of the
Work resumes on the right of way. I decided to start finishing some of the track bed with the use of hand tools. So with my trusty Mono-wheeled, Diminishing Horsepower, 6 Cubic Foot earthmover (wheelbarrow) and the Poor Man's Dynamite (pick Axe) I have completed 120 feet of R.O.W. I have been working in the area of "Summit Spring". I needed to reduce the grade approaching the summit so I lowered the roadbed by a foot. This provided a good amount of earth for the fill just after the summit. The Township Highway Department where I live, graciously donated 20 dump truck loads of dirt to help with construction of my little railroad. This will come in handy when completing this end of the line. The trestle will be shorter than planned and this will save on building costs. Next I will work on the line between the Summit Spring and the pond. Stay tuned.......
I have been building a stone retaining wall along the side of the cut by summit spring. This wall is 4 feet high and 75 feet long. Since we have so many rock walls on our property, the stones are free. I have been collecting and moving them around with a utility cart towed behind my ATV. I will use this cart to move the fill from the cut as well.
My neighbor let me borrow his Terremite backhoe for a couple of weeks so heavy earth moving has started again. I pushed the earth that the township donated to it's final resting place in line with the ROW. I then rough finished digging the cut by the vegetable patch and moved the resulting dirt to the opposite end of the line and on top of the now aligned earth fill. Hopefully I will have enough dirt to match the elevation of the fill that I moved by hand. I had to improve a few things on the cart as I discovered it wasn't really made to move such heavy loads. I first made a heavy duty tailgate as the this one that comes with the cart is pretty much useless. Next I had to make a heavier latch to keep it from bending and accidentaly dumping the load. Then I made the cart dump easier by installing a second pivot point at the back end of the box so I could fully dump the load. With all this, the rebuilt cart works quite efficiently. To make it easier to back the load out on to the narrow fill, I made a wooden guide that rides on the inside of the wheels of the cart and the ATV. Kind of like a set of tracks that keep the trailer wheels where they belong. On top of the fill.
All of the earth moving is done for this year. The temperatures have dropped to below freezing and there is a good frost in the ground. This should help things to settle in by next spring before I begin trackwork. If I am able, I will complete the stone wall by Summit Spring.
I picked up the 200 recycled plastic 2x4's that I will be using for the ties on my railroad. I will be cutting these to size and drilling the holes for the screws. It took 2 trips to the supplier as each 2x4 weighs about 38 pounds. I can thank another one of my neighbors for letting me use his heavy duty trailer to pick up the material at the manufacturer.
Winter is behind us and work on the right of way has started again in earnest. The retaining wall in the summit spring cut is finished, complete with drain pipes and ditches. The path that the track will take in the middle section of the line, has been surveyed and marking flags have been put in place. I have started leveling the R.O.W. at the exit of the cut by the vegetable garden. I will be removing the dirt that has fallen into the cut as a result of the winter frost pushing it in. Stone retaining walls will be built in this cut to hold back the sides in future winters. This provides dirt to build up the R.O.W. in low spots as well as fill for the approach to the lower loop trestle. A bridge abutment for this trestle will be made from the Springville and Southern's favorite building material....stone.
Work continues......
With this being the wettest spring in years, work on the ROW has once again been hampered. I will have to wait for the ground to dry out before track work can begin. My wife, Tara and I did the first landscape planting on the Springville and Southern R.R., along the stone retaining wall. We planted some English Ivy and to our suprise, this plant is not eaten by the deer we have in our area. Someday it will cascade down over the wall. We found a list of other plants that are not "preferred" eating and will plant more as time goes on. Until then, we are patiently waiting for the springs of Springville to ease up a bit.
The ground has dried up and work on the cut by the veggie patch is continuing. The fill for the approach to the lower trestle is in place and the stone abutment will be built soon. This abutment is the support for the end of the trestle as well as a wall to hold back the fill. The stone retaining wall along one side of the cut is almost finished and the wall on the opposite side will begin after the trestle abutment. The dirt that was excavated to build the wall was used for the filled approach to the trestle abutment. With all of this stone work, I have become quite good at building walls and they no longer seem to be such a daunting task.
