Poolside Rails

It was close, so close! Wyatt’s sister Claire came over to play with my seven-year-old : all hands! Battle stations!

I tell you, those rails shined they were so polished. I tested the little LGB 0-4-0 back and forth, up and down the line from Paris to China. Even the Troublesome Trucks, the two LGB passenger cars, minded themselves.

Station? Done! Track? Clear! Wyatt? Not today! Boy! Hurry up and wait!

So, now, for all interested parties; Wyatt Exposition Day is this Sunday, August 2, at 2:00 PM. No ifs, ands or whatevers.

In the meantime, I decided to try my hand at repairing LGB couplers. The tongue had fallen out of the coupler on one end of the red LGB passenger car…I ask no questions of my daughter as to how it happens and she offers no explanations. There’s a split plastic retaining clip that holds the thing in, and that clip had long gone somewhere on the Paris to Peking Railway roadbed.

I have a Denver & Rio Grande Western bobber caboose that came with the Bachmann locomotive. It’s nicely detailed, but must weigh about a gazillionth of an ounce: I know why they call it a bobber! My stepson was in the Cub Scouts and made a “spirit rock” – this cool potato-sized rock that has a spider painted on it. It’s heavy, and fits perfectly inside the bobber, making it a nice heavy weight car. Well, I don’t plan to tow much behind that caboose, so I used its coupler as a source of parts for the passenger car (and you thought the bobber story wasn’t going to lead anywhere!).

I had a lot of trouble getting that coupler tongue to come off. That folded plastic retaining pin did not want to come loose: it was tough. So tough, in fact, that I broke it in trying to remove it. Well, NOW the coupler tongue came off! I have no spares, so it took some quick engineering.

The retaining pin fits into a hole on the coupler tongue. The back side of the tongue has a nice pocket gouged in it, into which fits the coupler support on the car’s truck. Mister clever here took out his pin vise and drilled a nifty little hole in the coupler support. Using a flanged screw I found in my parts bin, I was able to simulate the retaining pin on the coupler tongue, driving the screw through the hole in the tongue and into the coupler support on the car’s truck. Brilliant! And it works! It’s a trifle stiffer than the plastic retaining pin, but seriously not much. As the screw is of a smaller diameter than the hole on the coupler tongue, it doesn’t bind, threatening to unscrew itself. Plus, as the track is currently wired, the car only makes right turns…let’s see, isn’t righty-tighty, lefty-loosey?

While I had the bobber in the shop to pull the coupler off, I shot its axle ends with Marvel Mystery Lubricant. The can belonged to my late father-in-law, and he must have had it for thirty years. I just took a wild shot and squirted it on the axle ends. My gosh! That stuff makes WD-40 look like tar! I hit all the wheels on both of the Troublesome Trucks, and I can’t believe how smoothly the whole unit runs! Lubrication! Who knew?

I think it’s only fair I announce this administrational change here on the PtoP Ry: Yours truly is now no longer a displaced worker (hold your applause, please)! That’s great news for yours truly! However, my daylight hours will be consumed between the exhausting work I’ll be doing and the 40 mile commute from Ventura to West Hills and back. But, I’ll make you a deal. If you’ll let me have Friday and Saturday nights off, I’ll keep you apprised of the PtoP Ry happenings on the other five days of the week. Deal?

I know what you’re thinking; how much interesting stuff can happen during the week? Trust me, my friend, I’ve got that covered. You’ll see.

You know my rule: measure once, cut twice. It’s not a good rule, but it is one to which I unfortunately subscribe.

I’m an artist. I’d love to sit here and tell you I’m a craftsman, but I’m not. I’m an artist. I like to jump into a project and trust my artistic instinct to get me out. It most often works.

The Ukraine Train Station, however, has proven to be quite the different kettle of fish. Here’s a new set of rules that will save your goose when you attempt a project like this:
1. Don’t Mark the Ruler: I have this nasty habit of marking the ruler with my pencil rather than writing down the precise measurement. When I move to the piece I’m cutting, I simply look for my mark on the ruler. But that depends upon your place the ruler on your stock in exactly the same manner you placed in on the piece you measured. On a good day that’s extremely imprecise. Take your time and write down the measurement…don’t trust that you’ll remember it, WRITE IT DOWN!

