Sunday 25 January 2015

Preparing The Train Room


For the last 15 and a bit years the home of all my model railway dreams has been my two car brick garage. Unfortunately that's exactly all its ever been. A brick lined room with a tin roof and a roller door that was an oven in summer and a refrigerator in winter. Let's not forget all the dirt, dust and leaves that constantly entered under and above the roller door and the never ending battle with spiders and them crapping over everything and I think you get the general idea. Basically my garage was a junk room. A dumping ground for all the things that couldn't fit in the house and my large collection of books, magazine, trains, abandoned benchwork attempts and just about everything else I'd hoarded over the last decade and a half.

Not exactly the ideal environment for constructing a scale and detailed model railway in.

So with the sale of my O scale collection the highest of priority was the full insulating, lining, lighting and painting of my garage (the first 3 to be done professionally). Also on the advice of Adrian Guzburg, I had sixteen wall sockets installed along with LED lighting which can be dimmed if required. Four very exhausting coats of paint later by me and I no longer had a dark cavern to build my layout in.


This just left the garage door to be conquered. As I wasn't keen to spend up to another 3 grand on a sectional door and 7 grand for an insulated one, a bit of surfing on the internet revealed that I could both seal all the gaps around and insulate the existing door for just over a grand. The search turned up Clearseal in Toronto NSW with a clever set of brushes designed to keep out dust, dirt and leaves to fire rated levels if you require. The brushes are very easy to install and only took a few hours basically on my own.


Vertical side brush.


Bottom door brush with rubber strip behind.


Top door brush that sits on the lintel when in the closed position.
 
Since these wonderful brushes have been installed the garage has been a much cleaner place to be and will be a much nicer home to build my layout in.
 
As of yet my roller door insulating blanket has not arrived from Queensland so I'll let you know when it does and how it works out. The garage still gets very warm as the door faces north and cops the full force of the sun on hot days so plenty of heat is still radiating into the room making it uncomfortable.

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