We been in the last few days trimming 40 to 50 foot Pine trees that are doing a lot of leaning. We had to put on 5/8 cables to keep them from coming out of the ground tied to each other.

Not an easy task trimming logs out to get some wt. off the trees.

The Layout was starting to get a little scarier with the big pines over head. Beside the pine cone are bombs.

Here are some photo of the mess of trimming them… Sure lot a lot of light in now.

Dannie Trimming Tree nbr2

Tom cutting up one limb that was lowerd by ropes

Dannie cutting off logs and lowering them by rope. These are bombs when dropped from 40 foot and the layout out is just a few feet on other side of walkway…

Never fig. these 5 Monterey Pine tree’s would grow so large from 1 gal cans 30 year’s ago.

I did the same thing at my grandparent’s house, but to an oak tree.

I did the cutting and had pulley and rope to lower the limb.

My 95 pound grandfather had the rope.

Cut off 4 foot length of big oak branch.

Grandfather never let go, but he left the ground!

got down and pulled him back down to the ground… next branch cut was 3 foot length!

Greg

Greg. Tom (My oldest Son) and I tried to lower the logs to keep from dropping on the fence line and when Dannie stated to drop the limbs it too both of us off the ground… That was with a truckers hitchs I made to reduce the leverage by 1/2 Lol… So after that Dannie has a rope hitch that lower logs or limb around 300 lbs with no problems and we just have a rope to guide it, but still takes two of use to swing it out over the fence. Never through these pine trees was so full of water. I could just see them hitting the layout one of these time before cutting them Still have one more tree over the layout yet to trim and not looking forward to that. I seen what Marty did and sure don’t want that on my steel bridges… there would be nothing left of them. lol.

Greg…We did like you after a few large limb…Cut them shorter as we got closer to the trunk. We had a hard time lowering them with Tom and I maybe at a total wt. around 350 lbs and still left the ground… lol.

Were starting to lay some board over the track on the layout and hope that keep tracks from getting bent.

To bad they don’t make a Vac. baggie for the chain saws… I got chip everywhere and have to keep netting the pond.

I guess is… Are we having fun yet?

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Quite the job. Good thing you had some help

I can cut trees down with a chain saw, but I’m not about to get up in a tree

Ralph

I leave that job to the professionals. They have the equipment. I don’t.

Its amazing how large those tress can get. I’m lucky the Ponderosa Pines are about 100’ away from the railroad. Of course if they were to fall it would make a very big mess.

Only large tree over the layout got removed last year. Was a nice sized Apple Tree. I must have killed it somehow when I was building the railroad around it. I sure did miss the Apple Pies I got out of it this past year.

Ralph Berg said:

Quite the job. Good thing you had some help

I can cut trees down with a chain saw, but I’m not about to get up in a tree

Ralph

Same as you Ralph. I’m to old to get up the ladder vary far… I don’t bouncy very good. lol

Dannie, the guy that is doing the trimming, is his every day job and get around like a monkey from limb to limb on his harness and ropes. When he get tired of trimming and needs a break, he comes down the ropes like on a elevator going to the ground floor.

What he is doing on these 5 tall Pine tree I don’t think I could afford any one to do what he is doing. We still have one to finish up and then one last one over the layout.

I wanted shade and now guess I’m paying for it to get some sun light back.

Ken Brunt said:

I leave that job to the professionals. They have the equipment. I don’t.

…

I’m Lucky this guy has all the stuff to work with. Just don’t own a chipper so we have other chain saws to get them small enough to burn later on. Pines makes good hot fires when it’s cold night around here and we make a deep hole for a fire…

Jake Smith said:

Its amazing how large those tress can get. I’m lucky the Ponderosa Pines are about 100’ away from the railroad. Of course if they were to fall it would make a very big mess.

Only large tree over the layout got removed last year. Was a nice sized Apple Tree. I must have killed it somehow when I was building the railroad around it. I sure did miss the Apple Pies I got out of it this past year.