The past two weeks have been very productive. In a mad dash, the final bit of heavy earth moving was completed. The first ten days of September were spent either on the seat of my neighbor's little backhoe digging out the last of the cut and digging for drainage pipes, or, on the seat of my ATV moving wagon loads of dirt around. I say mad dash because I asked a friend to help me lay the first section of track on the second weekend. I wanted to get everything ready so that when he arrived, all we would have to do is lay track. Well, minor problems did rear their ugly heads and I didn't get as much done as I had wanted. I still hadn't cut the ties and the first day my friend was here, I chained him to the saw to prepare the ties. (just joking about the chains) We both worked for half a day on cutting and slotting and drilling enough ties to lay 200 feet of track. In the afternoon we extended two drainage pipes so that water from around the garage would empty downhill from the track. Once this was done, a small amount of cutting was needed to lower a high section of the right of way. This was done and we were ready to start laying track!!
We gathered up the necessary supplies to get started. We put down some weed barrier first. Then a layer of 1 inch crushed rock. This was tamped with a hand tamper so that it was as flat as possible. We checked the grade with the transit and added or removed ballast to get things level. We then layed out the plastic ties, then the rails. Using a rechargable screwgun, we attached the rails to the ties using stainless steel screws. A layer of 3/4 inch crushed rock was then shoveled onto the ties and the excess was swept along with a heavy broom. Wow!! It looked great! I finally had my dream...tracks in the yard. A little lifting and tamping of the track made it straight and level. After completing 120 feet of track, time had run out for the track crew on that Sunday. A good amount of cleanup was done to make the "grounds manager" happy. It was now time to get back to work and catch up on other things that I have put off for the past two weeks.
The fall is here and my job has me quite busy. Little work has been done since the first track was layed. Grass seed and a layer of hay has been spread on the sides of the cuts and fill to keep them from eroding over the winter. Work will resume on stone retaining walls as time allows. Until then......
It's been such a long time since my last post, many of you are probably wondering what has been happening on the Springville & Southern Railroad. My regular job has had me quite busy and work on the railroad had to be put on hold for awhile. But now that spring is here and the ground has dried up from the thaw, work continues. While waiting for things to dry up a bit, I have been designing the trestle that will be built at the lower end of the line. This trestle will be 90 feet in length and 5 feet high at it's highest point. It will be made from pressure treated lumber with concrete post footings. The bents (the upright portions of the trestle) will be made with 4x4 caps and sill and the posts will be 3x5 landscape ties. The ties have 2 rounded side which will give the bents a realistic look and the flat sides will make building them easy. I will measure the height for each bent and build them in my shop. Then, transport them to the site and sit them on the concrete footings that will be poured in cardboard construction tubes (Sonotube) that will be placed 3 feet into the ground. Everything will be bolted together with galvanized bolts (a birthday gift from my wife) and the track secured to double 2x4 stringers that go the length of the trestle. Here's a picture of the sample bent
I have been clearing out the dirt and rocks that have fallen into the cuts over the winter. I sure wish I had built the stone retaining wall along the upper side of the cut last fall. A lot of mud has washed into the bottom of the cut. This is now being removed with the assistance of the latest edition to the "Quiet Springs" machinery list. A Terramite loader backhoe. This is a newer version of the backhoe that my neighbor let me borrow. We really needed our own machine with all of the various projects we have going on including the building of the railroad. Track building will be much easier with this machine.
That's all for now. Come back soon as railroad building will be the filler of my spare time.
