The Neosho Valley Lines Story -

"Our New Home"

 

The next chapter in our saga begins where we left off on June 29th. That happened to be our last Friday night in the depot. The big parts of the layout had been moved out that night. We hauled the Cherryvale section down to the hotel basement. We intended to use this section to start our new layout in the hotel basement or incorporate it somehow. The N scale layout was also moved on this last night. Around 9 p.m., it started to rain and it had already rained a lot in this area in the days prior to us moving. We all thought that by Saturday or Sunday, the big move would be completed and a new chapter of the club would begin.

 

On June 30th, Mike Peters and Bob Wintle headed over to the depot to finish moving the last remaining items. With their truck full and heading to the hotel, something that wasn't considered could happen, did happen. Wayne awoke Saturday morning to find 18 inches of water in the basement from the overnight deluge of rain. With sump pumps forcing water out like a fire hydrant, it took several days for the water level to go down. The benchwork, boxes, buildings, equipment, Digitrax system and anything else that had been moved now faced a flood of water. We planned for 1 - 3 inches of water in the basement and put crates down to lift things up higher. But, we were unprepared for the 18 plus inches that came up thru the basement floor and from the saturated ground below.

 

We salvaged the Digitrax components with some contact cleaner. One of our DCS 100's was sent back in for repair and came back to us in fine working order. Most of our lumber, 2x2 legs, homasote and plywood materials were soaked, at least up to 18 inches depending on how they were laid on there sides. Our backdrops were soaked as well.

 

Below are some of the pics taken 7 days after the flood. You can see these first two pics are of our Cherryvale section with a nice waterline on it now.

 

The rest of these pics are around the basement. Flood waters touched everything in our new home. To say that it took the wind out of our sails is an understatement.

 

 

We purchased some base cabinets from a local cabinet company a few years ago to put under our layout. Now, they are destined for the landfill, having been water soaked and now mold/mildew growing on them.

The two pics below show the flood damaged benchwork and anything else that needed to be burned from our basement cleanup. Many years of memories were in that pile. Fortunately, none of us were around when they set it ablaze.

 

 

 

Update - March 2008 - We started reconstruction sometime in September on the 2nd floor of the hotel. We occupy 4 rooms that are essentially 10' x 12' in size, connected in a row. We have completed the majority of the carpentry work, a new HVAC unit was installed this month, sheet rock has been completed as well. The rooms are far enough along that we will be painting them soon and starting on benchwork. Our new landlords, Jim and Wayne, have been very generous to our group in allowing us to have a layout in their hotel and our club looks forward to starting a new layout, utilizing new techniques we have learned since the last layout was built. The future is a lot brighter for us than where we were at in July 2007. Maybe by July of this year we will have benchwork installed in some of the rooms!