Non-Gardener builds an Observatory, Garden Railway and even Dabbles with Plants!

Looks great. I only got as far as building lots and lots of airfix planes.

 

Once sitting on the sleeper wall, I lifted each end by hand, and placed a two inch diameter roller under the rail. The rollers were made from two offcuts of tent poles. This allowed me to roll the rail along the wall to where the trackbed was.



Once aligned between the sleepers, one end was lifted by hand and turned 90 degrees, resting on a plank on top of a stool. I could manage to lift one end a short distance on my own. Another plank running up the railway sleepers, allowed me to then roll the rail towards the hedge. I was fitting the shorter sections of rail at the hedge end and the longer pieces at the playhouse end.

 

It took thirty six minutes from hooking up the first piece of rail to the crane, to having it sitting in the rail chairs. It was a warm day and hard work!



The whole process repeated - lift, drive, drop, roll and lift into place. At this point, the rails were just being dropped into the chairs, not properly fitted at this time. The longer rails took a little longer to rig for lifting, as only one end of those rails had a hole through. I got three rails fitted and then stopped for lunch. This picture shows rail number three, ready to be lifted into place. The 2 inch webbing on the weed membrane, was wrapped around the rail and then the 1 inch dowel near it, was wrapped around the other end of the webbing. This gave me a handle to lift and move the rails a short distance.

 

Here's a short video of the last rail being brought down the garden. It was rolled into place along side the rail chairs and then each end lifted in turn to drop it into the chairs. By twenty past one in the afternoon, all four rails were fitted. After another long walk up the garden, I came back with a bucket of chair keys - the wooden blocks that wedge the rail into the chair.



These keys were hammered into the gap between the chair and rail. This is quite an old method of rail fixing. In the video, you can see me hammering a key in. Only one was really tight and needed a little trimming off to fit.

Once they were done, the inner child in me took over!!

 

Once all the rails were secure, the short rail nearest the crossing gate, was sitting a bit low. Off to the workshop again, to cut some wooden packers to go under the sleepers. I levelled the ground as best as I could, but there were still some undulations. The sleepers and now with rail too, were very heavy, so to lift them to get the packers under the sleeper, I made another trip up the garden for my trolley jack. I seemed to spent a lot of the day, walking up and down the garden for stuff! The jack allowed me to lift the rail and sleeper and try the packer in place. A couple of sleepers needed some packers and they all needed a little trimming to fit. With the rails all sitting flush, I stopped to clear up the tools and take some pictures.

 

A view looking down from the playhouse.



It was a good job I was working quickly, as at 14:55 hours, I saw and photographed the first train; albeit, it was N scale!!! ( another hobby I still dabble with now and again ). This could well be the first train in the village since Dr Beeching's axe fell on the British railways.



I took all the tools back to the workshop and put the Dodge away after that, exhausted, but feeling very pleased with the day's work and the look of the railway area. I was still some way off having plants in the area.

 

I still do build plastic models now and again, but mainly for other people. Here's a couple of examples.

 

Heres us thinking it was going to be a 00 or 0 gauge !

Are you importing a complete loco or building it up from parts yourself or do we have to wait and watch ? !

No excuse now you are retired !
Some of the modern kits seem a masterpiece of plastic design and must need many hours to complete.
https://uk.airfix.com/products/supermarine-spitfire-mkviii-a17002

 

There's no loco or wagon going on the track, much as it would be nice! I left the track empty so I can look across at the embankment at the flowers and plants that were going to be planted there.

 

10th June 2023

By the 10th, Lynne's veggie patch was doing so well, it was becoming a little overcrowded!



I was busy drilling the concrete footing for the second gatepost. After the rawlbolts were fitted, the mount was dropped down on top and the nuts tightened up. The post was held in by twelve large screws. When I lowered the post in, I didn't lower it all the way to the bottom of the mount. This way, the bottom of the wood wouldn't be sitting on a damp surface after rain, hopefully preventing the bottom of the post from rotting.

