Spent some time this morning at the Chicago Botanic Gardens. I’m now one of many “Assistant Engineers.” The railroad opens Saturday.
The railroad garden contains 15 completely separate loops of track and only 2 turnouts. Each loop is operated by an Aristo trackside TE and either an Elite or Ultima power supply. A crew of 3 or 4 volunteers keeps it running.
This morning’s task was cleaning track and getting things running. It took about 1/2 hour per loop to clean any debris away, then put a loco and track cleaner car on. It took a nudge here and there to get it going over dirty spots, but after a trip or two around, it ran smoothly. I helped get 2 loops going. One of them has 2 turnouts and two trains take turns running around the loop. Had to clean junk out of the points so the turnouts would switch. We then put the correct train on each loop and let it run. I helped on “Track 7” which runs one of those cool LGB amtrak trains, and Track 3 which alternates a freight and a passenger train.
It’s all brass track bolted to boards laying on the ground. There is no ballast. Many plants, bushes, trees, buildings, figures and tons of mulch.
They have a place where they want to put figures of kids playing baseball. Hmm…
