clive_t's Garden Line - The Fall and Rise of the Scampington Chipside Garden Railway

More progress today - another 5 blocks laid, however I am all out of bags for holding the soil that I have dug out:




Last Sunday, I managed to clear and clean the entire circuit, enough to have a loco travel round it unaided for the first time in more than 6 years...

https://vimeo.com/album/4187735/video/189527542

 

Thanks all. Not sure what further progress if any I will make for the foreseeable - I am all out of strong bags for holding the soil, and we have just been told here that our local council 'recycling/amenity' friends are now charging domestic customers for the privilege of disposing of household garden waste, including soil, hedge clippings etc. No doubt the money they make from those that cough up will be more than swallowed up by chasing down those that will inevitably resort to 'fly-tipping' it.

 

This weekend, more heavy duty bags have been procured, however the weather meant that there was not much opportunity to progress the new track bed in this area - but, 4 blocks is 4 less still to do:



Of course, as with any excavation work there is always the possibility that archaeological evidence will be uncovered revealing past endeavours:

 

Hi Graeme, yes battery power has been lurking at the back of my mind for a while now, even before the line fell into disuse. I will be looking at how I can fit batteries into each loco, I seem to recall that I struggled with the large size of them back then when I first started thinking about it. I am hoping that the technology has moved on a bit, such that they are now much smaller.

 

Hello all, long time and all that...

Firstly, apologies for the massive gap between updates. My progress on resurrecting the line stalled during 2017 with a combination of appalling weather, and an injury sustained during the removal of a rather invasive shrub from adjacent to the viaduct.

Before:



After:



Unfortunately, during an extended period of kneeling to remove the trunk of this shrub, both my knees 'locked'. It took me an age to straighten my legs, and two of the loudest, most stomach churning 'clunks' ever heard. I couldn't kneel down for months after, and even to this day my knees aren't right! I guess there is such a thing as 'suffering for one's art' after all!

As a result, that was pretty much the sum total of the progress until the beginning of May of this year.

It won't surprise you, I am sure, that the intervening period was put to good use by good old Mother Nature, who wasted no time at all in attempting to re-establish her grip on the garden.

Having given up work back in March this year - I want to call it 'early retirement', however I am not actually drawing any pension at the moment so technically I am merely unemployed - I found myself with an unhealthy number of hours to fill during the day. Fortunately the weather has picked up over the past few weeks, and so being out in the garden was not the ordeal it would have been back in the first quarter of the year.

I am now busily engaged in cementing in the blocks I laid in the 'Chipside' area all those years ago!



I've also taken the opportunity to do some tidying up of this thread; where the previous photos were replaced with the infamous Photo Bucks ransom demands, I have replaced these with the same photos now hosted on Flickr. I still have some pics to replace, but I think I have done most of them.

Thanks for looking!

 

Thanks Toto, Chris, for your most kind comments.

I should really learn to keep my big trap shut - kneeling down to get some more 'pointing' done, and what happens? My left knee locked out again!! Worst of it was, I was unable to move, I was home alone (wife was out shopping), and my mobile phone was on the garden bench about 5 feet away from me! Luckily I had the forethought to put up a parasol to shade the area in which I was working, otherwise I would have been properly toasted! I had only just mixed up a big batch of mortar too, so I had to carry on filling the gaps as best I could from where I was stuck! I am sure it would have looked amusing to someone, but that someone definitely was not me!

Anyway, here's today's progress shot:





@Chris, I'd be interested to see pics of your garden line, can you point me at any please?

 

Thanks Pete, I might give that a try.

Thanks too, Chris. Got to love live steam!

 

Thanks Dave, most kind.

 

A bit more progress today - other tasks have very much been to the fore this past week or so:



I reckon I am about half way through getting these blocks cemented in, so not bad progress overall given I started at the beginning of May.