2. Use Millimeters Whenever Possible: I embarrassed myself on this project by repeating to myself over and over “Six and three quarters and that little thingy”, meaning the 1/8th mark. My daughter overheard me and asked me what I was talking about. Two mistakes: I didn’t take the time to write it down, and I didn’t use the metric system, because 57mm is easier to remember than six and three quarters and that little thingy. Plus, when it comes time to do mathematic equations, divinding millimeters is infinitely easier than dividing fractions!

3. Learn Your Power Tools: I make digital movies. Rule number one there is to learn your camera’s idiosyncrasies so that you can compensate for them. When I broke out my Hitachi Power Saw to cut the station in half, I didn’t exactly know WHICH line gauge actually matched the blade. As a result, the north wall of the station is slightly longer than the south wall, so that when I go to attach a back wall, it will sit at an angle relative to the front wall. Not to scale, and not cool.

4. Most Important: T H I N K!!! The rest of this article is on the result of rushing and not thinking, so I’ll simplify the rule here: Plan ahead, idiot.

When the time came to cut the piece of plywood for the base of the station, I chose a piece from a stack of junk plywood to which I happen to have easy access (I tore the crummy cover off my patio, which left me with a large, unwieldy stack of crummy plywood. I’m working on creative ways to get rid of it).

Anyway, I knew it needed to be 42 inches long, eleven inches wide at one end and twelve at the other. I was in a hurry to get the station set up, and I didn’t care much about the plywood piece or how carefully I cut it. I got my 18 inch ruler out and quickly measured off the dimensions.

Then I whupped out my Hitachi and quickly carved through the plywood. There was a place, along the long leg that was to face the track, that had a knot right there along the cut line, and it bumped the saw out of line. I roughly re-cut along the line, but it wasn’t a straight line.
I got the station attached to it, and it looked pretty good. I planked it, and simply planked over the jangly front edge. It looks great from the top.

But yesterday I realized I need to plank the front edge of the platform, too. The back side of the platform rests on a cement wall, and the front edge rests on the roadbed, which is, unfortunately, an inch lower than the wall. I added a one inch strip to the bottom of the platform to keep things level. But the bare edge of the plywood, along with the bare wood of the strip, just didn’t look right.

Planking that front edge required me to reduce/eliminate the nasty hump I left when I cut the plywood the first time. If I had dealt with it when I had the Hitachi on it there would not have been a problem, but I rushed it.

Now, because the top was planked, there was no chance to use the Hitachi without tearing everything up. I tried sanding the hump, but that was slow and terribly ineffective. I eventually put a grinder bit in my knockoff Dremel tool and ground it out. It took about an hour to correct a mistake that, if I’d done it right the first time, would have taken three minutes to fix.

The front edge of my platform is a little wiggly…I think the work crew that built it simply had too much potato vodka the night before, as it looks straight to them…thanks to my work with the knockoff Dremel tool, but looks far better than the ridiculously rough outcropping I’d left with my first cut.

The lesson? You can be creative and artistic, and SMART, if you plan ahead and envision the next step to the one you’re doing. Spontaneity has its place, but not in the scale engineering world!

There’s an old story about the farmer who goes to change the oil in his tractor, but finds that the latch is broken on the barn door. He sets his coffee cup on the work bench and reaches for the screwdriver to fix the latch but knocks over the tin can full of screws. While he’s down there on the floor picking up the screws he finds the nut that popped off the lawnmower handle. He goes to get a wrench to replace the nut but discovers that his wrenches are all mixed up, metric and SAE, and sorts them out. He gets the nut back on the lawnmower handle but sees that there’s a hole in the chicken wire fence. He searches for and finds the baling wire to fix the fence but can’t find his leather gloves. Remembering that he left them outside the chicken coop because he got interrupted in repairing that hole in the roof he goes to find the plywood to finish that job. That’s when his wife calls him for dinner. At the end of the day, the tractor’s oil is unchanged and he can’t remember where he left his coffee cup.

That’s how working on this railroad is. You could make the argument that, if Garden Railroading is Real Railroading, annoyances that intrude on real life would likewise intrude on the rail life, and, by gum, they do!

