A Garden Railway at Long Last

Longtime readers of this blog will know I've been chomping at the bit to build a garden railway. Well, this past February, I purchased an LGB Mogul at a train show. I've always wanted one. That seemingly innocuous exercise dumped gasoline on my smoldering enthusiasm.

I don't have the time or money to build an extensive garden line like I had when I was a kid. But I have the Pittsburg Division to satisfy my need to run multiple trains at once, so it's cool. Anyway, I was able to sell my wife on the project by proposing a raised vegetable garden that just happened to have a railroad in it.

I started off the festivities by purchasing some 8' landscape timbers from Home Depot. I spent the next day sawing and nailing them into the walls of my raised bed.

With the walls built, it took two trips to Walmart to buy 20 bags of "manure and humus" to fill the thing. Talk about going to Walmart to buy some crap!

For the track, I used some old Aristocraft sectional stuff I salvaged from my first garden railway. It forms an 8' x 5' loop. I used screenings purchased from a local stone and landscape firm. I dug a small trench where the track was to go and filled it with screening, then laid the track on top, ballasting it just like the prototype.

I finished things up with a few building from my old railroad. I planted some tomatoes, bell peppers, oregano, basil, and some other stuff.

All in all, it's a nifty little railroad. I learned long ago that with garden railways, the KISS principle needs to reign supreme.

I;ve dubbed the layout the "Ulster and Delaware."

Finished Painting the Backdrop

Not a whole lot to report here. Mixed up two shades of green poster paint, slathered it on the wall and it cooperated by drying. Not too shaby if I do say so myself.

I also finished building the high-voltage transmission towers. The next project is painting and installing the remaining utility poles in Johnstown. So after nearly three years, this end of the layout will be done.

More Streetlights for Johnstown

Now that we're most certainly in the postseason here, I went and knocked a huge item off my to-do list. I installed about 18 street lamps I bought from a Chinese seller last month.

The festivities started with running a new low-voltage circuit to Johnstown. From there, it was drill, thread, glue, and solder until the lights were in. Since the lights aren't ornate, I kept them to the industrial areas. Despite their size, I think they turned out alright.

Fixed the blasted Corssever!

Isn't it funny how minor problems can snowball into catastrophes?  Oh, wait, funny isn't the word I'm looking for. Infuriating is more like it. Case and point, I fired up the layout for some roundy-rounding the other night. ow, when the layout sits idle for a while, things can squirly when it's awakened from its slumber.

So, the first catastrophe, I noticed my T1 wasn't responding to the throttle. So, I placed it on the programming track and readdressed it. Unfortunately I forgot to flip the DPDT switch from the layout to the programming track! I suddenly found myself faced with the task of reprogramming every locomotive on the layout! This took me the better part of an evening.

With the decoder issue licked, I tried running trains. The trains on the inside loop stalling on the Peco double crossovers at the entrance to Johnstown.  After futsing with the point rails (the usual culprit with Peco turnouts) and getting nowhere, I dug out the multimeter.  I found the outside rail was dead as Dillinger. This was baffling since one of the two rail joiners was connected to a feeder wire.

I tried soldering the joint on the end opposite the feeder, something I'm always loath to do on a turnout. That didn't work. I soldered a feeder to said joiner. That didn't work either. So I decided to move the feeder to the turnout itself. So I drilled another hole through the layout, unsoldered the feeder wire and went to feed it through the new hole. It wouldn't go through. That's usually the case, so I grabbed a small dowel and pushed it through and "crack!"

I got out from under the table to see the crossover and part of the inside loop lifted into the air. I just can't seem to catch a break.  Long story short, I got the wire fed and solder, the track repaired and the ballast touched up. Thankfully, after all, that the trains are running fine again.