Finally the Winter snows and the Spring rains have supsided letting me get on with some track reapirs, reballast and upgrades! The main an passing siding weren;t in too bad a shape, but the storage spurs looked hideous…
There were a couple of problem areas on the passing siding so I decided that the main and siding both needed new ties, this time instead of my usual ‘Tie on batten’ method I decided to use Gary Buchanon’s ‘Tie on Plywood’ treatment, utilizing 5/8 inch pressure treated playwood for a subroadbed. For this area I slice a 1’ x8’ section off two 4 x 8 sheets of plywood (the remainder to be used for a future staging yard) resulting in a 1’ x 16’ area for trackage. Once this was done I stripped the rail off the old redwood ties that had seriously deteriorated over the last 7 years or so and nailed the new ties down on the Plywood.
The new system seems to work good, after all the rail was salvaged and spiked down to the new wood and everything was reballasted. I relined and surface all the existing yard tracks and ran test trains yesterday, after cleaning and fixing all the ground throws and turnouts.
Hopefully the rain this weekend will pack in the ballast and I can run trains properly on Monday!!!