As you’ll recall, Wyatt was supposed to show up on Sunday, but it turns out I misunderstood the plans and he’s showing up this Thursday. I “shirt-sleeve” engineered a cool pair of station buildings to dress up the railway and draw his attention away from the fact that the railway isn’t fully functional as promised. “If you can’t blind ‘em with your brilliance…” I parked the two half-buildings (cut from a single LGB/Pola railway station) on a sheet of plywood. But the plywood is ugly, out of scale, and just plain rife with splinters for Wyatt’s four-year-old fingers. Okay, so I figured I’d use simple popsicle sticks to plank it. But I ran out of trimmed popsicle sticks yesterday. Man, this thing just keeps getting farther and farther afield!

The nice thing about using popsicle sticks is that they are cheap and scale in appearance. The bad thing is that they have rounded ends, which means you’ll have to trim them in order to plank with them. They’re only six mm wide, and lightly waxed, and slippery as the devil. I did some simple math and figured I’d need just under 200 of them to complete the station platform. I’d already installed 82 of them, so I needed another 120. A hundred and twenty coffee stir-sticks? Oh my.

I found it easier to cut that rounded end off of them en masse, rather than one at a time. You can do it single-fashion-wise with a pair of wire cutters, but your consistency goes way, way down. Instead, I chose to stack up a bunch of them and cut them with my knock-off Dremel tool. However, stacking waxed 6mm sticks is easier than it sounds. Remember Mork & Mindy? There was an old lady who called Mindy’s father a “BB stacker”. You’ll feel just like him when you try to stack up these 6mm sticks.

I invented this interesting jig to help with the task. I call it the Ukrainian Stick Stacker, because the station will be, uh stationed, in my Ukrainian Section. You can see the structure in the picture; a back leg, a wide board with a shelf that sits at an angle against the leg, and a weight to hold down the sticks. Simple to build, it performed remarkably well. I taped a piece of masking tape sticky side up to the bottom stick on the stack. Then, once I’d stacked up my 120 pieces I compressed them and packaged them with the tape. No, I didn’t count them as I went; it turns out that each stick is five sticks wide. Once I’d gotten them compressed and taped I simply turned a pair of sticks on their sides and counted by fives up the stack. I hit the right number quite by luck!

Well, most of the station platform is planked with these little fellas, absolutely glued down with a healthy dose of Amazing E-6000 Industrial Strength adhesive. The half I’d done last night was rock hard this morning, so I am not fearful that today’s work won’t form a good, solid bond.

I hope the bond is strong enough to withstand what comes next: a bath in Thompson’s Water Seal. As the railway is out there in the elements, you’ve got to, got to, got to protect the wood from all those things that damage wood.

Tomorrow I’ll finish the last of the planking, and Thursday I’ll seal the crackers out of it. AFTER young Mr. Wyatt shows up, of course!

You saw that bundle of popsicle sticks I put together yesterday! It was huge! But it wasn’t enough.

The platform on the Ukraine station is far larger than I had anticipated, and will take many more wee little coffee stir-sticks than I had thought!

The project, as you’ll recall, is a continuation of the Distract Wyatt From the Short Running Train Subterfuge I concocted the other day. As the LGB 0-4-0 doesn’t go very far thanks to the condition of the turnout wiring, I decided to dazzle him with a very cool railroad station: my old LGB/Pola building hacked in half. The project has been made doubly difficult by the arrival of Polly Pockets, sponsored by my seven-year-old daughter, and all her assorted pieces of furniture. While it’s a delight to share this project with her (my daughter, not Polly Pockets), I can’t move any part of the structure without a tumbledown of small parts and a pained “Daaaaaadddy!”

The current part of the project is to conceal the hideous nature of the plywood base of the building by planking it over with coffee stir-sticks. I planned to cut the rounded ends off of what I thought was an appropriate number of sticks using a cool invention I read about in Tips and Tricks for Your Garden Railway I (it’s a booklet put out by Kalmbach Publishing that comes with your subscription to Garden Railways Magazine):

You take your super cheap hacksaw blade, glue a couple of pieces of thin scrap wood (I used craft sticks) over either side of one half of the blade, then wrap the sticks in masking tape. The result is a terribly inexpensive, very versatile hacksaw. When the blade goes dull, or when you, like me, push it too hard and break the blade, it’s a painless toss-out of the old one and three minutes until you’ve made a replacement…that’s pretty cool! Plus, as the old blade is steel and it’s encased in a wood and paper handle, it’s a biodegradable toss-out, too!

