Spring roundup.

[markoles]

Hi guys,

 

Now that the snow is mostly melted,  I am starting to look at my railroad to see what I need to do in order to run trains. 

 

1. Ballast. Ballast and more ballast.  I find that this winter was particularly hard on the roadbed, washing away a lot of what had been decent roadbed coverage last fall.  I also need to obtain some more retaining bricks for the ballast.  This was a problem last year, and I intend to remedy that this spring.

 

2. Turntable damage.  I noticed that sections of the turntable bridge (cosmetic) broke off during the past 3 years of service.  I believe this spring,  I will attempt to repair and improve those details.

 

3. Engine service area: I would like to construct a crude roundhouse and 'warehouse' that i can lock to store some freight trains. 

 

4. Garden:  Every year, I get a dozen or so plants and add them to the garden.  Considering this year I don't really foresee huge model train expenditures,  I may get more planting done. 

 

 

You guys that run outdoors: What's on your list this Spring?

[Rayman4449]

Hey Mark,

 

Well for me last year I did a roadbed project where I put a separate layer of the material that I use for roadbed.  It was in an effort to eliminate the grass on each side from slowly squeezing the single sheet of roadbed and create leveling issues.  It also served to widen the base out to further eliminate the need for any weed-eating.  So far it was worked perfectly and my layout and track is just as level as it was before winter.  There are a few things I will probably do to clean up the look of how it's all done now but nothing pressing.  

 

Hope you can get yours refreshed for this new season

 

[markoles]

Ray,

 

That's cool.  Question: I see your silhouette in your photo.  Why are you wearing a SCUBA mask in the middle of Kansas? 

 

I end up pulling weeds and spraying round up to control the grass and the weeds that sprout up.  Believe it or not, there's already some sort of green growth on the mainline!

[enginear joe]

 for some reason there's guys out there who can't hook up their layout. Apparently they can't tell red from black and can't read to find out what a TIU is. They are so jealous of Ray that he has to disguise himself. and

Is anyone buying this?????

[Rayman4449]

Hehe must be something I'm missing but if it's anything like it usually is it's a fake post posted under an alias account. 

[enginear joe]

 I dabbled last year with a loop of track outside. I picked it up for the winter. It has been about six months so I'm glad I picked it up. I have now bought much more track and started preparing a much bigger area for roadbed. Whenever this winter stuff finally ends, I hope to pour some more foundations and get going again outback. I have to see about getting a bigger trailer so I can pick up some crusher from a source that won't deliver it. No one else had any. That will be the start of a permanent outdoor RR for me.

 I still wonder if it's worth having with almost six months of downtime up here?

[Bart]

I shoveled the snow off the tracks once in February.   That proved to be an invitation to my daughter's Yorky.  Spring track cleaning was.. well unpleasant.

[markoles]

Joe,

 

I know what you mean about the lost train time.  I have a semi-permanent loop set up in the basement that grew a second loop after we took down the Christmas tree this year. That's how I stayed sane this year.  In other years, when I was more adventurous,  I would get out the snow plow and clear off the mainlines outside.  Too much snow and cold this year.  I must be getting old.

[Jerry B44]

So Ray, you just use rolled roofing on top of the grass? Okay for flat yards, I guess. I can't get down that low and back up though!

Jerry

[markoles]

We've had a lot of rain the last few days here.  But I did do a cursory inspection of the railroad on Sunday, and what I discovered is that I have a LOT of work ahead of me this year.

 

1.  My steel bridge is listing about 10 degrees.  Yikes! Need to lift and straighten, again. 

 

2.  After 3 years of settling and freeze-thaw,  my once nicely curved brickwork/retaining wall on the East End high line has become oblonged or falling apart.  I need to remove all the bricks, and relay them. I am also thinking that I should get fill dirt and start making a natural slope here.    To the left of the upper curve is where I am planning to do work.  This side is exposed to the main roads, and is the most public visual section of the railroad.  aka, my wife notices when this is looking bad.

