It is nice to have a helper that sees the vision …
OMGram, So much to tag!!
I gotta go to bed and think about this!
Sean, I wish we had a visionary as well.
If we had used napkins instead of notebook paper for the planning, we’d at least have something to wipe the blood, sweat and tears away by now. 
Not too much commentary here. It’s drudge work and I can’t get the Tetris tune out of my head.
Onward. Upward… but at 3%.
We have been hoarding some flagstones from our old house.
We generally had 10 stones in front of us to play Tetris.
You may wonder about our rock orientation choice. We are trying to replicate how blasted rock might look. It also allows us to create sharper curves with longer stone.
We found the cheap little birdhouses (in the background) at T.K. Max. Probably 1:29 to 1:32 scale. Perfect for forced-perspective.
We placed outer edging first. Then made sure it was rising at a 3% grade, and used our blocks to ensure the rock placement was and adequate distance from the rock wall, to enable the longest of carriages and allow for plantings.
We were surprised at how much of the hill had to be cut out, to fit these boulders.
The laser level arrived and we discovered some of the grade was at 8%.
Morris dancing ensued, but to the Tetris tune.
As it was an inexpensive laser, all our measurements had been done at dusk. Sunlight all but obliterated the lines produced by the level. Then of course it’s dark soon after dusk, so we were unable to do a quality check until the next day.
Second verse! Same as the First!
We weren’t sure until now but it’s starting to look less weird and contrived… at least to us.
Garden irrigation pipe was then snuck under the edging.
A little bit louder…
And a little bit worse.
CONTINUES…
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I seriously can’t believe how fast you’re going, Bill…
Hate to ask though, but… to preserve self esteem for some of us, could you slow the heck down, or maybe wait a few weeks between updates?! Sheesh!!
OK, I missed it, what’s your roadbed method?? Track on tamped “crusher fines”, or…? Just curious. I’m really pleased to see you weren’t going to lay track directly down in that ditch, cool as that would have looked for awhile.
Yes, laser level. Cheap, reliable. It will change your life in many ways.
We interrupt this program for a special request… Please stay tuned for further instructions…
please tune your browser to The DÜRR 
(A Trilogy in 5 Parts) PART 1
Ok,
We’re back!
Rock & Roll!
At about this point Herself & I realise that we have run out of time to have something up and running for the club meeting.
We also find that we are pushing maximum 3% grade to get to a reasonable height at top of the hill and still leave room for some plants and buildings in the lower bed.
Just like the Durango & Silverton, we are going to run carriages very close to the cliffs, so these rock walls are really going to have to support the edging. We threw some wire clips under the edging to help hold things in place.
As with the other garden bed we realise we will need access once the rail is in place to do maintenance and gardening. So we started to build a little platform.
Irrigation needs placement and we are going to have to adapt for some of the Cliff wall. Partial disassembly of the wall was required. It’s not a big deal to do this with our pipe extensions.
Some more rock details were required in areas where we underestimated the grade. It’s added some three dimensional depth to the rock face.
You can better see here where the slot carved for the other bit of edging…
…using a wood block to measure the width for the track bed.
And at the top of the hills we added some interesting rock formations to add asymmetry, and again block a bit of the view.
In the foreground we have added some elevation and created little cut on the mainline to continue the hill contour to the edge of the planter box.
Here, we keep playing around with the little TK Max Bird Houses to achieve some forced perspective. Surprisingly these cheap little structures were the talk of the club meeting.
This was the final setup before the meeting. The patina on the Corten steel is maturing well.
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Really looking good Bill. You working 3 shifts to get it so far along so fast? 
You know once you get a train running you will see all the little problematic things that you didn’t see coming 
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Yeah, my bad. You’ve been working so quickly that I blinked and missed the completion of your first box, and thought I was looking at that in your photos here!
But thanks for patiently redirecting me back to what I’d missed, much obliged!
