I am planning on an elevated railroad. It will run next to my privacy fence for about half the way, then curve out into the yard for a ways. I will elevate it about 30 inches or so. Somewhere I saw a layout that intrigued me, but I’m having a hard time locating it now, and my search on the forums didn’t help. The shelf consisted of boards on the outside with wire mesh stapled to them. The mesh was then covered with landscaping fabric and then filled with ballast on which the track was laid. If anyone can point me in the right direction, I would appreciate it!!
That sounds like Richard Smith’s railroad in Or-e-gun. Most of the construction was documented over on the other site years ago, then lost when he dumped the archives. I have a PDF that someone did for Richard that consolidated the build threads into one place. If I can find it I’ll put it here for you.
Awesome, Jon! Thanks a lot, that would be terrific!
I found it, it’s a huge file (25Mb). I’m uploading it now to http://lsc.cvsry.com/POC_Elevated_Benchwork.pdf Give it until 11:00 PM EST before trying to download.
Thanks again, Jon! This is one of the things I love about this forum, the willingness of everyone to help out! I made this post, and within a few moments I have my answer!
Thanks William. Just don’t expect that fast of a turn-around all the time. You got lucky this time 
William, a couple of updates to what Richard has done.
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Use 2X6 pressure treated lumber vs the 2X4 pressure tx stuff that he used. Richard mentions this, but it is buried in the meat of the text. The reason for this is that the 2x4 stuff is not strong enough to hold up the soil that is used as fill without additional vertical supports, thus negating any savings by using the 2X4s.
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If you want vegetation in your raised benchwork, mix the soil with peat moss and vermiculite, then add a drip irrigation system. You probably won’t be able to grow any trees without some method of supporting pots, but it will work well for ground cover.
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If Richard mentioned this, I missed it, but make sure that your benchwork is not more that 48 inches overall. I made mine 48 inches on the inside, and then had to retrofit so that the 48 inch hardware cloth wouldn’t sag. Lessons learned. I also used 24 inches on center for the cross pieces, but if I was to do it again, would use 16" in center, again to reduce sag of the hardware cloth.
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Read all of the pdf before you start, as there are a lot of lessons learned and “Things I wish I had done differently” as the project goes on.
Contact Richard directly, he is a member of this list, and very gracious with his help.
Sorry I wasn’t here to help. Been having some connection problems with the phone and internet lines just resolved today thanks to Frontier’s great service.
William,
If there are any questions you have or updates you need please ask. The POC R.R. has been highly experimental and mostly quite successful by my standards. It is constantly evolving however and care must be taken to adapt the methods to your own particular location and needs. I would be most happy to offer any help or advice that I can to you when needed including whether or not my methods would suit your specific needs. My way is certainly not the only way.
Thanks much Jon and Steve for coming to bat.
Jon or Bob,
Can we get this file of Richard Smith’s layout saved to an article or some other type of permanent file? This type of info needs to be preserved. Of course, this would need to be with Richard’s permission.
I agree Ric that would be a great resource to have readily available.
Ric -
I agree, but it’s in a PDF file which is not easily convertible to an article. I will leave it where I have posted it for as long as I keep that ISP, which will probably be a very long time as I’m pretty deeply entrenched there
If any of you retired guys know how to take a PDF file and re-write it as HTML it would be a nice several week project for you
Ya I was going to print it out awhile ago (2 years) but with my inkjet printer it would probably cost near $40 in ink. Maybe the link to it could be put in the articles???
Ill see what I can do about extracting it out…
It’s also posted here: http://1stclass.mylargescale.com/stevec/POC%20RR/POC_Main.pdf
And oh, yeah…it takes several minutes to load. Don’t give up.
Steve
I don’t get the angst over the file size. I just clicked on Jon’s link and downloaded the file in ~10 to 12 seconds.
I am way out in the country, but my service is ATT DSL with “. . . up to 6 Mbps service.” Using:
www.SpeedNet.net for testing usually shows ping times of ~20 ms and download speeds of ~5Mbps.
What service and speeds are the rest of the world using / getting?
Happy (High Bandwidth) RRing,
Jerry
I have 15Mbps Down / 3Mbps Up, but my hosting server won’t deliver it that fast. You must have hit it at a good time
Wow…I gotta get a faster connection.
Steve
Just so you know…
While the pix and text are from my posts, the organization and putting together into a PDF file are the work of Steve Conkle. He has made the file available for free to anyone that wants to download it. Perhaps a cheap and simple flash drive would be a good way to save it for personal use? He is currently gathering posts for Volume 2 although I have a lot of building to do yet before all the info can be posted.
Putting the PDF into an article on LSC would be fine with me; I would be most flattered. But Steve C. should be asked as well I would think.
Either way thank you all much.
You’re welcome to use the file in any manner you wish.
What a great file! Thanks Jon for finding it and posting here. I don’t go to the other site much and missed it completely. This is exactly what I have in mind for my next project. My knees complain when I craw around on the ground too much. In my climate, I think I can get away with non-soil penetrating upright posts, (using deck piers) making installation a bit easier. However, I will need to add some shade structures for sun relief. Our pinons here don’t get big enough to offer much benefit that way. Richard’s modeling is stellar. Has anyone constructed something similar to this as a loop or loop variant? I love this site.