@Bruce: Thanks! The PLAYMOBIL crew make the photos more fun. I also find that by taking the time to stage them, it forces me to slow down and think about what I am doing. Most of the time, I am operating off a concept and what feels right, so these breaks are important!
Today I chose to focus on “pup-proofing.” The first step was acknowledge that buildings on their preferred route to and from Lake Inferior will now reside on picnic table when trains are not running. I also decided to reroute the little siding that serves the waterfront. This displaced a little house to a corner of the railroad, but it looks nice, so I’m OK with it. Finally, I went back to our debris corner to locate “pup proof” foundations for the buildings:
Siting and setting these dictated the rest of the day’s activities. Throughout the day, the 1:1 crew joined in. The boys helped load two trains of gravel and dirt:
I like to use trains to haul things around as it makes the day more fun, is a handy way to hold stuff, and helps identify areas that need a bit of fill. As it turned out, the day’s work would overwhelm Mack and Mike Banana Peal, two little HLW Mac’s we acquired second hand who have joined Diesel Dan as MOW work horses.
Meanwhile Y.D. undertook to rebuild a house she made for her PLAYMOBIL years ago that had started to collapse. Basically, I told her to fix it or salvage the parts. She dragooned her brother, dug into the scrap bins, and attempted the overhaul:
She is very, very crafty, but this project is challenging her. While she can “see” folk art and craft projects in anything, applying that knack to an existing project is a new experience for her. While not a railroad project, I enjoyed her company, the skills are transferrable, and the MIK is coming!
Kid-zilla and I got the paving stones set. I told him to get some water to soak the soil. He immediately understood that we did that to make it easier to level and to get the mud to flow into air gaps under the paving stones. I gave him the privilege of setting the buildings in place:
I couldn’t help singing to myself:
The Church’s one foundation,
A recycled paving stone…
I figured since I got this stone from accumulated debris behind our church, this was a good use for it!
The final setting looked like this:
This picture actually came much later in the day. Anytime I move track, it seems I end up jiggling 15 other pieces out of position, so I used this day as an opportunity to address issues all around the Triple O. I use sectional track and, over the years, I found that some of my attempts to get things running left connections pinched our out of alignment. Sometimes the answer has been new radius curves. Sometimes it has been little stumpy pieces of track to fill a gap. Today it was a combination of hard looking, trail and error, and re-looking. Our inner loop in particular had suffered from numerous “half fixes” over the years. Fixing these surveying issues of course led to electrical issues (I shudder to think what it might portend for the alignment through the sugar mill!), and I was only able to restore the outer loop to full service by nightfall. Someday, I’ll convert some locos to battery power. In the meantime, there’s always Diesel Dan!
My in-laws arrived sometime amidst all the dirt flinging and track laying, and a stash of new roofing material arrived. A pair of shears and some Shoe Goo finished off the marine supply:
Our 1:24 crew, like the rest of us, was pooped and ready for the MOW train to take them home.
Funny how a plan to simply rehabilitate a few old buildings has led to an opportunity to rehab the rest of the railroad and to rethink how we maintain it. We’ve still got to seal some things up, do something about that water tower, reroof a little farm house, re-clad HardieBacker structure, and get the canopy back over the observation tower. Not to mention, there is that Cricut to get and signage to make, Christmas Thomas to repower (Finally saved up for a new STAINZ chassis! Will flow the parts soon…), a railroad crane to build, and a way-ahead to fix Charlie the Railtruck to decipher, and all before the Mik!
Work will get in the way of progress on any front next week, but I am satisfied with today’s push.
Enjoy the rest of your weekends!
Eric
