So, with all due sympathy for those of you hit by blizzards the last couple of days, I must say that here in Denver, Colorado, the temperature was 70 yesterday and 72 today. Yesterday around noon I went outside and it really hit me like a freight train that Mike McCarthy has a loop running on his second-floor concrete balcony in a very limited space and I got this great back yard which I recently had artificial turf installed (an old high school football field) and yet, despite the space, the only loop I have running is dicey at times because the trestle bridge causes derailments and I nearly lost a Shay to a five-foot fall last time I was running.
Well I up and decided NO MORE MR. NICE GUY. I am going to have a dang big irregular loop running by the END OF THE DAY! That’s right, by the end of the day…no more waiting around for perfectly looking track to appear like this:
No more waiting for switches that work in both directions and look great, which means no fighting with those damn aristo switches…
So here is our back yard a few days ago when there was still a little snow around; this is what I had as my starting point to work with yesterday at noon:
And I started laying track all around the edge. No track plan, no fancy ideas, just work with the shape of the yard and the all-too-available and all-too-unused track I have in the garage waiting for the day to come…
Here’s how I made my road bed and made it ready for trains. I used coat hanger wire and landscape pins that were left over from the installation of the artificial turf (the long pins, not the coat hanger wire!) to pin the track in place, hanger wire every few feet and the longer stronger pins where the track need a firmer grip, and I used simple slip sleeves to hold the track where the joints are. Like this. Simple. Pin it down. If they come up with changes in weather, so be it, I’ll hammer them back into the ground, no big deal:
Sure enough, by the end of the day yesterday I had about 175 foot of track laid and ready for trains.
This morning before I came to work, I decided to go one more step, because I really like ballast, and it would help hold the track in place better, just like the real railroads, so I got out my ballast wagons (ha ha ha) full of crusher fines in two sizes and two versions of chicken grit which for some weird reason chickens like to eat and which is non-magnetic being decomposed granite…
THEN, and here’s the big payoff for me!!, I grabbed my FA unit I was complaining about in another thread and charged it up and put it on the track and ran it.
While the FA was on its lonely trip endlessly circling the track, to my great satisfaction with no derailments and no hitches of any kind, I ballasted the track! I decided to forget about all the problems with how to keep the ballast in place along the sides of the track, ballast migration, and all that and just keep to my goal, so I ballasted the center of the track between the rails and left it at that for now. An hour and one-half later, in plenty of time to get to work on time, I had it:
And just for the self-congratulatory heck of it, I decided to drive a Silver Spike (gold would be a bit much for this very modest accomplishment) where the loop came together with two cuts of the rail and a little bending and pushing. And now I have somewhere to run my weathered consists and my several locomotives no matter what. It was a great encouragement and real enjoyment having that lonely FA running all the time I was ballasting.
Now I need to get back to work painting so we can keep our nice back yard and food on the table!
