Bloggin' Umholtz

The Bridge Over Sofa Gulch

Here in Ebensburg Winter lasts until about the 4th of July. We usually get a couple of warm days around then with no rain and very little wind. This is immediately followed by fall and winter, both usually simultaneous in arrival.

I worked diligently on my honeydew list until I had it whittled down to nothing and then began working on the shelf railroad. The winter had given me lots of time to think while my back recuperated from snow shoveling.

We live in an old house. We occupy the 2nd and 3rd floors while we rent the first floor out as an apartment. The house has plaster/lathe walls. From doing quite a bit of remodeling I knew two things. There wasn’t a square corner in the house and the plaster varied in thickness sometimes as much as 3/8 of an inch on the same wall! I had already decided to use oak plywood as shelving for the N.P.D. & S. I also decided that I wanted two loops of track and not just one so my shelf would have to be wide enough to accommodate both. To handle the plaster and the corner problem I bought colonial oak baseboard and attached oak brackets at two-foot intervals to it with wood screws. Once stained and given a satin finish I inverted it and screwed it around the perimeter of the room at the height of the shelf.

I used 3-inch long brass wood screws with a round head and a decorative washer to attach the molding. This gave me about 5/8 of an inch to play with when positioning the shelves and would leave no visible gap where the shelf met the wall. Next I purchased 3 sheets of ¾ inch oak plywood and cut them to fit. Two sheets were needed to complete the four corners. The radius on my curves is about 5 ft. The remaining sheet was cut to fill in between the corner sheets. When I was finished I had a complete shelf railroad… almost. I couldn’t believe it, but I was five feet short, and had no plywood left. I hated to purchase another full sheet just so I could cut a five-foot piece to span across the top of a window.

A railroading friend came to my rescue and also reaffirmed his superior intelligence at the same time. When I told him of my problem he looked at me somewhat incredulously and said, “Build a bridge.” With that he turned and walked away. I on the other hand took several moments to reassess what had just transpired. After picking up my jaw from the ground I quickly determined that there had been no one in earshot and knew that my secret was safe. “Build a bridge”, who would’a thunk it? I knew there was a reason I paid him all these years to be my friend.

Thus was born The Bridge over Sofa Gulch.

The Bridge Over Sofa Gulch

Next Installment: The Light at the End of the Tunnel