Planning

I quickly found out that getting architectural plans of the Stadium might not be quite as easy as I thought. I struck out with the structure's builders and old owners (the Yankees) as well as the new owners (the City of New York). I wound up tabling that for the time being and started to concentrate on the size and proportion of the entire layout. Starting with Google satellite photos of the Bronx I measured the area in question with the little scale on the screen and realized that it would be between 100 and 160 feet on a side depending on the boundaries. Did I want the river in the model? Did I want the 149^th St. tunnel entrance where the train emerges from underground? Did I want the junction where the Hudson and Harlem River lines diverge (or converge if you're headed southbound)? How about Joyce Kilmer Park? I already knew that Franz Sigel Park and Macombs Dam Park would be included, did I need another Park? Should I have the layout extend east as far as the Grand Concourse? Every city block I added would probable add six months to the construction time.

April 21, 2006 - The price of poker just went up. I stopped in at a local G Scale shop for one of my occasional browsing trips and wound up buying an LGB Genesis in the Phase III livery. I knew that it was a dangerous thing to do because it would dramatically accelerate my timetable, but rampant consumerism got me! I also noticed another expense looming on the horizon. Doing a rough count of visible cars in the aerial photos of the area brought home the realization that I'd need at least three hundred die-cast cars to make the layout look the way I wanted. Since most of the product lines emphasized either luxury or high performance cars I knew I'd wind up doing a lot of digging to find a sufficient variety of common non-sexy cars. I did luck out in one area, though. Apparently one of the model car manufacturers had lost their contract with the City of New York and were no longer making the 2005 Crown Vic NYPD patrol cars in 1 / 24 so I bought him out of his last 18 cars.

May 3, 2006 - Road trip! I could only take the early stage planning for so long and the time had come for me to play hooky and take the train up to The City for a photo recon. I had steeled myself to the concept that it would be a wasted day if I spent it snapping random images of the whole area. I would have to concentrate on one small area and shoot it from every conceivable angle. Since I had already ordered a set of Jig Stones molds and had plenty of concrete, I decided that my focus would be on the structures in the single block bounded by River Avenue on the west and Gerard Avenue the east, between 161^st and 158^th Streets. I would shoot JPEGs of the facades and use RAW format for the signage to add detail for eventual resizing and duplication. So armed with a camera, two tape measures, and a Lufkin wheel measurer I detrained the Amtrak (if you can deplane an aircraft, why can't you detrain?) at Pennsylvania Station, rode one stop north to Times Square on the 1 train and the shuttle east to Grand Central Station where I boarded the 4 train to enter that Magical Kingdom, The Bronx.

Concentrate on one block? Fat chance! I had taken 186 photos before I left the Northbound platform of the el at 161^st Street station. I measured the platform (579' x 11'10" except the southern 22' where it widens to 12'10") the utility sheds, the stairwells, the signage, I kept measuring until I started getting confused with my scribbled notes. There was a sequence of poster ads for Johnnie Walker which I took 68 shots of. Some of these signage shots are quite useable for duplication, others are not simply because I didn't get into a deep enough crouch to give the shots correct perspective. I did eventually leave the platform and start clicking the storefronts on my target block (and measuring them) when my camera battery started to die. I was just as happy that I'd forgotten to pack a spare because after 300 some odd pictures and 8 pages of scribbled notes and crude scetches, I was pretty much done in. I had shot the cigar store on the corner, the souvenir shop next door, and what looked like an unused side entrance to the Apple Bank around the corner. On the train home I spread out in the bar car trying to transcribe my notes into a more organized form but I could see I had lots of holes (the wooden storage bin for sand or salt for the platform was 3'8" from the edge of the overhang, but was it 3'8" to the left or right?). Was I obsessing about trivial details? Probably, but I knew that the final layout would probably have it's fair share of inaccuracies without any additional help from my laziness.

