2018

I was extremely disconnected from model railroading for the past couple of years, but now I’m getting excited about it again, but for the wrong reason.

My older brother John first introduced me to model railroading with the HO layout in our basement, then each of his subsequent layouts as he and his family moved a few times.  Recently he was talking about going N scale for his retirement house, but was diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer.  He and I would talk trains, cars, and other fun stuff to keep his spirits up.  We were going to start construction on a new lightweight layout when his condition worsened.  I was getting back into my indoor N scale layout and we were exchanging tips, I’d share some of the excess scenery pieces I had accumulated, and he was scratch-building buildings for his eventual layout.

Unfortunately he never got the layout built, and passed away in April 2018.  I had been working more on my N scale layout the last couple of months, but looking out the window I saw the garden railroad and knew John would want me to get going again.  So I did.

Things had taking a beating over the last couple of years, and deer are a constant problem.  A common term for them is “forest rats” because they eat everything and destroy a lot.  Forget the cute baby deer in Bambi, they are troublesome animals that do a lot of damage:

June 10 update: Before the rain started, I got those sections of rail replaced.  My wife and I had mulched most of the garden to keep weeds under control:

My son’s dog Maisy was helping today as the first time in several years that an engine was running.  This is an NW2 that had radio control installed.  A new battery was just put in, so the body and cab aren’t installed completely:

 

I can fix those.  The line on the left is the mainline, while the branch on the right feeds two sidings.

New Jersey also had a few back-to-back nor’easters (storms that form off the coast and tend to blow from the north-east) that dumped a few feet of snow.  A few trees came down, along with lots of branches, one of which hitting a building:

We watched one tree that looked destined to come down and smash into the pond, but fortunately it survived.

Some trackage was cleared, while quite a bit remains to be done.  At least the overgrowth is pretty:

The pond and the mainline bridge made out well, although birds ate all the fish so I’ve got to visit a local store for some cheap goldfish.  Plants saved in the greenhouse over the winter are slowly being moved back in:

My goals for this year are modest:

• Put down a barrier with mulch on top to reduce the number of weeds in the raised bed.  DONE!
• Get trains running again.  I switched to battery power a few years ago, but the mainline needs some work. DONE!
• Add new fish. DONE!
• Finish building the one rock wall that remains.
• Maybe get some topsoil and start filling in the rest of the raised beds.

We’ve had a really cold spring so far and very few nice weekends to get outside.