Alberta............

Hellooo............Helloooo............I'm still here................


We had to actually put the Stettler float on hold for a bit. We had a job come in for Molson's beer, and it was a fairly big job, with no blogging about it, but I'll share a cool pic! Lot's of LED backlit wall panels, and laminating veneer and aluminum over MDF and acrylic.

Not super cool, but more of a challenge. It was supposed to be installed on the 2nd and 3rd of March, but the location wasn't ready, so we were pushed back until April 7th and 8th. Photo's of that coming when it's installed.

In the meantime, we're back on the Stettler job now.

Shortly after the framework for the heart, and the bridge was test fit, I decided to change the design. A small change in theory, but a huge change in terms of re-work, and fabrication!
I decided that instead of bolting, and un-bolting the train from the bridge for transit, that the available real-estate inside the heart was the perfect place to store the train. Why I didn't think of it earlier, I don't know. Stupid Jamie...........

The answer was to put the whole bridge, and train attached, on a vertical slider system. This won't be a powered system, they'll still have to use a small ladder and lift it, then lock it in position. BUT, the benefits far outweigh any small things like weight and gravity! HA HA!

I used 2" steel tubing, and welded 1/4" rod on all the inside edges. The rod essentially becomes the rails in the system. There's also a hard stop welded to the sliders to stop the whole thing from crashing down into the heart.

Each end of the opening got the track system made.

The rollers were actually heavy duty patio door sliders. These were designed to ride on 1/4" rails.
The system is pretty slick!
This minor/ major change actually ate up 2.5 days on our end, when you include the added design time, and re-work to the heart assembly!

It's a little hard to believe that a heart that big could be collapsed down into a 4 X 8 X 16" tall crate.

I think it was around 250 lbs when it was all crated................
And now it's gone!
8)
JWO