shovel Handle (In One Easy Lesson)
The lads were moving the stuff out so fast that one of the shovel handles started to split so we had to take it out of commission for some repairs. First thing to do was to grind the steel rivet that holds the handle in place off and punch it out with a pin-punch. Next thing was to give the shovel a couple of raps with the hammer to release the wooden handle. Next was to find a replacement handle as that was the cheapest alternative to buying a new one.
Would you believe that it's almost impossible to find replacement shovel handles? I had to go to 3 stores before I found a shovel handle at the 4th store? Home Hardware didn't have one. Home Depot didn't have one. Princess Auto didn't have one. Last stop was at Rona. And they had one!
From that point, it was easy installing the handle. Insert the handle into the shovel. Give handle a couple of good raps on the floor to seat it into the handle. Drill a 6mm hole through the shovel and the handle. Insert a 2 1/2"x 6mm bolt through the hole. Fit the nut onto the bolt. Tighten the bolt down.
The shovel looked a bit grungy when compared to the shiny new wooden handle that I then wire-wheeled the steel on the shovel. I was going to sandblast it but, as I had already installed the wooden handle, it was too long to put into the sand-blasting cabinet. After wire-wheeling the shovel, I polished it up with a bit of oil. Brand new shovel, ready to go back to work!
The Baggage Room Basement - The Saga Continues
Actually, the lads had gotten way ahead of me on the work. I had to leave early last week but they carried on with the task of removing the excess clay out of the baggage room basement under George M's tutelage and eye. On inspecting the work last Sunday (I was in MF on other matters relating to the G-Men), it was very obvious that a large amount of clay had been shovelled and bucketed out of the baggage room basement. We had gotten a good start on the next phase of "The Swamp Chronicles".
For most of the morning, Bill S and I were on the shovel-end of things down in the baggage room basement loading a whole pile of clay into the buckets. The lads were kept very busy trucking the stuff outside and dumping it into a pile on the edge of the swamp or throwing it over the edge. The pile you see below (with Mike on the end of the short shovel) is what had been pulled up out of the basement by mid-morning, to say nothing of the stuff that had been dumped or shovelled over the edge.
After lunch, Brad took over the shovelling chores and had the opportunity to use the sledge hammer on some large chunks of concrete. With the exception of some extra large pieces, we managed to get most of the visible concrete and rock into the buckets and dumped outside.
By the end of the day, we had about 3/4 of the excess clay, concrete and rock moved out of the baggage room basement. Let me tell you, that was quite a feat!!
This is what things looked like before we started. This is a photo of the northwestern corner 4 months ago.
And this is what things looked like at the end of today (the northwestern and northeastern corners at the end of the day. It's hard to believe that the clay was at least 12"-14" higher than what you see in these photos.
And the only tools we've been using is this stash of 15 buckets (a couple of them have bit the dust...... er..... clay), two shovels and a sledge hammer inside, plus two shovels outside. That's quite an accomplishment.
In the meantime, Merrill W and Bob C were working on the CP Wickham and managed to get it banging on 6 cylinders (unfortunately it's an 8-cylinder engine so there's a bit more work to do on it).
And Steve G was at it again with his weed whacker, whacking down the weeds (he left that big tall one that you see in the middle of the tracks standing to see if anyone would comment on it).
We'll be away for the next two weeks but Bill S has agreed to be the job-superintendent. If you're looking for something to do, Bill could use your help.
The Crushed Stone Saga
There's been some comments about our source of crushed stone down at the North End. So let me give you a bit of history on the various piles of crushed stone that you find at that end of the property.
The photo below is what I call the "Clarence McDonald Construction" pile of crushed stone. Back in 2005, Clarence and the boys rebuilt one block of Church St (new sewer, water, curbs, asphalt, etc) and used the North end to dump about 400 loads of fill into the swail. That made a big difference to the property! He left behind about half a truck load of crushed stone - sort of a going-away present to the Museum. As you can see from the pails, that's where we've been taking our crushed stone from. It's been sitting there for the last 5 1/2 years.
The next year, we brought in about 6 loads of crushed stone and tail-gated it along the new mainline re-alignment. Ties and rails have since been laid on top of that. Part of those loads was dumped alongside the switch so that it could serve as ballast. There's only been a couple of buckets that's been taken as ballast from that partial pile. That crushed stone was paid for by the Museum. We have taken half a bucket from that pile.
