The DÜRR 🌵 (A Trilogy in 5 Parts) PART 2

Hines · October 1, 2024, 9:54pm

That’s an interesting suggestion, Cliff. Tonka trucks on the garden railway, huh? Let’s entertain this idea for a minute…
Tonka trucks? Well, we could actually finish the build immediately. Let’s break this down…

I mean, I’ve got mountains. I wouldn’t have to worry about sticking to a 3% grade. These Tonka trucks look like they’d handle, what, 22%? More?
And there’s mountains near Susanville and I’ve already built a Susanville township. I believe Rick Marty has even climbed one of these hills.
Of course, somebody here could walk me through installing a R/C with battery control into these trucks, couldn’t they?
But Cliff, according to Wikipedia, Tonka is named for Lake Minitonka in Carver county Minnesota and Susanville is in Lassen county, California.
You see where I’m going with this? I would feel obligated to re-badge the whole Tonka fleet, for local accuracy.
After all, there’s a prototype for every thing, isn’t there?

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Oh, and while we’re at it, anyone wanna check back with Lassen Trucking to see how they feel about switching their fleet to battery-operated trucks?

Cliff, I’ll mark this idea as potentially a possible maybe and ponder getting 3% grades in a small garden bed.

Rooster · October 1, 2024, 10:36pm

Korm · October 1, 2024, 10:38pm

three percent grade… yeah! that means 3 centimeters per meter. how high are your steelwalls? 40 centimeter? so you need about 13 meter of track per grade.

but, looking at the pics, i got the impression, that you got a serious problem.
go, get a shotgun and get rid of that mole, that digs up your garden!

or are you planning to make a model of a cañon landscape?

on a more srious note:
did you use water and pressure/tamping/vibrating to settle the dirt?

Rooster · October 1, 2024, 10:44pm

I gotta ignore that as I might say something stupid.

Hines · October 1, 2024, 11:42pm

Yes, Korm. Every layer was damp and tamped down. I have had to use a rotary hoe (tiller) to prep for placing the edging as the soil was too hard for carving, raking and shovelling.

We were also becoming seriously worried about how well the plants might fare, but I’ve uncovered a number of earthworms 🪱 deep in the bed when I’ve hooked up the irrigation system.

It’s now A NOPE to the 90 degree crossing. We are losing too much garden.

At the end of the excavations, we have found some things that work well, and some things that need a re-think…

We needed a break. So we ended at the Uraidla pub and were rewarded with a can of Melusine Stout and prayed for a sign…

Melusine is built upon a large Imperial Stout malt bill for a 10% ABV with plenty of residual sweetness and layered with oats for a silky finish. Freshly baked, Whole almond croissants were added to the mash by the Uraidla bakery. 10 kgs of whole Tahitian vanilla beans were then whirl-pooled through the brew kettle after a long, sticky boil. After fermentation, this pastry stout was then conditioned on Lactose and 30 kgs of freshly toasted almonds for a final pop of flavour. Decadent, full-bodied and layered with flavour’s of rich vanilla, Almond frangipane and a roasted finish this is sure to be any stout or pastry lovers dream.

…and we saw a sign! Maybe not the one we were looking for

….BECAUSE he saw a man laying track.

Drum roll please

Oops we almost forgot to put in deep water mains for irrigation and then had to Morris dance (2 steps forward 1 step back… AKA tamping, Korm)

This was a deep dig, as we needed the irrigation system both at the surface and deep to get under track bed.

This is where Jim’s templates came in quite handy.

With the ROW checked it’s time to lay edging get an immediate reminder that Ace Hardware edging would have been better (if we had an Ace product).

So we braced the edging with reeds as chopsticks were too short.

Then berms were placed to hold the edging in place.

Here is the result. Only one full edge done. Waiting for the second verse.

I laid this piece of edging out flat last night and this is how much it’s expended by mid morning.

CONTINUES…

Turbo4whl · October 2, 2024, 1:19am

The cat and I aren’t good with secrets.

Korm · October 2, 2024, 2:31am

thank you.
that spares me to ignore your possible comment.

Korm · October 2, 2024, 2:41am

reading that, and seeing these pics of backbreaking work, makes me happy to have turned to indoor railroading/landscaping.

putting all the pipes into the area, i am supposing, that you are using some kind of drip-irrigation.
a pic of the drip-outlets would be very welcome.
not asking for a friend, but for our plants.

Hines · October 2, 2024, 3:42am

Absolutely Korm. When we get to that section I will plan to post heaps of drippers. If we don’t answer your question, remind me. We appear to have a different connection for almost every occasion, and we should be able to get a picture of each. Herself is quite knowledgeable in this area.

I have found two important things with the irrigation process so far.