For a good part of this month I have been working on the wall along the upper side of the cut by the veggie patch. I began at the opposite end this time in order to give support to a hickory tree that is right at the edge of the cut. The winter had removed a lot of the dirt around it's roots and I needed to get them covered with dirt again before the hot summer months. First I layed the heavy bottom rocks and then built the wall up to the bottom of the roots. I backfilled the wall with nice dirt to make the tree happy again. Then I tackled the rest of the wall. Again first the bottom rocks were carefully layed in place. These are the most important and they have to be layed with no rocking and with a slight backward tilt. then the remaining rocks are stacked in place with the straightest faces out. Each rock is positioned so that the wall tilts slightly against the earth when it's finished. This is how the wall works so well at holding back the mud and dirt.
Next I will be adding drainpipe to the rest of the cut. This is needed as the water bubbles up from the floor of the cut after it rains. Stay tuned and I'll let you know how it goes.
I have finally finished the deep cut near the vegetable garden. (informally known as "Cow Dung Cut") The stone retaining walls are finished and the drainage ditches and pipes are in. The slopes of the cut are planted with grass seed and this has been covered with mulch hay to prevent the seed from washing away. This cut has proven to be the most time consuming and back breaking part of my entire railroad. I am glad it is finished.The completion of the cut also starts the next phase of track work. This begins with the building of the switch that leads to the cut. I prepared the site for the switch and cut into the straight section of track that was put down last fall. This required some curved track, so, a rail bender needed to be made. After a day in the machine shop, I came out with a simple 3 wheeld rail bender that produced nice evenly curved rail at the proper, 45' radius. I am not going to go into the description of making the switch here, but, I will have a page dedicated to it in the near future.
I have updated some of the old ROW pictures on the Photo Map page to reflect the latest work that has been completed. Give them a look.
I know it has been awhile since my last update. With regular work keeping me from working on my railroad, progress has been minimal. I did manage to build the switch that leads to the loop and "Cow Dung Cut" before the ground froze. I put the switch building chronicle on a separate page as it is quite long. One other item to be mentioned is that the fill that leads to the upper loop by "Summit Spring" has grown considerably and almost completed. I needed to widen a drainage ditch and this provided a lot of dirt. As before, I loaded the dirt into my dumpcart and backed it out to the end of the fill and gave it the old "Heave Ho". I planted some rye grass on the sides of the fill to hold things together for the winter and in the spring, I will try planting some Crown Vetch. According to a prototype track building manual, this is an ideal ground cover for fills and banks along railroad tracks. It's root system makes a mat that will hold the soil. It is low growing and stands up well even in drought.
Yes, it has been awhile since my last posting. Things can get quite busy in the spingtime, especially when you are building a house. Tara and I have begun to build our permanant house on our property. How does this relate to railroad building you ask? Here's how. In excavating the building site and the basment for the house, there is a vast amount of dirt and rocks that is left over. This dirt needs to be put somewhere. What better place than on my railroad. With the large amount of dirt to be moved, the ATV and old dumpcart will not be adequate. A new 2 cubic yard hydraulic dump trailer that can be towed behind my tractor is in the planning stages. This will make moving dirt very easy and save on time and manual energy spent. It will dump with the hydraulic power that the tractor can generate internally. Of course it will be loaded with the backhoe.
That's all that is going on right now. COme back soon to see more progress.
One of the approaches to the bridge by the pond is complete and the rocks for the other have been moved to the construction site. This will make the building of the approach easier. It gives me a good selection of rocks within reach of the abutment. To fill the approaches to the abutments, I used small rocks that I removed from the final graded dirt pile area. I made a simple screening plant to separate the rocks and dirt and the rocks fall directly into my atv trailer for transport to the bridge worksite. Filling the approaches with rocks will allow for good drainage and hopefully prevent frost damage. A small culvert pipe was placed under one of the approaches at the low spot to allow rainwater to pass under the ROW. The grade leading to the culvert was pitched so that water would run towards the pipe and eventually to the lower side of the track. Some plants were put in along the approach by the beautification team and now I am waiting for the grass to grow. Be patient and wait with me...
(click on numbered corresponding descriptions below map for photos)