Actually, though, it didn’t work this time: too slow. I screwed a cutting blade into my fake Dremel tool and tried that. Although noisy, dusty, and still slow, it did the job. I had exactly half the number of five inch sticks that I needed!

The installation of my mini-planks down the length of the platform was time consuming but surprisingly rewarding. I left the station buildings on the platform for the first row of planks (to my daughter’s dismay) to ensure that they neither interfered with the building’s placement nor left a nasty gap at the edge. Nothing makes a model building look more fake than a big gap between it and the ground…how many real houses have you seen with a big crack at the edge of the grass!

For the first row of planking, I spread a thick coat of Amazing E-6000 Industrial Strength adhesive on the underside of the planks and stuck ‘em down, one at a time. I pressed each plank down firmly for 45 seconds to give the glue some time to hold it. I found that it holds better if you give it fifteen or so seconds to cure before you stick the plank on. The Amazing E-6000, made by Eclectic Products, Inc, truly is amazing stuff. It dries waterproof (since it’s made with perchloroethylene), and sets up very fast. After that first row, I found it easier to smear the adhesive to the plywood instead.

My older daughter watched the process for a little bit.

“You realize, of course, that you could do three planks at a time,” she said.

Well, I hadn’t, but couldn’t admit that, and so replied “I was thinking the same thing…”
The work went faster after that. Ahem.

To my younger daughter’s delight (or should I say to Polly Pocket’s delight?) I was able to remove the station building from the platform while I continued with the planking. She was then able to move her ten gazillion little plastic pieces into the buildings.

A couple of my planks were warped, and wanted to sit down on the deck like rocking chair rails. I tapped a ½-inch nail into each end and they snuggled right down. As I had feared, however, the cheap wood split under the first nail. I drilled pilot holes, and all was well. My original plan called for nailing each plank, but the nail head is too large…about the size of a scale fifty cent piece…to look right. I’ll rely on the glue.

Once we’ve got the proper number of planks and they’re all glued down, I’ll bathe the entire structure in Thompson’s Water Seal to protect it from the elements.

I didn’t really pitch my book today, it just sounded better than what I actually did with it which is to register it with the Writer’s Guild of America, West, down in Los Angeles. It took an hour and a half drive to perform a three minute function. But now it’s done, and soon you’ll see my book at your local bookstore. Maybe!

Wyatt is coming on Thursday…three days to prep the rails and finish the station platform. AHHHH! The PRESSURE!!!

What happens when you clean up the railway for the exhibition day, you make the lemonade, pour the chips, scrub those tracks until they shine , WD40 all your rolling stock axles, and sweep your track bed so that there isn’t the possibility of the hint of a misplaced grain of sand? Of course, your guest of honor is a no-show.

Turns out Mr. Wyatt was on vacation last week, I’m assuming it was with his family as he’s only four years old, and is making his return trip today. We’ve been watching his dog while he’s been gone, and I distinctly remember his mother saying “we’ll see you Sunday” as they drove off, the little yapper living up to her reputation…the dog, not the mother.

In part I’m disappointed, as I’ve made the lemonade and poured the chips. In truth, the railway looks better than it has at any time in the last ten years, and it almost works. That’s a bonus, isn’t it? So, the day isn’t a loss.

In addition, I had to make some rather robust decisions on the rush to Wyatt Day – decisions that determine the direction and structure of the railway for many moons to come. That’s a good thing, because I tend to procrastinate…actually, I’ve been putting off procrastination for a while!

So, life goes on. Wyatt and his mom will be around tomorrow to pick up the yapper, but I won’t be here, as I’ll be in Los Angeles hawking my novel. But as he wanders the quiet wonderland of a railway without an engineer, I’m hoping Wyatt’s imagination will do the work of the railway for him. Possibly better than running trains could!