Poiseulle’s law says that the flow rate depends on fluid viscosity , pipe length, and the pressure difference between the ends of the pipe. But all these factors are kept constant in the garden and really your only option is to change the radius of your pipe. It’s a complicated formula but effect of radius on flow is clear. Flow is related to the radius to the 4th power. For example if I increase the radius from 2 to 3 mm the flow is changed from by factor of (2x2x2x2=8) eight, to a factor of (3x3x3x3=81) eighty-one . Jump to 4mm and the flow increases to 4x4x4x4= 256 times the flow of a 1 mm pipe. So increasing the pipe radius from 2 to 3mm can give you more flow than trying to doubling your pump pressure.
If you’re using simple irrigation pipe, these metal clamps are so much better at not popping off, in comparison to the plastic ones.

if you’re in a rush for drippers, we are happy using Pope, Toro, Holman and Neta brands. Each have certain abilities.

Korm · October 2, 2024, 7:26am

thank you!

hey, these clamps look very interesting! might be an idea, to test, if we could use them to fix firehoses onto fitings. have you got any link about them?

… and the friction between water and pipe/hose.
(reminds me how difficult it was to hammer these things into the heads of firefighting aspirants during instruction)

no, i’m not in a rush. only highly interested.
all these names say nothing to me. in the late '80ies / early '90ies, when i put up irrigation of a 5 acres orchard and a 1 acre of pickles, i had to import the irrigation stuff from israel. by letter correspondence because we had not even telefones in our area.

Hines · October 2, 2024, 7:51am

Yes turbulence. Always try to avoid bends and elbow joiners. I had to look it up “laminar flow”

I haven’t tried aliexpress for these, but it may be an option.

I’ll try to get some action shots for you too. I suspect the specs are on these company websites.

Hines · October 2, 2024, 9:50pm

As mentioned, this edging is better than many, but it’s not ideal in heat. Yet metal edging is outlandishly expensive, and wood unavailable.

To separate and place the edging, we are using blocks that we can hammer down with a rubber mallet and hold the edging in place with reeds wired together, to maintain uprightness as the soil is compressed.

Did I mention that a friend and I harvested a tonne of Adelaide Hills Bluestone? Loaded each one. Unloaded each one. This got old very quickly. I could use a MasterClass in Neil’s rock formations.

We haven’t decided whether to make an island of garden here in the middle of the triangle, or go full ballast. Has anyone plopped vegetation in a Wye?

Dirt movement continues…

Herself and I keep discussing the benefit of more sidings vs more hills.

You can see a pile of reeds at the bottom of the picture above.

For the first time we’ve just seen how much space a station can take up. (It’s in the back.)

Voting is in. Herself and I like the idea that the railway should beckon viewers to get up out of their chairs to see what’s happening elsewhere. Soil beat sidings. Time to shovel yet another tonne of soil.

Korm, my back wants an indoor railroad instead too.

Where we initially installed a 90deg crossing in the plans, we’ve backed off and made a switch for a siding. We don’t lose our Roundy-Round status but are still at risk of learning all waybills.

In this picture, You can see how well the sandy loam holds its shape. I can stand on the pile and it doesn’t shift.

So we can work from the top of these hills, if we want have to…

Not unexpectedly, eyeballing a 3% grade is quite difficult. Time to purchase a Laser!

CONTINUES…

Jim_Rowson · October 2, 2024, 11:22pm

We planted several trees inside the Y near my logging area.

Initial planting:

Sorry for the lack of a good view of the trees, what the Y looked like a couple of years later:

Here is a really short video with a small view of the Y starting 41 seconds in.

A longer version of the same general footage, but with a better view of the Y starting at around 2 minutes:

Pretty happy with plants in the Y. Your railroad so do what makes you happy.

Cheers!

Hines · October 3, 2024, 6:59am

Remember those well thought out, well placed drip irrigation pipes, that were near the surface? Well Herself marked the spot just in case on the chance they got buried.

And now we are digging them up as the plan changed from “rail sidings” to “hill-sidings”. As you can see, we have re-exhumed the previously inhumed pipe. With 4 extensions we can irrigate on both sides of the track.

1 step forward and two steps back. Morris dancers beware!

Now we are trying to ensure we have irrigation between tracks. So there are four risers reaching upward. And just to preempt the process; once we get the grades in we will partially exhume the pipe again to put a tee on the pipe to run along side of the edging.

CONTINUES…

David_Marconi_FOGCH · October 3, 2024, 7:39am

Bill you should take a stroll through here:
By our member Ray Dunakin
http://www.raydunakin.com/Site/IRR_Real_History.html
Look at the pics of his backyard hill layout.

Hines · October 3, 2024, 9:06am

Oh no Hollywood‽
Now I have to make 19 more trips to the quarry before I can grumble. 🫨

Ray’s railroad is amazing. It’s fantastic to have something to strive for. I think I started 20 years too late.

And this is only PART 2!

smcgill · October 3, 2024, 11:19am

It is nice to have a helper that sees the vision …

Rooster · October 3, 2024, 9:57pm

OMGram, So much to tag!!

I gotta go to bed and think about this!

Hines · October 3, 2024, 10:04pm

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.

Hines · October 3, 2024, 11:10pm

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!