I’m currently in the process of rebuilding the upper part of the cliffs on the eastern half of the layout. I’ve never been satisfied with this portion of the cliffs. It was very steep and had pressure-treated 2x8 planks visibly supporting the slope at the very top of the hill. In late December 2009, I finally decided to rebuild the top of the cliff, making it taller and more stable, while also hiding the planks.
Here’s a look at the project under construction…
Nice start Ray.Went through some of your other build photos again while I was there and just can’t praise enough. 
Nice work Ray, but I’ll never let my wife see it. I keep telling her I’m too old to start another railroad, if we moved, and I’d be bugging her all the time, so try to keep quiet about this, okay?
I haven’t been able to make any new progress the past couple days due to illness. Cris and I have both had bad colds since Christmas Eve. I was hoping to make another trip to get rocks this evening but it’ll have to wait.
Good work Ray, do you suffer from Vertigo when you are working up there?
Must be the season for improvements and flu’s, I pulled out a rotting timber retaining wall on my railway to replace it with some wall retaining blocks over xmas and got hit with a cold as well, mind you, it was a hot xmas here in Adelaide, Oar-Stralia so I didn’t mind the excuse to sit out the hot part of the day.
Wayne
How many loads of rock do you figure it will take? Now that I’m back from Quartzsite I can go to work on my three-foot “mountain!”
Very smart that you removed the ice plant, and I suggest you kill the remainder completely and then replace it with plants that don’t store water the way ice plant does. All that weight of earth, especially if full of water, behind that high, narrow wall is likely to make your wall collapse unless you have also included a liberal number of drain holes and reinforcing steel.
Looking good Ray.
Nice work, Ray!! Do you get a nose bleed when you get that high in the mountains? By the silhouettes, I take it there is a cemetery close by?
After being idled by a bad cold, and then having a busy schedule early in the week, I’ve finally made a little more progress on the cliff rebuilding project. Part of this project includes finishing the upper end of the stairs on this side of the layout, and I’ve made some progress there too. The most recent pics begin here:
Ray, I just tried to open your link and nothing happens. I would say it’s my DSL but your links usually work fine.
Worked ok for me just now, though a bit slow. Try it again later, it might have been server overload or something.
Thanks Ray. It did open but it was real slow.
Are you “cliff hanging” today?
Yeah, did some more work on the stairs and the cliff today. I’ll try to post pics tonight, if possible. Unfortunately I ran out of both the black rocks, and the black pigment for the mortar. Nearest place to buy the black pigment is about 20 miles away, and I have to go 80 miles to get more of the black rocks.
Time for a rock trip!
Here’s the pics from today’s work session:
http://www.raydunakin.com/Site/IRR_Cliffs_2010.html#7
Tomorrow after church I’m planning to head out to pick up some more black rocks, and a few other things.
Awesome Ray. Or should I make that awe inspiring!
Well, I made it out to the desert yesterday and picked up a pretty good load of rocks. Got some black rocks, some purplish gray rocks, and some pinkish granite rocks.
Today I only had a couple hours to work on the RR, but I managed to get a lot done. I did a little more texturing at the top of the stairs, but mostly I concentrated on mountain-building. And I have step by step photos showing how I put together rocks to form a natural-looking mountain top, while also hiding a conduit and creating a hidden channel so I can run low-voltage wire from the conduit to a newly-repositioned junction box.
The pics begin here, starting with some shots of the rocks I picked up yesterday and showing how I separate them according to color prior to use:
http://www.raydunakin.com/Site/IRR_Cliffs_2010.html#12
Enjoy!
You’ve got a nice artistic eye Ray. I like the way it all blends together. Is there any chance we could get a pic or two showing the whole layout from the low point looking up or even from a higher point looking out from I assume your house?
I haven’t had a lot of time to work on the RR these past couple days but I did get a few things done, including a bit more progress on the cliff. I extended a short vein of quartz, so that it now goes all the way up the mountain. Did some more texturing at the top of the stairs, and started working on a “foundation” for the next area of expansion on the cliffs. The new pics begin here:
http://www.raydunakin.com/Site/IRR_Cliffs_2010.html#26
David, I’ll try to get some new shots of the whole layout once I finish the cliff expansion project.