Somewhere around 2008 - 2009 (I probably have the dates all wrong), Steve Hunter and a bunch of guys laid down the ties and spiked the rail in place. They then brought in some crushed stone and used a "stone slinger" to place the stone. We haven't taken any crushed stone from those piles.
Just to set the record straight.
In conclusion
Part Deux of Draining the Swamp is progressing very nicely and we should have that job done in about another 3-4 sessions. Things are nicely moving along, eh!?
Next up, we're gonna dig the pit for the sump pump and play in the soupy, muddy water.
We got well into Phase 4 of draining the swamp in the bathroom basement today. In fact, we got so well into Phase 4 that we finished the job!!!
Yup, we got the sump pump installed and working, excess clay hauled out of the basement, trenches 18"- 24" deep dug around the perimeter, drain tile installed, and all backfilled with crushed stone - all completed today.
The three most difficult things to shovel are asphalt, concrete (before it's set), and crushed stone - in that order. I've shoveled two of the three. If you don't do it right, your forearms are aching after 45 minutes, every bone in your hands are screaming, and you're ready to throw in the towel...... er...... shovel. Fortunately, I had an old construction labourer give me a couple of lessons on how to shovel crushed stone (you don't) which I still use to this day.
Step #1 - Don't use a pointed shovel - use a flat shovel (problem is we only have round shovels).
Step #2 - Don't try to ram the shovel into the pile. Start at the bottom and bring your shovel up into the stone. Your shovel will start to fill up, stone-by-stone.
Step #3 - Don't try to "overfill" the shovel. It won't happen. Take what's on your shovel and dump it into the plastic pail.
And a couple more tips and tricks that I just happen to do automatically without thinking. So, using my lessons-learned from a few decades ago, I tried to show the lads how to do it. Some of them learned and some of them didn't. But there definitely is a big difference in the way everyone's been working from when we first started on Thursday, June 30th - only 6 weeks ago.
Now, if you don't believe that there's a right way and a wrong way to use a shovel, come and join us for the next phase of draining the swamp - the baggage room basement.
In the meantime, we managed to get 8 lorry-loads of crushed stone from our pile at the North End back to the station, down the stairs, through the basements and dumped into the trenches. That may not seem like much until you do some calculations.
We had 12 plastic buckets - 6 perched on each side of the lorry, filled almost to the brim with 1" clear, septic bed crushed stone. Each bucket had to weigh at least 50 lbs. Some quick calculations reveals that we hauled back 12 x 50 lbs = 600 lbs of crushed stone with each trip. As you can see from the grimacing on Mike's face, those buckets do indeed weigh at least 50 lbs.
We made 8 trips from the North End down to the station with 12 buckets of stone, each bucket weighing at least 50 lbs for a total of 600 lbs on each trip. The 8 trips with 600 lbs of stone meant that we hauled back 4,800 lbs of stone from the North End today. Almost 2 1/2 tons of crushed stone!!!
We now get to the difficult part of the job - hauling the buckets down the stairs, through the basements and into the bathroom basement. Here's how we do it.
We made 6 trips from the North End last week so that was an extra 3,600 lbs of crushed stone. Which, if we add in the 4,800 lbs of crushed stone, gives us a total movement in crushed stone of 8,400 lbs of crushed stone - over 4 tons in all!!!
But we got the job done!!!
Once we get the bathroom basement done, we'll be tackling the baggage room basement and giving it the same kind of treatment - sink a 45-gallon steel barrel 4' into the ground to create a sump pit for the sump pump. Glue some 2" rigid ABS plastic pipe together, bend it around, under and over some duct work, holes between basements, and around some wires. Connect it into the rest of the drains so that we can pump the water out of the basement. Then start digging some trenches around the perimeter of the basement, at the same time, busting up some of the old concrete columns that were pushed over when the floors were rebuilt, in addition to moving a whole pile of junk out of the basement.
In the meantime, if you see any of these lads, tell them they did one heck of a terrific job!!
Stay tuned for next week's continuing adventure of "The Swamp Chronicles!"