Deciding not to let the day go to waste, I opted to work on the LGB/Pola station again. My seven year old daughter has “decorated” the two structures, agreeing to finally let me turn the buildings back to their proper alignment so that the trains can run. Once you cut the building in half down the roof ridgeline, you get two equal sized buildings with no back wall…a natural beacon for young kids to come and “decorate” with their action figures. My little girl was delighted!

I mounted the structures on pins stuck through a plywood base, which forms the foundation for a station platform. But it’s plywood, which looks like, well, plywood. The kindest thing you can say about it is that it’s grossly out of scale.

Enter popsicle sticks, the wonder building material. I used coffee stir sticks, as they work up to a nice looking planking surface for the platform. Stacking them on a piece of masking tape stretched out on my workbench, I built a hefty brick of them.

The brick is taped firmly together so that I can cut the rounded ends off of all of the sticks at once. It’s much easier to cut a solid unit like that than trying to hold a stack by hand. And cutting them one at a time? Forget it!

Tomorrow, once I’ve finished hawking my book, I’ll get down to hacking the heck out of them. My plan is to glue and nail the sticks to the plywood. These guys are pretty flimsy, and I worry about their ability to fight warping. I’ll smear Plumber’s GOOP, which is strong, clear, and waterproof, on the stick, position it on the plywood base, then drive a ½ inch spike through either end. I may drill a pilot hole first, as these sticks tend to split.

It’s a funny thing about cheap materials: they cost you very little in cash, but suck up that other precious resource, time, in working with them. It’s a trade-off, there’s no doubt. But when the dimes are few and far between, and time is the only commodity on hand, you do what you can. That’s the reality of my situation, and, well, Garden Railroading is Real Railroading!

As you’ll recall, I cut my LGB/Pola in half along the roof’s ridgeline in order to make two half buildings out of it.

My plan is both devious and simple at the same time. As we’ve opted for the track-powered LGB locomotive (see Electrification Consideration for the juicy details), my presentation on the Wyatt Day Exhibition will be rather short. To fill the potential interest gap in the four-year-old Wyatt’s itenerary, I’ve opted to include some “play value” scenery. If you can’t blind ‘em with your brilliance, dazzle ‘em with your BS!

Now, my seven-year-old daughter has been a silent witness to this subtle subterfuge, not knowing that I am pulling the old switcheroo on the little brother of one of her best friends. She has, in fact, watched the architectural surgery with both interest and enthusiasm.

That was all yesterday. Today I knew I had to clean up the piece of plywood I threw under the two halfway houses to keep them stable. Indeed. This morning I found my two story structure destroyed, having been dashed to the ground by what must have been a strong gust of wind (perhaps of the canine variety).

My littlest girl watched in anticipation as I reassembled my shattered domiciles. By the way, I tried out the look of a three story station: it’s too much, looking overwhelmingly big-bad idea. She kept asking me when she could decorate. By decorate, I thought she meant painting the buildings. I have to tell you, never hire a seven-year-old to paint your house, even in 1/18th scale.

“When I’ve got the second floor done,” I kept telling her.

Cutting a piece of plywood to serve as the second floor was surprisingly difficult. Perhaps my motto Measure Once, Cut Twice doesn’t serve me well. I eventually cut three second floors, although I only needed one. But I was able to use the other two second floors as first floors, and my little cutting adventure shall remain our little secret. I meant to do that!

I drilled a hole in the plywood base through which I stuck a two-inch long brass screw. I fixed the screw to the plywood by using a nut, countersunk into the wood so as not to rise above it. Then I drilled a hole in the bottom of the corresponding wall on the structure. The building slips down over the screw, making it virtually windproof. I installed another such assembly on other end wall…the building is removable but very stable. I did the same thing for the smaller structure.

Finally, my very patient little girl was able to decorate. Out came the Disney Princesses and the Polly Pockets figures, along with all their various pieces of electric pink plastic furniture. To my deep and immediately relief, she had in mind “interior decorating”…”you know,” she said, “with furniture and stuff!” Not a paint brush in sight.

It turns out I was correct about that play value thing. I chopped up another house…a 1/18th scale shattered farm house from a line of military figures that my stepson gave it to me some years ago, and I haven’t found a use for it until today. Cutting off the “shattered” pieces and rearranging them makes for a complete, albeit somewhat small, non-shattered structure. In this case, I only had enough material to make two complete walls, so I placed the building in a corner.

