iowafarmboy1960
1st Class Member
Brakeman
Posts:32
Send Message
 | | 07/27/2008 4:26 PM |
| After 4 years living in this house, I've started my garden railroad. The following pictures show my progress.
Spring 2008.
The beginning of July 2008. I added some retaining wall timbers and some wooden edging.
Saturday July 26, 2008. I had 5 yards of dirt dumped on my driveway and moved about 1 1/2 yards by wheelbarrow by myself while my 18 year old son hung out with friends. 90 degree temps and 85 degree humidity.
Sunday July 27, 2008. I woke my son up at 8 AM, he wasn't happy. Enough back breaking work yesterday, so I rent a walk behind skid loader. So much easier.
I started to lay out the track plan and found out that I mis calculated, so had to make some quick layout changes.
White string indicates the location of the pond. We're also going to have a stream running from the corner of the retaining wall over top of the 2 curve section. Both curve sections will be tunnels.
I'll update the pictures as the work continues. | | | |
|
iowafarmboy1960
1st Class Member
Brakeman
Posts:32
Send Message
| | 07/27/2008 4:28 PM |
| | Don't know what happened to my pictures. I'll have to try again. | | | |
|
toddalin
Foreman
Posts:406
Send Message
| | 07/27/2008 4:31 PM |
| you need to put a / before the img at the end of the pic.
[/img] | | | |
|
toddalin
Foreman
Posts:406
Send Message
| | 07/27/2008 4:33 PM |
| Posted By iowafarmboy1960 on 07/27/2008 4:26 PM After 4 years living in this house, I've started my garden railroad. The following pictures show my progress. Spring 2008. The beginning of July 2008. I added some retaining wall timbers and some wooden edging. Saturday July 26, 2008. I had 5 yards of dirt dumped on my driveway and moved about 1 1/2 yards by wheelbarrow by myself while my 18 year old son hung out with friends. 90 degree temps and 85 degree humidity. Sunday July 27, 2008. I woke my son up at 8 AM, he wasn't happy. Enough back breaking work yesterday, so I rent a walk behind skid loader. So much easier. I started to lay out the track plan and found out that I mis calculated, so had to make some quick layout changes. White string indicates the location of the pond. We're also going to have a stream running from the corner of the retaining wall over top of the 2 curve section. Both curve sections will be tunnels. I'll update the pictures as the work continues. | | | |
|
Jerry Barnes
1st Class Member
Lexington, NE
Conductor
Posts:976
Send Message
| | 07/27/2008 7:54 PM |
| | Looking good. The walk behind skid loader was a good idea! Jerry | |
Life is too short to take seriously. | |
|
iowafarmboy1960
1st Class Member
Brakeman
Posts:32
Send Message
| | 07/27/2008 8:26 PM |
| Toddalin,
Thanks for fixing my screw up with the pictures. I haven't post pictures on the site for quite awhile.
Tom | | | |
|
iowafarmboy1960
1st Class Member
Brakeman
Posts:32
Send Message
| | 07/27/2008 8:29 PM |
| I guess I didn't notice that the last 2 pics are the same. Here's the pic of where the pond will go.
| | | |
|
Torby
1st Class Member
North Chicago 'burbs.
Engineer
Posts:1666
Send Message
| | 07/28/2008 6:23 AM |
| | Nice work! | |
 "If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not. We cannot compete, in simplicity with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with Fact. Of course anyone can be simple if he has no facts to bother about."-- C. S. Lewis | |
|
iowafarmboy1960
1st Class Member
Brakeman
Posts:32
Send Message
| | 07/28/2008 8:45 AM |
| Here's a picture of the track plan using RR Track
 | | | |
|
jimtyp
1st Class Member
Centennial, CO
Conductor
Posts:720
Send Message
| | 07/28/2008 9:19 AM |
| | Looking good IFB! The pond, stream and tunnels will really add a lot. There's a pic in the latest Garden Railway that I really like the look of the stream. Are you planning a trestle or bridge for the crossover? What sort of grade are expecting? | |
livin' la vida loco | |
|
iowafarmboy1960
1st Class Member
Brakeman
Posts:32
Send Message
| | 07/28/2008 10:48 AM |
| I have a 2' pony truss bridge for the crossover and a 3' truss bridge for over the pond. The grades will be 3.6% from the switch to the crossover and 3.8% from the crossover to the entrance of the lower tunnel. The lower tunnel starts at the 1st straight track before the curve closest to the tree.