May 7, 2006 -- Transcribing notes and and drafting architectural drawings. I supposed I could have been bummed about all the measurements I failed to get. There were so many things that I would get the length and depth but forget the width. Perhaps I did actually measure it but failed to write it down. On balance, however, I think of it as a successful day. I did gather a lot of data and more importantly learned a regimin which I'd certainly follow in future data gathering days. On my next trip at least I'd know specifically what data I needed. Besides, I'd figured out that you can make aluminum gutters from a 2x4, a router, a roll of flashing, and a steel rod (sometimes I can be easy to please); and the Nationals won to boot!

May 8, 2006 -- Wow! Golly Gee! Holy shit! My biggest obstacle might have become one of the layouts signature features! There are quite a few clichés concerning turning adversity to advantage and I think I might have done just that. My most daunting unsolved problem concerned the topography of the area around my house. As the layout grew the number of suitably level sites rapidly approached zero. It's one thing to find a level piece of ground for a 20x20 patio, but quite another as the piece of ground needed exceeds 100' on a side. Three years ago I built a 60x110' indoor riding arena and after considering many possible sites on my property settled on one I thought relatively flat. It surveyed out at 13' out of grade from the northwest corner to the southeast. I'd rather not remember how many truckloads of bank run needed to be brought in to solve that headache!

My little Magical Kingdom of the Bronx would be worse. I'd come to resign myself to the inevitability of having the construction site far from my house, and far from existing power. Today my brainstorm occurred. I was in the Lowes in California, Maryland asking questions about the properties of various concretes when used together and explaining the terrain problems I had with my hilly property (http://www.millcovefarm.com/pix/farmpix.html). I mentioned to the projects associate that it had occurred to me that in some of the areas with more dramatic depressions and swales that I could span the depression with 6x6s and pour the concrete slab so as to be elevated in some places. I envisioned a crawlspace under some areas of the Bronx (as I had come to refer to it) which would become an attractive nuisance with a variety of critters taking up residence.

Then I thought of an ant farm! You know those nature exhibits for kids where a glass sided tank is made with a minimum of depth, then ants are added and as they dig their intricate underground labyrinth the viewer can watch their actions from the glass side. Why didn?t I take advantage of the topographical depression and build an underground room or basement under part of the Bronx - Such a room would accomplish several things:

May 12, 2006 -- I bought 200 some odd feet of used track on eBay which arrived today. I wanted a break from making drawings and bricks anyway so I started to lay it out in the basement. I had already decided to go digital as far as controlling the power to the layout so I spent some time online learning MTS. I downloaded some software from LGB which included a 163 page PDF manual. I guess I've got some reading to do tonight.
Reading, right! I watched Atlanta and John Smoltz survive the best performance I've yet seen from Ramon Ortiz. As soon as the last pitch was thrown (around 9:45) I went downstairs and started cleaning and assembling track. I was at it until 3:15 AM. The part that annoys me is that while I'm playing, the layout isn't progressing. I can rationalize it by saying I'm getting some practical knowledge about MTS, but we all know that's a crock!

May 19, 2006 -- Beaurocrats! I realize that a zealot on a mission has a distorted sense of what constitutes a reasonable response time, but I finally had to call the Bronx. The non-arrival of the plats and topos finally became too much to live with (not that I'm anywhere close to pouring concrete yet!) so I called that gentleman who had seemed so helpful during my early inquiries. When I reached him he remembered me immediately and told me that he'd been too busy to get to my request yet. Apparantly he didn't realize that he was slowing up the most momentious construction project since that long wall in the Far East a few centuries ago. People have got to learn to prioritize!

August 3, 2006 -- Still no plats. Maybe another trip to the Bronx is in order but it's just so frustrating to me that you have to kiss people's asses to get them to do their jobs! I suppose that possessing that attitude makes me a closet idealist. Either that or a potential postal worker.

March 7, 2007 - HELP!! IF YOU HAVE ANY IDEAS AS TO HOW I CAN SPEED UP ACQUISITION OF EITHER YANKEE STADIUM PLANS OR PLATS FOR THAT AREA OF THE BRONX BOUNDED BY THE HARLEM RIVER TO THE WEST, THE GRAND CONCOURSE TO THE EAST, SOUTH TO 148th STREET, AND NORTH TO 164th. PLEASE E-MAIL ME !

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