So, you see, it’s important to have little eyes look upon your empire. They give you insight, help refresh your vision, and remind you of what is important. Most of all, though, they can help you decorate!

I had a good idea today…now don’t go calling CNN, I have lots of them!…while thinking about Sunday’s Wyatt Day Extravaganza. I was sitting on the beach, ah the life of the idle broke, thinking about today’s post, when I remembered my brother’s layout in the attic.

It was always hot up there, even with the window open, and it always smelled like ozone. When I was a little kid my brother had this really cool HO model railroad layout with pre-printed streets and everything. I remember a white farm house and an orange-roofed Howard Johnson’s…back before they were HoJo’s. What I remembered most is that white Cadillac ambulance, and how I loved to drive that thing up and down the pre-printed streets. Trains? Who cares? It was the cool little cars and the little town.

Back here in the 21st Century, I have deucedly few buildings. But I do have a two story LGB/Pola railroad station. It’s made from very heavy styrene, and the copyright inside the roof panel is from 1986. The spiders love that place!

So, how to make more buildings? Well, cut the thing in half, of course! I have a rather narrow band of landscapable ground to the west of the main line. It’s about a foot deep at its widest. The full depth of the station is ten inches, not counting the one inch roof overhang, which brings it out to the full foot. Cut that baby in half, though, and now you have two identical six inch deep buildings!

Cutting that thick styrene was a real challenge. That stuff is thick! First I tried a little hacksaw. Uh huh. NEXT! The keyhole saw didn’t make a dent. The metal cutting bit in the knock-off Dremel tool scored it, but only with repeated urgings. Now, that nice Hitachi Circular Saw, now you’re talking! It was a horrifying sight, all that plastic sawdust rising through the air. But, man, did it do the job!

I kept the front and back walls in their original sizes, but cut through the end walls, doing my best to cleave them precisely in half. You know my motto: measure once, cut twice. I will admit that the predicted results resulted – one could say that the two halves of the building are not exactly identical!

One of the structures is two floors, while the other is just single story. I decided that would spice things up a bit, and add a degree of visual interest to the Ukraine Section, which is, for the moment, their new home. In thinking about it, I could actually add a THIRD story to the two floor guy. I’ll think on that.

Because I am cheap, I used PVC Cement to join the building pieces together. It attacks styrene like nobody’s business and dries strong and hard and fast, and was on hand because I’d used it on some plumbing work I did. The result? A leak…but on the railway I achieved, as predicted, two half-way houses!

Now, my thinking is that young Mr. Wyatt, the four-year-old stir causer here on the Paris-to-Peking Railway, will find great interest in goofing around with my half buildings. My seven-year-old daughter has already requested that I fit an actual second floor in the larger structure so that she might be able to decorate.

You see? For us grown-up types it’s the rolling stock and the engineering and the romance of riding the rails to places unknown. But for little kids it’s all about “can I fit my guys in there” and playing with characters. I’m thinking Wyatt will be interested in the trains, but fascinated by the half-way house.

I’ll let you know!

Just for the record, I did say that the popsicle stick/craft stick retaining wall was temporary, correct? Correct! I had, upon its installation, anticipated a quick and thorough landscaping of the China Section mountain. I expected the retaining wall to remain a week perhaps, certainly no more.

Sir Topham Hat would be angry with me, I’m afraid. “You are causing confusion and delay!”

The landscaping is not done. It’s been three weeks since the addition of the retaining wall, and the landscaping crew has yet to lift a finger. I don’t mind saying it’s a little frustrating.

So, I decided it’s time to reconsider that flimsy wall. I really like the look of it, very scale. But it failed to withstand the almost daily assaults of the barking hole diggers. There have been several disastrous breakthroughs, causing some rather horrendous train wrecks.

Here’s the funny story for the day: I took out my trusty digital camera to document the condition of the existing fence and show the installation of the new one. I had Harry Hardworker pose in front of the old fence.

No sooner did I have Harry in place than our newest canine addition, young Zorro, burst over the mountain, scattering dirt absolutely everywhere! Zorro actually kicked the camera just a half second after I got my shot, and I quickly fired again to capture the event! Stupid dog!