 

3. the track immediately in front of the woodpile has also sunk about 1"-2", since there is nothing to hold the ballast in place.  This photo is from last Fall.

[Jerry B44]

Rough winter here, I guess . Lost about 5 Alberta Blue Spruces, one was 20 years old. So waiting for stores to get them in. I did pick up a juniper I trimmed to look like a tree. Also a neat Arbovitiae type that has fine needles and turns red in the fall, had some orange tips on it still. Will have to prune it, but looks neat and different.

[markoles]

We've been outside playing and riding bikes a lot lately, and I plan to start doing small projects here and there.  Started with some minimal ballasting, but there's still work to be done.  The trains seem to run OK, but I am concerned about passenger train speeds!! My new pacific runs significantly faster than all my other power, so I'll have to pay special attention to curves and kinks, etc..

[markoles]

I created a new album for 2014.  Here's the two photos there so far. 

 

[Rayman4449]

The Consolidation looks good.  I hope they do in fact get more Heavyweights in stock those are an excellent looking car.

[SteamPower4ever]

... This side is exposed to the main roads, and is the most public visual section of the railroad.  aka, my wife notices when this is looking bad.

 

Ah, yes - the operations dept. must make sure that a layout maintains a high WAF at all times to keep upper management happy.

For those of you that don't know, WAF is the Wife Acceptance Factor, which is usually used by HiFi enthusiasts to classify loudspeakers, where a good sounding loudspeaker is often very large and ugly, and thus has a very low WAF.

 

It would seem the size and condition of a model railroad layout - especially outside in the garden - directly affects the WAF also.

 

 

Jens

[Jerry B44]

Planted quite a few things on the layout today. Then cleaned the pond filetr(YUCK!!)  Did run a train afterwards. Cooling off tomorrow for a few days, so back to inside.

[markoles]

Well, it took all summer, but I finally have an update!  I was chatting with a friend who said he had a lot of bricks to get rid of and asked me if I wanted them.  I took him up on his offer and raised my outer retaining wall by about 5-6".  Now, I need to get dirt to fill in between the retaining wall and the track bed.  I will post some photos later. 

[markoles]

Here are some photos of my recent repair to the brick wall.  Click on the image for a larger version.

 

Looking down in to the gap:

 

Here's a better overview of the new brick.  I raised this up by two bricks and added drainage stone and topsoil.

 

Here's the drainage rock going in:

 

Here's the final shot.  I got a couple of small tree/bushes.  I need to ballast the track here, too.  I purchased that Korber kit to go in this area. 

[Rayman4449]

Looks good Mark

[du-bousquetaire]

When I made my trackback in 1978 to 1982 in very humid clayish soil, I adopted a concrete base to save futur maintenance and maintain the track geometry. We don't have much permafrost here rather mild wet winters with temperatures rarely getting to -10° centigrade below freezing. I used precast sidewalk curb borders to make a double track subbase a meter long and about a foot wide and three inches thick. This needed to be widened about a couple of inches of cement around the sidewalk borders in order to make a neat dross strip over the ballast line. I used a steel flat bar to make the mold for that just curving it parrallel to the track held by wood pegs hammered into the ground. This has served as a rail joiner for the concrete. An expansion joint was planned every three meters. I actually mow the grass right up to the track. The track which is in one meter or one yard sections is screwed using brass screws into plugs drilled into the concrete evry foot or so. I then put a coarse (not to scale) ballast between the ties for realism, this actually helps when making small adjustments to the track level. This has shifted in very few places over the years, in one instance due to a root actually growing under the track base and moving it a bit. I have nearly no maintenance every spring in the last 39 years! Except mowing and creosoting the wooden ties on the inner handlaid track. This is long at installing but saves a heck of a lot of time since. On this photo the edge of the concrete is quite apparent.