…

We have one apple med size tree along side of the house and yes sure like the Golden Green sweet apples off of it for pie. To bad you lost it…

On our Pines, they drop large pine cones and probably like your apples they can become bombs big time. I hear one cone now and then drop and you would have a bad headache or knock you out if it every hit someone.

Kind of wish I planted them out more to the back of the yard 40 some yr’s. ago than over part of where the layout is now.

Well Noel, the work you do now will be worth it in the long run. One thing I wsa thinking about is your plants on the Railroad. Now that your opening up the canopy, there will be a lot less shade. There could be some plants that wont like that.

We had a big wallnut tree leaning over the house. Susan told Uncle Mort he could have the log if he took the tree out for her. Since the tree was leaning over the house pretty severely, Mort brought his BIG tractor, climbed way up in the tree and fastened a chain. He put Susan in the tractor, which was a familiar place for her, and started working on the tree. After a while, he wanted to see if it would give any, so he waved to Susan.

Susan thought he meant GO, so she WENT.

Split that huge old trunk to toothpicks!

Not a bit of rot. No knots. Would have been a valuable log.

Jake Smith said:

Well Noel, the work you do now will be worth it in the long run. One thing I wsa thinking about is your plants on the Railroad. Now that your opening up the canopy, there will be a lot less shade. There could be some plants that wont like that.

…

That was kind of one of my other problems that we were having is plants dieing off due less sun light was on them. So hope this will open up from more moning sun. We are still going to have lots of shade but maybe less Pine needles and bombs.

Tom Ruby said:

We had a big wallnut tree leaning over the house. Susan told Uncle Mort he could have the log if he took the tree out for her. Since the tree was leaning over the house pretty severely, Mort brought his BIG tractor, climbed way up in the tree and fastened a chain. He put Susan in the tractor, which was a familiar place for her, and started working on the tree. After a while, he wanted to see if it would give any, so he waved to Susan.

Susan thought he meant GO, so she WENT.

Split that huge old trunk to toothpicks!

Not a bit of rot. No knots. Would have been a valuable log.

…

Neat story… To bad on the lumber tho… Walnut has very nice grain in them… We have one of our train Group guys that is a contractor and he cut one of his old old Oaks down and one Walnut tree an on that… boy what a nice 2 inch slice he did for a coffee table… Real nice grain.

Sorry you lost yours…sniff.

Our Grand daughter wanted to help with the yard work by starting cleaning up our Trimming mess around the layout, so we gave her some contractors equipment to start working on the mess… She found some tracks under some of the pine needles around the area she is working on by the walk way… lol.

I asked her if she could have this all cleaned up in a few days after school… She just gave me a dirty look. lol

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For the past eight years we had the neighbour’s huge maple, with about 3/4 of it all over our yard and that meant over the RR.

It’s a real dirty tree - dropping seeds in the Spring, Leaves and twigs all summer long, Leaves in the fall, and broken boughs in the winter.

The seeds would often lie inches deep on the tracks and between my rocks, and then of course they’d sprout into babies.

Early every Spring my wife and I put out 1/2" mesh, covering the whole RR to catch the seeds, then after the deluge was finished we’d have to shake out the mesh on the patio and clean up the mess of the seeds all over the yard.

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It also meant that with an already too-short outdoor season up here in Toronto, this business cut into it by a couple of weeks more right at the beginning. The leaves shortened the season by a couple weeks in the fall, too.

Every time I went out there I had to clear twigs and sticks. Also, once or twice, a large bough came crashing onto the tin shed roof, and that caused damage as well. Believe it or not hardly any of this cursed tree of our neighbour’s was actually growing over their place, so it was no problem for them of course.

They had no interest in helping us with all this agro.

(http://freightsheds.largescalecentral.com/users/choochoo_chaboogie/_forumfiles/Nov2012fix03.JPG)Last year we hired a guy, $1000.00 to get rid of all of it that was hanging over our place, which as I said was 3/4 of it. Mostly it was one ENORMOUS branch growing practically horizontally straight over our place. This Branch alone was the size of your average big tree. Imagine it looming over your head maybe eighteen feet and covering your whole yard. From Googlemaps you couldn’t see our backyard because of this tree, and it’s base was actually on the other side of the fence.