Awesome work…
No way Sean,
I’m being very positive here.
I CAN SEE THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL!
…and if it’s not a freight train heading my way…
…I’m going to be very disappointed.
i am afraid, that our hyperactive Aussie will face a grave problem in a year or two. - everything done!
he will bore himself to death.
he’ll sit, watch his four steelboxes with too much steel, plants and dirt to start over a new.
btw, Bill i officially declare you to be a Non-Devoner!
Korm,
Oh no! Does this mean, I have deviated from the Prime Devonation? That would make me no longer, a Dev-on-tee?!
Should I have spent more time praying for Dev-on Intervention? Oh Devon, why hast thou forsaken me?! 
Oh crap what is my religion now?
I better look it up…
Is this it? Oh, double crap. According to the internet, there’s even a term for those who deviate from the Word of Devon!
Korm, am I a devonant now?
Devonant (noun)
/ˈdevənənt/
Definition:
A person who is not only devoted to making grand, elaborate plans but also sees them through to completion with undue haste and passion, especially in the context of creative projects like garden railways.
Usage:
“He’s a true Devonant, always crafting intricate designs and making sure every detail comes to life but never as planned.”
Related adjective: Devonantic
“Pressured by an upcoming club meeting, Herself’s Devonantic approach to her new garden railway project ensured it was both imaginative and mostly realised in record time.”
Why didn’t my parents raise me Kormish? I’d be inside today.
because that is a mix of “Komik” (comic) and Amish (allowing bicycle dinamos to power model trains)
Things are starting to slow down on the DÜRR this week. It’s landscaping week and it can’t be put off any longer. Though the days are getting longer and daylight savings time is in effect, it’s getting harder to reach the sections we need to work on without risking damaging sections already in place.
The positive news is that the station takes up a lot of land leaving less for us to landscape! Unfortunately the hill looks quite small when the station is placed nearby.
But wait! We still need to play with the watering systems. It’s actually a good time to go to the hardware store to get some irrigation pipe connectors instead of landscaping.
Cut, clipped and connected. Well that was faster than expected. So we start back on the difficult section of the garden.
…and to paraphrase that famous quote:
My fellow LargeScale Centralians, even with the station removed, I think this cut will be our Achilles heel.
Because there’s no easy place to stand we are densely planting mini-mondo grass to over grow and stabilise the area leaving us enough room to place one foot on the dense grass and the other on these two small flagstones outside the cut.
At this point, we are holding off adding the second piece of edging until we are happy with the planting. It’s a double edge sword, as in some ways, it would be easier to plant things if we knew exactly where the edging and irrigation were to be placed.
Sigh…
We had to lean from the outside to do the plantings, it was too narrow to be inside the cut and plant at the same time without cracking our heads on the rock.
Here we stuffed sphagnum moss in cracks prone to losing soil.
Hopefully we can get a glamour shot in a few months time.
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Hmmm when does the track go in …
I’m not sure Sean.
I’ve certainly been Morris Dancing in this build, finding there is a double edged sword between planning and playing.
Cliff and Hollywood have pointed out I’m moving way too fast for LSC building standards, despite my attempts at devoningering. Shockingly this has led to me being excommunicated from the Church of Sinsley, declared a Devonant (a non-devoner) and a butt modeller!
Luckily I have been accepted by the Kormish People possibly due to my excessive use of umlauts. However, even their high priest, has also warned of building too fast.
Thankfully the DÜRR is still a Trilogy in 5 parts and even I have no inkling of what is in PART 3.
However I’m looking forward to laying a golden spike in the Transcontinental Planter Box even if its done under DÜRESS. 
LSC Dictionary
I’ve done that a couple times myself over the years and it gets better every time!
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Sounds like you’re planning where stepping places will be, which (speaking as a person who didn’t always do that) is wise. Because, as I’ve learned, whether you plan on stepping near a spot or not, in the end you will be stepping somewhere nearby! 
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