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!

Layout & Design

My first concern was to make this railway as maintenance free as possible. It is at ground level at what we will call the upper end, which limits my ability for maintenance as my age now makes it difficult for me to get down on my knees to work the railway.  The area is on a natural slope with a walkway between the house and the pergola flower box that connects the upper driveway with the lower patio; an elevation change of about seven feet vertical in fifteen feet of distance.  The lower end of the flower box has a retaining wall about three feet high made of large landscape timbers which also doubles as a nice elevation for steaming up a loco while sitting on a stool. So that part of the railway is elevated for easy maintenance. 

 

I spent the winter of 2012 conducting research on the namesake railway and designing its soon to be small cousin.  It has been years since I lived in Southern California and only had vague memories what the view was from the railcar when I rode the railway way back in the 1960’s. The internet provided lots of photos, passenger point of view videos and interactive aerial views that I could manipulate via Google Earth. The ability to crowd source through social media helped to bring back memories of my younger days.  As a retired Navy imagery analyst I resurrected my skills conducting the discipline of remote sensing analysis that I use to do onboard aircraft carriers.  Now I can do it in the comfort of my own home. I developed a storyboard of what I wanted the finished railway to look like along with pictures of details I wanted to incorporate.  Additionally, I planned the construction methodology and created a detailed lists of supplies needed to make the construction go smoothly with minimal “on the knees” time.

For the right of way, I opted to use a pre-made pvc roadbed that would provide support for any live steamer that could handle the tight radius.  I still had an old LGB track planning template, so I drew up the flowerbox to scale and used the template to plan what roadbed pieces I would need.  The pvc roadbed comes in the standard LGB sectional track sizes, so that made planning easy.  The small loop only has a circumference of about 24 feet, so cost of the investment for the roadbed was well within my comfort zone per foot.

Visually, I wanted a smaller railhead profile, and decided to go with Sunset Valley track to secure to the pvc roadbed.  With six foot lengths of code 250 brass rail I could ensure that the rail joiners straddled a roadbed connection rather than both being aligned.  This was important to me because no matter how deep I thought I could place the pvc support pipe into the flower bed to avoid the potential for frost heave, I knew from local experience that by straddling the rail across the roadbed connections would also provide a smoother transition.

Beginnings

All aboard for the Calico & Potomac Railway!

The Calico & Potomac Railway is a western themed ghost town amusement park based on the 30” gauge railway that runs at Calico Ghost Town in the Mojave Desert of Southern California.  Calico was once a subsidy of the Walter Knott themed parks enterprise when he purchased the town in the 1950’s to preserve a part of California History dating back to the 1800’s.  The narrow gauge railway that served the town was originally called the Waterloo Mining Railroad and then became the Daggett-Calico Railroad as it serviced the silver mines in the calico colored mountain range not far from present day Barstow, California. Today the loop of track re-established in the 1950’s by Walter Knott of Knott’s Berry Farm fame is called the Calico and Odessa Railroad, named for the town and the nearby Odessa Canyon.

Since the present day C&O RR is a simple loop of track winding around small desert hills, I decided that this would fit perfectly in a small space under the pergola between my house and the garage.  When I moved into the house four years ago, the space was a flower garden of sorts that was only established to make the house look nice to a new buyer.  No real thought.  Plants in pots set into the ground for a quick splash of color that was not suited for the predominantly shady area through-out the day.  The area receives the morning sun that only lasts about two hours.  The spring rains of Virginia fed the “garden” and the best of indigenous species of weeds took a firm hold, creating an eyesore within a few weeks of when I moved in.  I pulled and raked the small plot several times over a two year period as I thought about what I was going to do with a space that seemed to require more maintenance than my first garden railway I had built at the old home many years earlier (Jan-Feb 1989 Issue of GR).