With the arrival of Paya, an Aussie Cattle Dog, last September, I find it necessary to make some changes on the railroad. Dani, our Formosan Mountain Dog has coexisted with the railroad for over 2 years with no problem. Paya, OTOH, is Dani’s opposite. Whereas Dani would “tiptoe” through the railroad with great care, Paya runs though with reckless abandon taking out figures and detail items in doing so.
The other day, after bringing in the structures for the winter, I noticed that Paya would stand on the concrete mountain at Chameleon Corners with her front feet up on the fence and terrorize the delivery drivers as they brought their packages up to the gate. (Most don’t make it past the garage if the dogs are out.) In this configuration she could have easily jumped over the fence, and I couldn’t let this be.
As a result our tunnel, a 5-foot long piece of 10" diameter ABS plastic tube, had to be removed. But the tunnel was encased in wire mesh and concrete and ran under the B&B which was raised up on the concrete and this all had to be trimmed way back from the fence line to where Paya could no longer use it as a “booster” possibly allowing her to escape the yard and go after a delivery driver, or even another dog walking though the neighborhood.
Whether the pipe gets reused or not is still up in the air. There is really no good place to put it, but I do want to retain the sound of the engines as they go though it which is really cool!
Our next step may be to remove the structural pads and buildings in Tortoise Town. I wanted to turn this into an open pit mine, but Linda would prefer a “park” setting, which would be easier to attain, but take years to to fill in.