The new wall is a trifle more robust, being made up of actual log sections. Now, again, I point out that this is temporary! Eventually, and I mean that in the “within the next month or so” sort of way, I’ll have plants across the top of the mountain and the logs will be no more.

You don’t want to use untreated or raw wood along the garden railway if you can avoid it. As Garden Railroading is Real Railroading, the rot and insects that attack wood in the real world won’t recognize that your real wood is to scale. Hey! I spent three hours carving that! So you have to make absolutely sure you treat your wood with as tough a solution as you can get. I soaked my craft sticks in Thompson’s Water Seal before I installed them, and after three weeks in the ground they still look as good as new.

All that being said, I didn’t treat the logs with anything. You see, I truly believe that the landscaping will be installed within the next two months, and I know the logs won’t rot in that brief amount of time. And, when the plants go in, the logs come out! Hernan Cortez burned his ships so that he would have to conquer the new world…I will have to replace these logs pretty soon!

I’m looking very forward to running the LGB 0-4-0 through the China Section (as far as it gets, anyway) as soon as the new logs are completely installed. It’s odd to travel the tracks with a brush and garden scoop to pull out the loose dirt and, well, the uh, excrement, before running the trains…I never had to do that in the basement!

The other thing about running these rails: I live three miles from the ocean, and it’s foggy almost every night during the spring and early summer. I’m getting used to polishing the rails with a sharpening stone before powering up.

Man! I really liked that battery locomotive…

I called a meeting of the board of the Paris to Peking Railway company this afternoon. I’d have held the meeting in Paris, but, frankly, I haven’t cleared the weeds yet!

The subject on the table was electrification, and the meeting was serious.

Here is the issue: Sunday is the now world-famous Wyatt Day Exhibition on the P-to-P Railway. This young chappy will show up all doe-eyed and innocent, expecting an exciting display of garden railroading fireworks.

“Gentlemen,” I asked, “what have we got?” What I got was a room full of blank looks.

The chief engineer stands up and gives me this report: “The P-to-P Railway has severe operational issues that hinge on the choice of motive power.” He then details the problems with a nifty handout.

Track-Supplied Electrical Power: Turnout issues still not resolved in the China Section, resulting in only partial operation in that area. Further, hidden wiring issues in the Parisian Turnout cause the LGB 0-4-0 to spin its wheels backwards once it clears the turnout to enter the Parisian Section. Obviously there are wiring connections there I have yet to discover! The net result is a nifty looking train that will run the lenght of the main line, about 60% of the China Section, and none of the Parisian Section. As it cannot complete a loop, the train must run the main line engine pushing in 50% of its trips.

Battery Supplied Power: The New Bright locomotive has the ability to complete the China Loop and travel to the very end of the rails in the Parisian Loop. But the design characteristics of the locomotive make it too light to handle the rail “irregularities” in the China Loop. The Bachmann conversion is not complete, and requires some serious intellectual overhauls before it can enter service. The Net Result: The battery-powered 2-6-0 can cover 100% of the China Loop in theory, the entire main line, and all available rail in the Parisian Loop. But weight issues will mean frequent derailments and much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

So, which should we choose? The dirctors are all leaning toward the battery option, as it’s a technology with which they are familiar.

The Chief Engineer slams his fist on the table, upsetting his ashtray and sending his lit cigar skittering across the table and into the lap of Wilmer Fitzgibbons, milque-toast philanthropist and primary financial supporter of the project. Fitzgibbons fixes me with an uncharacteristically nasty glare – it’s clear the pastrami sandwich luncheon wasn’t to his liking.

“It’s transformer supplied DC power you want,” he thunders. “You can manage your locomotive wherever it happens to be-you can’t do that with your simple on-off battery power! You have finesse, control, and ease of operation: the 0-4-0 is plenty heavy enough to handle the China Loop! Don’t be a bunch of babies holding on to outdated technologies out of fear! Embrace change, you bunch of lily-livered cowards!”

The board of directors cowers under this assault.

It is actually the PR guy who breaks the stalemate. He stands up and speaks softly.

“The four-year-old Wyatt is a fan of Thomas the Tank Engine.”