There he is, in that picture up there. Where he’s standing is right above the middle of my Railroad, so twenty feet at least from the fenceline, and more than that for sure to the other side of our back corner behind the shed where the tree is growing from.

I found this picture in a folder on my computer called ‘the Damn Tree’, and I’m not a swearing man, so that gives you an idea of just how strongly I felt about it.

Unfortunately, there’s still 25% of that tree still up there on the neighbour’s side but I can’t do much about that. The wind blows from that direction as well; it’s west of us, darn it.

Expensive? Yes. But y’know what? I’m very glad we finally got rid of most of this monster, and I’m looking forward to having to deal with a lot less crud from it this year. The sunlight will be good for our garden plants as well…

One more story from the tree trimming department. The truth is out there; we are not alone! I’m glad you started this thread, Noel.

Good story john Le.

Ya…Years ago our nabor had a great big maple that same as you, nothing but leaves and seeds. We have a Magnolia tree that was shaded from it and never really got very big… Well finely last year. She had to have it cut down due to over years, ants started to kill it with a great big hole in the trunk from years of eating in it.

Now we have some sun. I think she said it cost 1,000 bucks to have it cut down due to no way to get a truck with a boom between the houses.

Ours are back quite a way form the house but yes it was over her back area that is a vac. lot and they never really do much with it out there… Just fenced in weeds.

So this made it easy for us to swing limbs to drop down there and cut up. We put in a 10 ft.cattle gate to her place when we first move here being all of houses are one acre narrow lots and no access to back except thru ours. so we put in a 16 ft. cattle gate on the other side. Now look like all of the 5 houses have lined up there back yard gates as same as her’s and mine… Sure makes it easy to get across every one’s lot. Like you, if put up Google well show the gates in middle of our lots form one side to the other. That how years ago we got my Construction 40 ft. office trailer back to back of the lot. Made a great Ho train layout in it.

Seem like away something that I has to make a change after years of stuff growing that i didn’t think it would get that big. Now the R.R. and plants are going to get some light again… lol.

When we moved here around 40yrs ago, all there was was open fields. It get pretty hot here around Sacramento and I like shade. So started to… just about every time we went to town we would look around for sales on Trees & Plants… Never thinking how big or thick they can get. Our resovor out back is hard to see on Google, fact the hole lot is hard to see anything but trees.

But we love it and like a park i guess and keep me on my toes on trimming.

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Looks good Noel…

Nick

I had a 30’ Japanese Black Pine removed last Thursday. It was lifting the rails and brick patio. Had to build plywood covers for about 20’ of rails to protect them, they were only four feet from the trunk of the tree. The guys did a great job with no rail damage! Much happier without the messy pine.

Dan DeVoto said:

I had a 30’ Japanese Black Pine removed last Thursday. It was lifting the rails and brick patio. Had to build plywood covers for about 20’ of rails to protect them, they were only four feet from the trunk of the tree. The guys did a great job with no rail damage! Much happier without the messy pine.

…

Dan.

We have one 50 ft Black Pine on the other side of the walkway and yes tracks are right next to the trunk, but not doing much lifting in that area yet.
Tracks are about 8 inches raised with Ive under the 2 x 6’s. So far that tree hasn’t been any problem on needles or limbs yet. Had two other one about 10 ft away that got Beatles in them and they had to be cut down.

Our Black Pine don’t seem to grow very wide… Just straight up with short limbs so far.

Like you. we are lucky to have someone that know how to trim trees… He know his stuff like a monkey up there on his ropes and harness.

So far …" knock on wood" hasn’t dropped any thing yet, but pine cones and needles…

Sir. Nickie… I still think you should let me test out your trains to see if NYC can fit on our layout and I can send you photos of me running them for you…hahahaha .Only send out diesels due to my water tanks can’t supply enough water for your big boys…

Oh … and I’ll fix any wheels that fall off… And Dr. Pepper on me.

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