When I was about 12, I lived in Savannah GA for awhile. My mom and I would go grocery shopping at the mall and if I was good, she would give me a couple of dollars to go to the arcade. The arcade in the mall was called The Gold Mine. I loved The Gold Mine! It was a cool idea to have an arcade inside a gold mine! It was dark and had the oil lamps (simulated) on the beams holding up the roof. It really did look like an old Mine. I have always had fond memories of The Gold Mine. So Now I bought my own Gold Mine! (sorry no machines yet) The mine is the "R". It came with a small building 36'X 16' and about 10 Acres. The building was partially renovated (they got started) Pulled wire, insulation, sheet rock and one of two rooms has new tile. It has a wood burning stove but no power no sewer and no water. Well my work is cut out for me. First I will need power. There is no grid power up there. So, we will install a solar system. I have experience with this. I will be installing about 1600 watts of solar panels, an Outback Maximum Point Power Tracker and an Outback 3600 Watt Inverter. That will get the job done and then some. So my plan here is build a small cabin with a couple of machines to start. Then at some point build a 4000 sf house on the pad above the mine. Then the mine will become the "R"cade and I will add more machines. This project will be ongoing and I will post up the progress as I go. Oh and by the way, I just scored myself and Ore Cart this weekend! (very hard to find and pricey if you do!) Thinking about which two games to have to start. I am thinking White Water (had this one and I miss it) This game also has a Mine! Then maybe Fish Tales. (had this one also and miss it as well)

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Yeah I have a CCC. It would definitely fit in there. Any other games that have mines in them. I know there were em games like Prospector, Gold Rush, Klondike ect...

Got the solar equipment all ready. We have a snow storm going on up there right now but later this week I will start the install.

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Eureka!

Started installing The power panel today. The owners before me pulled 5 circuits for the building. It’s likely that I will need a couple more. I added a few more breakers in the sub panel for that reason. I pounded an 8 foot ground rod ( you have no idea how difficult that is in the Colorado Rockies. I have seen where you had to dig a trench and lay the rod in it to get 8’ of contact) successfully. It is VERY important to have only 1 ground source for all the electrical. One word: Lightning! Lightning can cause a massive Build up of voltage potential between two ground sources that will destroy a power system and start one hell of a fire. I hopefully will set up the array tomorrow.

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I will drill a water well. I have drilled several over the years. I also “witch” for water and out of at least a dozen wells I have never been wrong(knocking on wood).

That is Awesome! I guess it’s a bit silly to think that there was only one Gold Mine Arcade, there probably were many.

So I got the Photovoltaic Array up today. Fell short of time and didn't get the wiring done. I am hoping to pu “Fire In The Wire” tomorrow and get the system up and running! Can’t Wait!

Got the building powered up today. Now I have to go through the wiring to get every circuit working. They left some circuits pulled but not connected to outlets and switches. No fixtures so there will be some fun in picking those. Trying to keep in synch with the mine theme so lantern and hurricane fixtures will be sought.

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Did some electrical troubleshooting today (actually chased my tail for a few hours) I have one dead circuit. So, I will have to run some conduit along the back of the building in order to replace the wiring for that circuit. Off to good old Home Depot with a grocery list in the morning! The good news is, I got to install the two porch lights. I went with a lantern style for one and a rustic light sensored LED for the other. 54538646-A423-4D17-B095-2D2E98F5DD81 (resized).jpeg

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Good memories... life seemed so innocent and care free back then. Thanks for sharing.

Ok got the electrical done. We finished hanging light fixtures this week. We got some good ones. I found some rustic mine looking lights at Home Depot. Very simply a hanging bulb in a cage. Something you might find in a mine when electricity made its way into the mining industry. I also found a couple of old hanging candle hurricane lamps on Ebay. We put a couple of led flickering candles in them and they look awesome. We did track lighting above were the bar will go and into where the bathroom will be. Remember I went with the circuits that the former owner pulled.
The other room had one center fixture and two reading lights. It was intended to be a bedroom and we may put a bed in there to spend the night. But at some point I will remove it and just put games in there.

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A historic piece of artwork at “R”cade Mine.
This is a picture of the Georgetown Loop Railroad. A historic Mine Train in Georgetown Colorado. (Still Operating) It is a local tourist attraction now. I recommend
You guys come out in the summer and take ride on that. Your kids will love it and if your nothin more than a big kid (like me) you will too.

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You might have noticed my mouse traps! The mice have been very curious as to what is going on here. I just trap them and take them down with me and let em go. OK I know I am a big softy. I have used all kinds of traps for mice in my time and the live traps are the best because you don't have to clean up the mess! We recently started placing steel wool in all the spots where they can get in and I noticed that we are seeing a lot less of them. I am keeping my fingers crossed. Once I install the Brick board on the perimeter walls it will shut them out completely. Plus there will be a lot less of them to shut out!

