Saturday, June 14, Leif and Dave finished the shed.
Thursday evening, June 12: Russ and Darren put the roof on.
Leif plans to finish the plywood on Saturday
Monday June 9. Dave stained the shed and bought the peak cap and eve flashing at Valley
Metal roof and finishing touches to come soon.
Saturday June 7, Leif, Russ and Dave installed the walls and rafters for the Wheelchair Car shed.
Leif had prefabbed the two walls and rafters at home.
Saturday, May 24. Leif, Rob and Dave installed the blocks to hold the shed. We went for flat-side-up instead of a 2×4 in the slot because of the precise dimensions. Leif, lead builder, is continuing with walls and trusses at home. We decided to increase width to 54″.
Background
The wheelchair car is a nuisance in the shed. It is hard to walk past, and leaves no floor space for working at the workbench. We had considered storing the wheelchair car outside on a track with a fold-back cover over it, but now more of us like it in a mini-shed.
We’ve decided on a mini-shed that just fits. The wheelchair car is 36″ x 92″, So a 40″ door width would be plenty, and a 96″ shed length just makes it.
And we have the funds in our infrastructure grant.
Alternate Location discussion
– Some of us wanted to build a track switch and put the mini-shed on a new siding, but we’d not likely get that done by the infrastructure deadline of September 2025. Too much metal fabrication work. And the Market uses the parking lot for vendors in the winter.
– Some suggested expanding the north side of the south shed, but that still leaves the entrance the same (an ankle-breaker). It would be expensive and challenges deadline. (Expanding that shed remains an option in some future year when we need more space and the wheelchair car is stored elsewhere)
– if we later prefer having the over-track drive-through shed at a different location, since the mini-shed is small, we have the option to easily move it later.
The decision is to build a drive-through shed with the current location selected here, near where we deploy the wheelchair train, towed by “little toot”, with the option to move it later.
Our standard wheelchair setup is now the little-toot loco, pax car #10 and the wheelchair car. When setting up, we’d pull the wheelchair car back to the west shed, move the main loco by, then move the 3-car wheelchair train into its “priority loading” position.
The shed opening would be 40
‘ wide and 4′ tall, (just enough to drive through seated), with a single gable metal roof and door like our recent lean-to shed. Shed length is 8’.
Foundation will be simply four concrete blocks, flat side up
The shed door would be 40″‘x4′, and when open would display photos or whatever, plus the full 4’x8’ wall is available for a permanent photo display or mural.
Another plus: the photos on our heritage displays could be on the shed to avoid deploying the displays.
Homemade trusses could look like this; we would need five at 2′ spacing. We could store 20″x 20″ boxes in half the space with a 2’x8′ piece of plywood under the trusses on one side.
across the trusses would be two 1″x4″x10′ on each side of the gable to hold the metal roof
We have several pieces of metal roof left over that are large enough for the 28″ needed on each side of the gable. We have an offer of a free metal ridge cap.
To prevent trapezoiding sideways, we could add 2x4s like in this shed, there is no clearance problem near the top
Cost would be under $900