 

Once the post was fixed in place, the gate was aligned and the bolt hole drilled and painted. It was left to dry a while before the gate was closed and the bolt slotted into the hole. The mount bolts and post screws were then painted over in black Hammerite.



As the day drew to a close, I was indoors, but noticed the sunset colours on the wall inside the lounge. I grabbed my phone and went out to see what I could capture. There is of course, still a lot of clutter around the site. The tree trunks are just holding down the weed membrane covering the new lawn area until I start work on that and there's no ballast down yet, but after taking these sunset pictures, I thought the area would be great for some widefield star shots or star trail photos too.

 

11th June 2023

The next morning, I had a trip out to B&Q for some timber. I wanted to form an edge to the trackbed to contain the ballast and keep the soil embankment in place. The easiest way seemed to be a 4 inch tall timber wall, with stakes to hold it in place. The wall is made from three strips and the centre one needed cutting to length.

All three strips were painted along the bottom edges in bitumen and left to dry for a short time. Once dry enough to handle, I started fixing them in place. At the hedge end, the timber was attached to the sleeper edging next to the future hedge-side path. At the front, the timber was screwed to the sleeper wall. Once fitted, the rest of the timber was painted in bitumen.



12th June 2023

I got the weed membrane glued with mastic and stapled to the front sleeper wall and wrapped over the edge strip. There was also an additional patch of weed membrane to fit at the back, where the original 5mtr square sheet wasn't long enough. Then came the question of ballast.



After taking some measurements, I sat down with an online gravel calculator. Even allowing for the space taken by the sleepers, it suggested six 850Kg bulk bags to fill the area. Decorative gravel starts at £100 per bulk bag, so spending £600 on rock was more than I was prepared to spend. I then contemplated filling most of the area with river gravel, then just adding a final layer of decorative gravel on top. The river gravel was only £50 per bulk bag and much more affordable.

I had around a quarter of a bag of river gravel left over from the soakaway behind the sleeper wall. I decided to spread this out and get a feel for how far and how deep it would cover. This suggested the six bulk bag estimate was probably pretty close. I ordered five bulk bags of the river gravel, but that was going to be a few days before delivery. Once the five bags had been spread out over the track bed, I could decide whether to buy a decorative topping, or leave it with the river gravel finish.

 

13th June 2023

While waiting for the ballast to be delivered, I turned my attention to the space beside the gate. I wanted a short length of fence to finish off the gap. My neighbour had a load of scrap fencing at the back of his garden and let me pick a few pieces as I wanted something that already looked worn.



There was evidence of rot, splitting and woodworm in the planks, so there was some gluing and clamping first to fix the splits. I cut the planks to save the best sections, but to harden up the remaining rot, I mixed a batch of waterproof PVA glue, water and shed paint and painted several coats onto the planks, allowing the mix so soak in. Eventually they were given a couple of normal coats of shed paint to finish them, followed by a brown/grey mix dry brushed on to give them a weathered look.



The top and bottom rails were fitted first and then the third rail added half way between. The bottom rail was mounted quite high, to allow for ballast height below it.

 

21st June 2023

Around noon, a big delivery truck turned up and dropped off five 850Kg bags of river gravel. The one day I wanted overcast and cool, it was at least 24 degrees.



I started decanting gravel from the large 850Kg bag, into smaller half ton bags, to split the load into three. Two large bags were split giving me six loads to move. The Dodge was brought out of the garage again and the crane mounted. I then drove to the front of the house and hooked up the first bag. It was hot work, but eventually I got the six bags driven across the lawn and dumped on the new lawn, ready to start spreading. By this time I was melting in the heat, so packed up and came indoors.

 

After 7pm, it was still 22 degrees, but I went back outside to start spreading gravel. The gravel was quite dusty, with a fine silt all over. Having this wash onto the weed membrane was just going to provide somewhere for weeds to grow. So all the gravel was washed as I scooped it out of the bags, to get the worst of the silt off before spreading it around.



By 9:30pm, I'd emptied one 850Kg bag.