New trench

Today I shored up the road bed along the fence so it is in operable condition again. And I'm hopeful that this solution should provide some stability and last for a long time. I'm still not quite ready to run trains as I want to finish up the new retaining wall near the garage first. I should have that done sometime this week.

This is the before shot. The ballast is completely washed out on the left side and the road bed and the slope has partially slumped. The track is twisted and leaning downhill.

My initial thought was to install some simple boards to just stop the soil from moving. But when I started digging out the slope I quickly realized that wouldn't work at all, as I had forgotten about all the large rocks and concrete chunks I had put down underneath the roadbed for stability four years ago. Perhaps if I had looked at old pictures (i.e., this blog) I would have remembered.

So I switched gears and instead focused on building up wall on top of the concrete blocks that were already in place underneath. After clearing loose material out of the way I started placing large rocks and concrete cobbles that I had around.

And then I switched to using a double layer of bricks. As these are sitting on top of concrete blocks, not on the soil, they should be quite stable.

This is a view looking the other way showing the track in its new trench. I backfilled with the material I had cleared out of the way as it was still pretty clean. I then put fresh quarter-minus ballast on top.

Here is the after shot, with the new ballast but before I sprayed it down with water to lock it in place. The track has been leveled and aligned. It hasn't looked this good in ages!

And here is a final picture looking the other direction. Compare this to the picture at the beginning of the post.

I noticed today that another one of my native irises is blooming. This one is a rather compact plant and has very small flowers.

And for a final picture, the red hot poker is in peak bloom right now and lots of bees are visiting.