Well I ordered the first game for the “R”cade Gold Mine! See if you can guess which game

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Today I brought up the faux brick paneling.
That stuff gets pretty heavy when you have to load and unload 10 sheets. I watched a couple of videos on different ways to install it with good results. They said in the video that the paneling was pretty forgiving and it was pretty difficult to botch it. Oh and I did find that out first hand. The key to installing this stuff is not to butt up each sheet. You want to stagger the seam between panels. You do this by creating a jigsaw puzzle piece (with a jig saw ar ar) by cutting out every other brick on each adjoining sheet.
I got two panels up today. This takes longer than I thought...

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I sold a FT that I restored 4 years ago and I really miss it. My collection is all WPC-95 now and I promised myself I would not exceed 9 games with the space I have. So I have a couple of "Lost Games". Games that I really want back but have no room for. White Water is another title that I call a lost game. If there are any of you guys out there that have a WW that are thinking of letting it go please PM me. So two machines is all I want to put in the "R"cade for now. We will be using the "R" for a mountain getaway for awhile til we decide on the main house. (cost feasibility) Once the house is built the "R"cade will rise to it's full potential of an Arcade and entertainment center.

Thanks. The real upgrades are coming. Next summer I will be installing a septic system and drilling a well. I intend to do two directional bores under the road for well line and sewer line because the well will go in above the road/mine. The sewer line will serve the proposed house above the road as well. The septic will be a 4 bedroom (large) for the main house. The field (septic) will be below and just west of the mine. I do mountain residential site development professionally so this is my area of expertise.

I haven't played a Congo. I will have to check that out.

I have to share this picture of a front door that I saw at Home Depot. HD has had this door for some time and I have always loved it. It has the miniature greeting at the top.
It would look awesome at the mine.

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Put some more brick paneling today. It’s Not going up very fast. Between the outlet holes and the fitting of the panels, it just is a bit tricky. Once the box extenders are in for switches and outlets they match up with the surface of the panels. I also played around with some grout today. The grout is just a little too bright so I mixed in some ash from the stove and presto, the color matched right up.

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Got the Fish Tales for the “R”cade. (Thanks racingpin) Cleaned it up and added pinblades from Tilt and color dmd. Replaced the coin door with a nice straight one I had. The game plays well. I landed a White Water and it should arrive in the coming weeks. I had to find one outside of Colorado because White Water games are very difficult to find for sale here because... well it’s Colorado! Up in Idaho Springs (where the mine is) there are many rafting companies because rafting is big business here, so WW will be a great addition to the “R”cade.

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Got my first wall up with the Faux Brick Paneling. I must say I really like the way this stuff looks. The two games will really look nice in there. I hope to make more progress next week (won’t have to work)

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Yeah good eye! The batteries are small to start here. The batteries are just 4 Die Hard deep cycle marine batteries. ($300). What will ultimately be used will be 8 Trojan L16s
About 5 times the capacity of these. ($2500) what I wanted to see here was how much these little guys would take before I brought in the big ones. These guys will take care of all my construction needs right now. Once I am finished, then I will spring for the big ones.

White Water! All ready to ship. I should have the game on 12/3. Took a chance and bought this one on Ebay at auction (not buy it now) This game appears to be in really nice original condition (low plays) Thats a myth for a WW! But we will see how well I did when it comes in. I paid $6350 so I will let you guys be the judge as to whether I got a good deal. I think going in I did or at least paid the going rate. If a White Water comes up on Denver Craigs List here it is “Gone In 60 Seconds”

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That looks awesome!

Would be nice. Looks like fun but it would take up too much space. Plus I would have to run my neighbors off with a shot gun!

Ok so I have been working on Fish Tales for the past few days getting it ready. I can’t take it up there til we finish the Brick paneling and widow trim. The right side of FT is/was severely faded. I decided to spend some time on it with some Alcohol based Ink. I have had some success in the past with this. This job was rather large compared to my past touch ups. I have also installed cabinet decals so that was an option here. The other two sides looked pretty good so I decided restore the artwork for the right side to match the left side with the ink. Let me know what you guys think. Now I know it is not to full color like new. I just wanted to match the other side.

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So the other things I did to Fish Tales were
Color DMD, the pinblades from Tilt, LEDs (mostly white but a few color for GI)
One of the things that bugs me about FT is how the fish in the topper makes a banging noise. Some of em sound like somebody is shooting at the thing. Mine was pretty loud. So I took a slide pad that you put on the legs of furniture and stuck it to that metal pad that attached to the fish tail. That quieted down a lot. Now it looks and sounds like a fish floppin around up there.

Oh Water will be available I guarantee it! I will drill a well next year and since I am a water witch, I will find the water!

The mine is vertical shaft (straight down 150' to an adit network underground (horizontal shafts with no portals) The mine was capped a few years ago when a neighbor's dog fell down the shaft (too dangerous) When I got the property and brought up my wife and daughter, the first thing my daughter wanted to do was go look at the shaft. (glad it's capped) The building was a shaft house that had a winch to drop the ore carts and miners down to the work area.