Okay, so it's not as big an event as landing on the moon, but we finally achieved what one might think was the impossible. This morning, we completed the 18"-24" deep trench around the inside perimeter of the bathroom basement. We got a whole pile of excess clay moved out so that if you wanted to put in a lift 6" of clear 1" septic-bed crushed stone over all of the bathroom basement and then add a 6" layer of concrete on top of some 6-mil plastic, the bathroom basement would all be ready. However, that's not on the top of the priority list. You should'a seen the pile of clay that was piled up outside when we broke for lunch. It was quite the pile.
In the meantime, we took the big coil of "Big-O" drain tile and rolled it from the main waiting room basement into the baggage room basement. If you think holding on to an Anaconda is a trick-and-a-half, you want to try uncoiling some "Big-O" drain tile. Brad uncoiled the pipe from the coil, threaded it through the opening into the bathroom basement and passed it on to Corey.
Corey then passed it on to me. All the while, the pipe was trying to recoil itself back into a big roll.
And I tried to push it into the bottom of the trench, all the while trying to keep the coil straight so that it would roll naturally into the bottom of the trench without it coiling back up again. While I've never wrestled an Anaconda, I kinda got the sense of what it might feel like as we tried to fit the "Big-O" drain tile into the bottom of the trench.
It was a bit of a task but we had the job done in about 30 minutes. By this time it was time to break for lunch so we all hiked up the street to Burger King where we recovered in the cool of their newly renovated restaurant.
After lunch, we then shifted into Phase 4 of the project, Phase 1 being lowering the 45-gallon steel barrel an extra 24" into the ground, Phase 2 being digging the trench around the perimeter of the bathroom basement, and Phase 3 being installing some 6" "'Big-O" drain tile into the bottom of the trench.
Phase 4 involves the moving of some 1" clear septic-bed crushed stone from the north end of the Museum back down to the station, and then lugging the crushed stone down the stairs, through the basements, into the bathroom basement, and filling up the trench with the crushed stone.
This is a different kind of grunt work. It's not glamourous or glitzy. It's back-breaking, hard on the knees, legs, arms, and muscles, to say nothing of the back. But it has to be done if we're to succeed in draining the swamp.
It's that same old question again.
How do you eat an elephant?
One bite at a time.
How do you move crushed stone into the bathroom basement?
One bucket at a time.
How do you fill a bucket?
One shovel-full at a time.
There's no other way to do it.
And that's how it's done.
First we liberated one of the lorries and moved it down to the north end next to the pile of crushed stone. This is stuff that's been left over from 2006 when we relocated the mainline onto its new alignment.
Then we shovelled the stone into the 8 plastic buckets that we used to move the heavy clay out of the basement (they're doing double-duty now, eh!?)
We then moved the loaded stone back down the tracks to the station.
We then off-loaded the buckets onto the station platform.
Then the fun begins! Each one of those pails weighs about 40 lbs. Truck them across the platform, down the stairs and into the furnace-room basement. Then it's into the waiting-room basement. Across that basement and shove the pail into the baggage room basement. Then across the baggage-room basement and shove the pail into the bathroom-basement.
Take that pail full of crushed stone and dump it into the trench. One bucket at a time. Slowly but surely, the trench gets back-filled with the crushed stone.
Repeat the process all over again.
We managed to get about 1/4 of the trench back-filled in spite of the heat and humidity. We made some really good progress today. If we can keep it up, we should have the baggage-room basement done in about another 2 weeks (we only work on this project on Thursdays).
In 5-weeks worth of work, working only on Thursdays (I'm only available on Thursdays), we've managed to get rid of the alligators (How do you drain the swamp when you're up to your eyeballs in alligators?), and get rid of the water. It's quite the difference between then and now!! Fer shur! Fer shur!
Today we had George M, Steve and Cliff, and John W inspect the work that's been done. If you want a personal guided tour, let me know. And make sure you let those young lads know that they've been doing a really good job. Without them we wouldn't have achieved what we have achieved.
Stay tuned for next week's episode.
PS - Steve and Cliff were really tearing up a storm cleaning the mainline track from the weeds. Cliff was running behind the lawn mower (This lad doesn't walk. He runs!). And Steve was right behind him with the weed-whacker cleaning up right next to the rails. Lotsa progress being made today, fer shur, fer shur!!
