OOPS! A Little Problem at 10:10 AM...

A little background to this section.

Eric decided to cut back to three days a week in April 2007. This left two days that I didn’t have an experienced display operator. Linda filled in the days with Earl, Barry and Mike, of which Earl was the most experienced because he did a lot of the cleaning of the display over the past several years. He had learned a lot and was always able to pick up little tidbits of info from either Eric or me regarding how stuff worked and how to repair them. Well, Earl got sick at the beginning of the 2007 season, was diagnosed with cancer and died in August. So Linda had to fill the days with Barry and Mike keeping an eye on the trains during the week with me as the repair man and hoping that the days Eric had off on the weekend, things worked smoothly for them. In January 2008, Greg came back to work for us full-time and we decided to teach him as much as we could about the train display so he could be the operator when Eric and I weren’t here. The worst part of operating the display is being able to get up on top of it to make any repairs, especially the Strasburg Rail Road and the monorail and H.O. at Dutch Wonderland. Occasionally, a flood light burns out but that can go until Eric or I are here if necessary. Eric worked with Greg for a couple weeks and showed him as much as he could without bombarding him with more info than he could digest. There’s actually a lot to know about repairs and such, but Eric and I knew that no matter who was going to run the display, they couldn’t possibly learn as much as the two of us know in only a couple of weeks. This is knowledge that is best learned by doing the building and even Eric can’t fix a lot of my animations.

So we opened on March 15th and Greg eventually was on the schedule to run the display. The first two weeks we were open, I was here to help him and to answer questions when Eric wasn’t around. He finally worked a Saturday on which neither Eric nor I was here. I figured all was good but Linda had a feeling that we shouldn’t go far from home for the weekend, like head off to the beach for some needed R&R.

WELL………

At 10:10 AM on March 29, I got a phone call from Greg at work. He was all in a panic and asked if I was driving or if I was pulled over. My first thought was that someone had died! So I said I was pulled over and he proceeded to tell me that he had an accident on the layout. He said that when he was trying to fix the monorail at Dutch Wonderland, he knelt down and placed his left hand on the display to keep his balance. As he reached for the monorail with his right hand, the landscaping beneath his left hand left go. His whole left arm went down through the scenery, breaking the front of the model of my house and leaving a gapping hole that was about 2 feet by 1 foot. It also pushed the model of my house off of its foundation about 2 inches. Now normally, when someone calls me and tells me they did something, they usually over-react and what they did is in reality not as bad as they said or thought it was. This was definitely as bad as he said.

When Linda and I got to the CCB, I found Chris bandaging Greg’s arm where he scrapped it on the screening as his arm was plummeting through the layout. His injury wasn’t anything major but it just needed covered so he didn’t ruin his shirt. I walked out to the layout and immediately saw what he had done. I gulped and started thinking of how I was going to do a quickie repair job until I could fix the mishap permanently. I first took the model of my house off and assessed the damages there. I knew I was going to have to rebuild part of the front so I found a box and put the house in it for transporting home. I quickly found some screening that we use for scenery and then went over to the train shop and grabbed all the packs of Woodland Scenic landscaping mat that we had. On my way through the back room, I grabbed the staple gun, the tub of glue that was left over from winter repairs and a paint brush. I pushed all the loose plaster into the whole and onto the floor, cut the screen material to cover the hole, stapled the screen to the existing scenery, then brushed glue over the whole mess and stretched the landscape mat over the screen. I topped this all off with a sign that said OOPS! Accidents happen. We’re sorry for the mess.

Linda and I went home and I hit my workshop for the rest of the afternoon to repair the front of my house. It took about 3 ½ hours to make the repairs and paint the house. Linda and I left to go back to the CCB and arrived about 5:45 so I could repair the hole and put the house back.

I started by tearing out my quickie repair job.

I then looked things over and decided to try and prop the screen/plaster back up that was pushed down, repair the holes with new screen and then plaster over everything. I figured I’d have to come back the next morning and re-landscape with grass, bushes and such because my plaster wouldn’t be dry until then. So I started with the propping up job. I grabbed some scrap wood and went under the display and started taking some measurements so I could cut my wood to make my props. I could see that I was going to be shooting from the hip on this one because this has never happened before.

I made the best of it and propped the screen and plaster up as best I could, filled the cracks in the plaster with Elmer’s wood glue and started working on getting the house back on. I was able to get the house back on the foundation that didn’t get destroyed and so I cut some screen for the front yard where the hole was. I fit the screen under the front of the house and using #8 sheet metal screws, fastened the new screen to the old landscaping. Time to get the plaster!

Things were going a lot better than I had figured they would so I looked in all our landscaping materials and found some plaster of Paris. We never use regular old plaster of Paris because Structolite has always been our plaster of choice but since I was on a time limit, I thought I’d try something new. Plaster of Paris has a very short working time, something like 10 minutes, tops. Structolite can be worked with for about 30 minutes or so, but it also takes a lot longer to dry, like overnight for best results. Since it was still fairly early, it wasn’t even 7:00 PM, I mixed a small batch of plaster of Paris and using my trowel, started forming the front yard. I mixed four batches of plaster before I was finished and then grabbed a foam brush and with water, smoothed out the rough spots. At 8:00, Linda asked me if I was getting hungry and I said that we could get something in 15 minutes. After a pizza from Pizza City in downtown Strasburg, I returned to the layout to start the landscaping. Using a paint brush, I “painted” the plaster with our usual mixture of ½ wood glue, ½ water and a couple drops of liquid detergent and sprinkled Woodland Scenics blended turf on the front yard. I grabbed a couple trees for the front yard, some bush material for various bushes and some other landscaping pieces to finish the job. I vacuumed the loose grass from the driveway and painted it with Floquil engine black to give it that new macadam look. By the time I cleaned up all my tools, I could put the cars back in the driveway and stand back and admire the job. It was 11:15 PM and time to head for home. And the best part was I didn’t have to come up the next morning to finish.

Comments

[David Mosher]

In a few short paragraphs not only did you give insight to your expertiese, you also gave a newcomer to the hobby a great deal of pointers. And I must admit to having many "OOOPS" episods during my lifetime. Great stuff! Thanks for sharing.