Well, he’s right, of course. The boy was stone cold on the New Bright, with its D&RGW profile. But he was dying to see the 0-4-0T go, because it’s a European profile tank engine.

That cuts it, I’m afraid. Unless I can lay my hands on a European tank engine that’s battery powered and carries the batteries in boiler, we’re going electrical on Sunday.

I adjourn the meeting of the board of directors with a hearty thanks and handshakes all around.
Mr. Fitzgibbons gives me the now cold cigar and admonishes me to watch for a bill from his cleaners and the hotel maitre’d has his hand out. I put the cigar butt in it and tell him “want a tip? Don’t smoke.”

Hey, times are tough for everyone!

The number one rule of playing chess is this: when in doubt move a pawn. In other words, when you don’t know what to do, do something else.

Such is the case on the Paris to Peking Railway. As you know we’ve spent a lot of time reworking that China Section. We went from decimated rails to new mountains to restored rails to out and out electrification. That’s a lot of stuff!

Frankly, and just between you and me, I’m stumped by that short in the tracks (do me a favor and don’t tell anyone, okay?). I know it’s the turnout wiring…the fellow who built this thing had it niftily wired so that the main line would automatically reverse polarity as the train passed through the turnout. But the wiring has been mangled by dogs and me (yes, I’ll fess up to it – hey, I was all for battery operation and there all these wires poking out of the ground!), but mostly the dogs. Today I found a long oblong box with the name Lehmann on it, and a terribly corroded motor inside connected to a rack and pinion assembly. Now, I didn’t do that. Anyway, I’m stymied.

The bonehead PR guy on the P-to-P Ry (that would be me, too) promised an exhibition for four-year-old Wyatt on Sunday, and heads will roll if we’re not ready.

So, I decided to move north, up the line towards Paris. We had already cleared the Kazakhstani bridge. Now we had to clear and clean the rails in the Ukraine and work through the turnout into Paris. I hit two obstacles on my way to Paris, and they both occurred in the Ukraine section.

The first obstacle was the cypress tree which the original builder planted along the side of the concrete roadbed. Oh, sure, I’m sure it looked “just like a pine tree” back when it was young. And I’m certain his wife planned to trim it like a bonsai tree. Well, they sold the house, and now the darned thing is five feet tall. Some deft work with the hatchet and the four pound Engineer’s Hammer, or Trackside Tree Modification Tool, did the trick rather well.

It’s funny, but now that we’ve gone electric, I’m running the crackers out of the little LGB 0-4-0 given to me by my brother in law in Pennsylvania. It’s a little tank, both literally and figuratively. But there are two passenger cars that came with it, and they are like the nasty wagons in Thomas the Tank Engine. They just want to fly off the track. If it’s not a clearance problem it’s a gauge issue. If it’s not a gauge issue it’s a stick between the rails, or something stuck alongside the track that catches on the steps, or some other unseen thing that knocks them off the track. I couldn’t believe how smoothly the entire train ran from the Paris turnout all the way up the backside of the hill in China, and at full throttle. But on the return trip, BAM, the blue car flew off the rails, and would not make it no matter what through the Ukraine section.

Close inspection revealed a dip in one rail, with a rather nasty kink in the rail itself. It looks like I may have inadvertently dropped my four pound Trackside Tree Modification Tool at some earlier point and dinged the rail.

The engineering department got right on it, using a Track Height Adjustment Tool (or a screwdriver to us laymen) to raise the rail up to the right height. Zoom, as good as new.

Paris, my friend, is a mess. I keep referencing that History Channel show Life After People because every three feet of this abused railway looks like it ought to be featured on that show! But the worst, the very worst, is what will someday be Paris. Missing track, plants, weeds, bees, ants, you name it, picture it at its worst and have a nightmare about it, and my Paris section is STILL worse!

So, what have we accomplished? Well, I’d say safely 80% of the line between Paris and China is operable. You can travel south from the Paris Turnout, which has been cleared, all the way through the China Turnout, east around the bend, and within three feet of the China Turnout to begin the return trip. Then you must back up all the way to Paris…how humiliating!

I’ve got to figure out how this guy wired the track and fix it, or replicate it, or bypass it, or something, in the next day or so…before the return of Wyatt!