Tracks are on the ground

The weather was much nicer today in Seattle than I was expecting due to rain shadowing from the Olympics—what I like to call the "donut hole effect." So construction continued after a trip to pick up some 1/4-minus from the fine people at Burien Bark. This is a finely crushed rock where the particle size is no greater than 1/4 inch. I'll use this for both the roadbed and ballast.


I moved the track from the garage and loosely placed it in position to ensure my measurements were on target. The ground was still a bit uneven in places but that is fine at this point as I'm trying to determine where additional ground work would be needed. After a little shifting around and the alignment looked good, I poured dry sand over the entire length of track to mark the right of way.



The track was then picked up and moved back to the garage. Following the line of sand, I placed the 1/4-minus crushed rock and pounded it down in place using a 8" tamper. This both levels the roadbed and compacts the crushed rock so it binds together.


There was one section of very soft soil where the right-of-way cuts through the iris bed. I know that settling will occur here, so to help reduce settling and support the roadbed I placed a path of bricks. The bricks were then topped with enough crushed rock to bring it up to the level of the roadbed.



At this point I had a nice 8-10" wide roadbed but it was a bit vertically uneven in places. So the next step involved crawling along the track with two boards and a level to even it out as much as possible, grading down high spots and filling in low spots with more crushed rock.



Now the track could come out from the garage again. I won't be doing any soldering as this is a relatively short loop and the alignment is likely temporary. But I still want to ensure that conductivity along the rails is good as I'll be using track power. I made sure I had a good connection between each section and used a conductive paste on each joiner. This was the most tedious task of the day.


That's as far as I made it today. The next step, hopefully tomorrow if the weather is as nice as today, will be ballasting the track!