Construction

When spring arrived in 2013 I attacked the once again weed filled eyesore with vigor and began the landscaping.  I had plenty of thin landscaping stone left over from the previous owners failed fountain project that I had to remove from the basement.  This was used to create terrace transition between the upper and lower area of the railway.  And yes, you read that correctly.  The stone came from an indoor fountain I had to chisel out of the house; but that’s a story that would fill another article in itself. The rocks were stacked against the dirt terrace face to create the transition.  As I dug away the dirt to create a level area in what would become the upper half of the railway I discovered that the previous owners had filled in the area with debris to include broken pieces of concrete, cinder block, landscape timber cut-offs and more large rocks.  Removing their quick fill of the raised end of the flowerbed added a chore that I wasn’t expecting.  But it’s good to know what may lie underneath as I would be planting support posts of pvc pipe into the ground for the roadbed.  I thought it a bit prophetic that I had to mine the area that would eventually represent a former mining town in miniature.

The terrace was planned to allow for a transition in elevation that would also incorporate a short trestle across a desert wash.  This also happens on the real world prototype.  I wanted the trestle bents to have a firm foundation so I was able to re-purpose some flat slabs of cinder block for the foundation.  Eventually this will be masked by a mixture of sand, crusher fines, and concrete to disguise the cinder block as the floor of a desert wash.

Once the rockery was in place I could lay the roadbed in the upper area.  This took no time at all, fit exactly as planned and I was ready to get the weed block fabric in place.  The end of the reign of the weed box is now in sight. I chose red lava stone to go on the weed block fabric.  I needed a way to create the desert atmosphere and chose the red to add that desert color I grew up in.  The idea of using the lava stone was planted in my mind during the 1989 Garden Railway Convention in Concord, Ca.  There was a railway that used different colors of lava stone and river rock on their railway for that effect and I remembered how well it worked.

The rail and ties were pulled out of storage, a left over purchase for another project that I let languish and then changed my mind on executing that project.  I had just enough so I was extremely happy to clear the garage of those items and not have to make further purchases.  Track went down quickly and I turned my attention to the trestle.  Also fortunately for me, I had a completed curved trestle made out of redwood donated by a friend who changed his mind on the execution of one of his projects.  The bents were already built and attached to each other at a wider radius curve.  I just needed to disassemble the trestle and re-purpose it on my new railway.  That was completed in an afternoon since it is a short curved span.  Track is now in place, ready to test!