Tom | | | |
|
toddalin
Foreman
Posts:406
Send Message
| | 07/28/2008 11:01 AM |
| An Iowa farm boy..., Hmmmm...,
You wouldn't happen to be Captain James T. Kirk now would you?  | | | |
|
jimtyp
1st Class Member
Centennial, CO
Conductor
Posts:720
Send Message
| | 07/28/2008 11:09 AM |
| Tom, looks like you have done your homework :-)
One more question, and I ask because I want to do something similar with a pond and stream some day, will you have a holding tank so when the water from the stream is turned off the pond does not overflow, or will you leave enough room in the pond so that it can hold the stream water as well?
| |
livin' la vida loco | |
|
vsmith
1st Class Member
SoCal
Conductor
Posts:996
Send Message
| | 07/28/2008 12:23 PM |
| It looks like your using your existing topography to your benifit, you will still have a stiff grade from the looks of it, but niothing that cant be delt with.
Whats your minimum radius/diameter curves? | |
 Kitbashing, welcome to the Dark Side | |
|
iowafarmboy1960
1st Class Member
Brakeman
Posts:32
Send Message
| | 07/28/2008 1:33 PM |
| | The minimum radius is 5', 1 by the pond & the other between the tree and the shed. Everything else is 8' with a few 5 footer here and there. I'm planning on running my bachmann 4-6-0 and my lgb 2-4-0. Tom | | | |
|
vsmith
1st Class Member
SoCal
Conductor
Posts:996
Send Message
| | 07/28/2008 3:28 PM |
| 5' radius? Are you sure of your designations, 5' radius = 10' diameter, 8' radius = 16' diameter, I ask because it looks like the curve at the tree would be 5' diameter, I just want to be sure were talking about the same apples here, its very easy to get confused on the whole radius/diameter thingy  | |
Kitbashing, welcome to the Dark Side | |
|
iowafarmboy1960
1st Class Member
Brakeman
Posts:32
Send Message
| | 07/28/2008 6:31 PM |
| The smallest is 5', 6.5', & 8' foot diameter curves. I'm just going to running my steam engines on this layout. I have F3's, but the rest of my diesels are too big. I had plans to build a much bigger layout, but decided I better start off small with the first layout. Here's a couple of pics of where the big layout is suppose to go.
But as you can see, the retaining wall isn't finished. It's looked like that for 3 1/2 years now. | | | |
|
iowafarmboy1960
1st Class Member
Brakeman
Posts:32
Send Message
| | 07/28/2008 6:35 PM |
| | And of course the pictures didn't show up again. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. | | | |
|
Semper Vaporo
1st Class Member
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Engineer
Posts:1226
Send Message
| | 07/28/2008 6:39 PM |
| Posted By iowafarmboy1960 on 07/28/2008 6:31 PM The smallest is 5', 6.5', & 8' foot diameter curves. I'm just going to running my steam engines on this layout. I have F3's, but the rest of my diesels are too big. I had plans to build a much bigger layout, but decided I better start off small with the first layout. Here's a couple of pics of where the big layout is suppose to go. But as you can see, the retaining wall isn't finished. It's looked like that for 3 1/2 years now.
No closing square bracket on the last tag. | |
 C. T. McCullough
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
SA #37469
| |
|
iowafarmboy1960
1st Class Member
Brakeman
Posts:32
Send Message
| | 08/11/2008 5:39 PM |
| Worked on the railroad again the weekend. Friday I dug out the location for the first tunnel.
Saturday there were 2 open houses for 2 members of the MGRS. I got a couple of ideas for making the tunnel. Neither one panned out and I decided to go with concrete. Here's a couple of pics for the progress that I made today. I got the floor of the tunnel poured.
Tom | | | |
|