Well the title kind of spoils the end of this story but I thought I would share it since some one may be inspired, or more likely comforted, in the fact that they aren’t alone with some of the troubles that life throws at us garden railroaders. We have owned our house for 14 years now. I spent 10 years working on it to getting it ready to move in. We have lived in it for 4 years now. In that time I’ve built another addition nearly doubling the size of the house, giving me a man cave and a nice living room above for the family. All the while I have also been grooming the yard for the installation of my railroad empire. This has Included slowly battling and wining the war against Japanese knot weed, a highly invasive plant that had all but consumed the property we bought. I have also moved over 1300 yards of fill and built 2 retaining walls to get things to a usable state. You can see the current lay of the land in the picture below.
In the next picture the last remnants of the railroad can bee seen. In the spring I began the second stone wall that would keep the hill away from where my yard would have been. I wanted to lay the first 200’ loop of permanent track this fall. I pulled the far end of the dog bone so I wouldn’t mess up the track during construction. Well, a few short months later the reality hit that Pittsburgh public schools were not going to do for our son who is now 2 and a half. Catholic and private schools are not an option for us either for various reasons I won’t go into now. Our only choice is to pull up stakes and move. This is bitter sweet, but I’m excited. It will be hard to let go of this property after pouring my heart and soul into it for all these years and bringing it back from literally, a junk heap. Anyone want 100 used tires? The sweet part is, now we have the chance to get back to the country. We are planning on swapping out our urban 1/2 acre for a nice 3 to 5 acre slice of country near a small town in PA with a good school district and of course some place I can work. Seems like a lot to do, but I have two years to get us there. For now at our current house all that is left is bright green vegetation reclaiming what was once the Pittsburgh Limestone Railway.
Also the entire roster in mothballs. I even have 200" of brand new tie strips and rail ready in boxes, enough to do the first loop described below.
What would have grown from that little dog bone? Well, as can bee seen in the drawing below I had grand plans. This was designed to run RC’d live steam. The big oval to the right was all to be dead level track for those that like to roundy round, or non-rc. The area below the round house is a place where the hill starts dropping so the was going to be a BIG 3 track stone arch bridge that would start just after the round house and end when it came back to level ground at the bottom of the oval. There would have been stairs leading down to a nice side walk on either side of the bridge to permit loco maintenance at belly height. Lots of spots like this would have been here and the along the line. The long line that heads all the way to the left end of the yard and back to the loop at the house would have went to the lime stone quarry. This would have been in the middle of the loop. That line would have been a 2% grade from the Y to the quarry. There would have also been a run in track to the basement off of the quarry for indoor storage. This would have started it. I’m sure other lines and industry would pop up here and there. There was also going to be a large stone cutting shop back at “town” where large hunks were processed.
As for the future I’m excited to see where we will land and what that can mean for the railroad. I’m going to keep the same limestone theme, and most of the structures I mentioned. A track to bring trains in to some building is a must. Other wise It’s pretty much mating my old vision to the new terrain.
Well That’s been my G scale adventure for the last few years. We’ll see what lies ahead.
