Starting about a month ago, I decided to finally get the RR back in shape after winter and a rather wet spring. Below, you can see Tyler adding ballast to the line. Most of the ballast settled out and washed away - ultimately, the whole RR line settled quite a bit except for on section.
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The photo above shows that I cut back along both sides of the mainline. The grass was just too long. As I have said in the past - this section of the yard has various grasses, trees, etc and originally had a path that ran throughout it that I kept mowed. The RR occupies the western third of the "Outfront" - the name of the prairie grass area...
The initial issue with the Railroad was two fold. First - when it was being work on last summer, it was extremely dry. This made digging very difficult. Also, since there was very little moisture last summer, the praire grass section of our yard didn't have a lot of growth. Fast forward and look at the photo on the above right taken in Mid June, 2006. The grass is much higher - so high that it droops over on the RR. So I had to cut it back further from what I initially did last year...
I also decided to add another layer on top of the old ballast and that layer was high grade roofing shingles. I have about 6 packages of these left by the previous owner of this house. I slid them between the old ballast and the track. I did this to decrease anymore "settling" of the underlying gravel.ballast and for weed control.
Tyler has been so helpful in getting the RR up and running again. He did much of the rough re-ballasting.
Rough early layout of the "city". I have many buildings to repair and reassemble
