Tim McNerney worked on track at the West end of P-yard while John Purbrick added more ballast and worked on track in the 105th street area a few feet east of P-yard.

John McNamara and Alvar Saenz-Otero secured the additional 2x8s and bridging that Alvar had installed in the tower this morning. The tower floor will be a six foot diameter circle of 3/4 inch plywood supported by 2x8s on one foot centers. John, Alvar, and Kevin Burleigh constructed three 30x38 inch panels which were added between the legs of the tower to provide dimensional stability for the legs and to provide a means of anchoring the tower to the floor. With the assistance of Jeff Birkner, the tower was positioned in its proper location and secured to the floor with concrete anchors. This will provide the basis for subsequent construction of the tower superstructure and for the turning loops that will provide Phase 1 loop-to-loop operation.

Last Saturday, Jeff, James, and Howard Gorin installed the 3/4 inch plywood floor in the new tower. It looks great! The support structure for the tower will be surrounded by track loops whose inner diameter is 6 feet (circumference 18.8 feet). The four corners of the tower support structure will provide support points for the loops - one every 4.7 feet. This evening, John Purbrick and John McNamara began work to add four additional support points for the loops, cutting the support distances to 2.3 feet on the average.

During the second half of the evening, John P devoted his attention to track work (yet another switch), while John M, Jeff, and James began enclosing one of the columns near the middle of the room. This enclosure will not only hide an ugly drain pipe, it will also provide support for a cable tray coming from the System and will provide a path for cables to drop from the overhead cable tray to layout level.

Mike Newman worked on upgrading our computers to make them more compatible with the NetPhone system his company is donating.

John Purbrick worked on switches and Jeff Birkner painted the column enclosure that he, James Knight, and Alvar Saenz-Otero constructed on Saturday. This enclosure hides an ugly pipe beside one of the columns near the center of the room, provides a support point for the cable tray coming over from The System, and provides an out-of-sight cable route to get cables down from the tray to under the layout. Saturday's work included benchwork construction for the first of two loops around the tower. These loops will provide initial loop-to-loop layout operation.

Here is a scanned draft copy of the layout plan.

There were no regular Tuesday evening work sessions during the winter break.