Poolside Rails

Yes, we have a new format here at Poolside Rails. Yes, it’s taken us a long time to get our act together in reworking the website. Yes, it’s taken me a long time to get another post together. Quit your whining, rub some dirt in it and get back in the game!

Actually, I do apologize for the delay in getting you an update on what’s going on in the garden: trying to get a book published is a major, major time taker!

So, here we are, revisiting the locomotive yet again. I tried to drill out those windows, I swear I did. I got the first window pretty oval-shaped. The problem was that second one, behind the first. I used the same template and everything. But cutting through that plastic was tough, and, as the saying goes, there’s many a slip between the cup and the Lipton’s.

After many efforts and much cutting, I invited my sister the artist to see if she could draft out rounder, better looking ovals, as she was sitting there drinking my tea and doing nothing. She sketched pretty cool looking ovals, but they took up the whole side of the cab.

“You know,” my brother in law said, “if you make big windows like that the engineer’s going to hanging out in the breeze. You really should have smaller windows, maybe three of them, only in the upper half of the cab.”

Three Window Option: Rolling Pawnshop

Well, I’m an open-minded guy. And, as you know, I’m a wizard with those popsicle sticks. My plan was to panel the upper half of the window area with those coffee stir sticks and then cut three windows in that that. But I have to be honest.  Take a look at that “artist’s rendering.”  Yes, it looks early industrial-revolution, but it looks pawn-shoppish to me. Plus, I had so much trouble cutting just two windows, I can’t imagine tackling six! So, three windows are out.
My little girl is seven years old and a kick in the pants. She likes to wake daddy up early on Saturday morning and watch cartoons in bed between him and mommy. Mommy likes to read while daddy likes to snore through the cartoons.

But last Saturday my wife got sick of the commercial drivel (my favorite part, of course) and switched over to PBS just in time for Thomas the Tank Engine. Well, I will always cease snoring for Thomas.

Henry, the big, powerful engine, has tanks on either side of the boiler but rectangular windows on the side of the cab. Thomas has no side windows whatsoever, sporting instead a tall opening between the cab and an aft mounted coal bunker. None of the other locomotives, James, Emily, Scarlowee, had any windows at all. Toby, let’s just say he’s square.

So, enter Plan III, the No-Window Not-So-Big Hauler. I like it. I really do. I can cut that cool curve, I can protect the driver, and I can get it DONE!

Groovy Schwoopie Cab - easier to cut!

There’s a bit of a Catch-22 relative to the tanks to be mounted onto the boiler. I like the idea of using a massive hunka hunka wooden wood to bulk out the tank…I’ll sheath it in sheet plastic to give it a detailable surface. But the upper locomotive is held to the chassis by just two screws, and they are dead center above the two remaining drivers.  Fitting the tanks will occlude the screws, denying access to the engineering staff planning to take the thing apart.

Wireframe shape of the tank

I imagine I’ll have to drill a tunnel in the bottom of the tank to provide access to the screw.  It will just have to show up out there in the open air, for all to see…this cool looking tank with a square little notch out of the bottom of it. Have to work on that one.

Next on the agenda for the locomotive, once the new Windowless Version is complete and the tanks are fitted, is to come up with a remote control mechanism.  I read in the Tips and Tricks for Garden Railways flyer from Kalmbach that cheapo remote contol cars can provide excellent electronics…and you get to choose between 29 and 47 megahertz!

Look, ma, TWO locomotives!

Plan for China House

Well, exciting times have come to the Paris to Peking Railway, haven’t they? Just look at our new surroundings.
Housekeeping first: our new surroundings will result in better information for you. You’ll be seeing more and better links coming in the very near future.
We have new staff to help us accomplish this bold new look…my brother the graphic genius has officially signed onto the railway as the Marketing Director. He is most welcomed!

Important Update: I talked to young China’s mom this morning. China’s vision in the damaged eye has been making a steady recovery…first lights and darks, then shadows, then blurry colors…until today. China told her it was no better today than yesterday. Still, it’s a rapid recovery from a disastrous injury. I thank you, good reader, for your prayers, your concerns, and your well wishes. Her mom asked that I thank you, too.

Okay, back to work. In my panic to use up the remaining plywood before the arrival of the dreaded dumpster I designed this very cool looking China House.

A quick aside: when I tore the roof off of my patio I had nowhere to park the debris. Mind you, this was a big job…20×30 feet of tarpaper-covered plywood laid over 2×6 supports. The guy who put that thing up must have had the hots for the nails saleslady…that sucker had a nail blasted in there just about every half inch. We’d ordered a dumpster to haul the junk away, but my went crazy with the chainsaw and trimmed the trees in front, filling the dumpster twice. Twice!

Anyway, I stacked all the junk on a corner of the patio, with the best sheets of plywood stacked vertically. Sunday I noticed there were nails pointing into the walkway…very much a hazard. I pulled one out with a hammer, and that one darn nail was supporting something else, and that slipped, and the whole pile of junk cascaded around me like Fibber McGee’s closet! You would have to be in the Navy to hear worse language!

So I’ve decided not to use the plywood anymore…bad memories. Instead, I bought this cool insulating foam from Lowe’s. At least I thought I did.

According to an article I read in Garden Railroader Magazine you can use insulating foam for structures…you have to coat it with something like stucco, but it’s supposed to hold up for decades.

Well, the foam I bought at $10 for a 4×8 sheet of 5/8 looks suspiciously like the foam my laptop came in. What gives? It has a very interesting thin sheet of plastic, kind of like a Mylar, on the faces, but once you cut it you get that grainy, crumbly snowfall of little pieces. Grrrrrr

I used the really sharp knife blade in my-friend-the-Leatherman. Most often it worked when I cut quickly, but the stryofoam bunched up underneath the Mylar sheet and made a mess. Grrrrrrr

To do this right we’ll have to invest in a hot knife, unless I can find a plan to build one on the…you know me…cheap. I’m excited to use it as a building material…just have to get used to its idiosyncrasies.

I’ll do that after I clean up the wreckage on the patio!

It's still styrofoam!

Ten bucks a sheet! Cheap!

Big things are happening here at the Paris to Peking Railway Company…so big I can only hint at things to come. This is, therefore, not a hint, but a status check.

First things first: China. As of Friday PM the little girl still has no sight in her right eye, but the doctors were confident that the retina was not detached. There is still severe hemorrhaging going on, and they are waiting for the blood to drain. China’s mom said to thank you for your prayers and that she will update us tomorrow.

Upcoming this week:
-New windows on the Not-So-Big Hauler revised yet again…you’re going to like it!
-China House finally designed and to be built out of, get this, Styrofoam…you’re going to like it!
-Telephone poles designed and ready to be built. It’s a cool design…you’re going to like it!
-Tanks for the tank engine custom fit…you’re going to, well, you get the idea!
-Planning for El Nino – yep, they’re saying it’s this year. I have a plan and…you’re going to hear about it!
-A new hosting platform, more features and cool stuff, just for you!

So, there’s an update, isn’t it? I think we can agree it’s not much of a post.
We took the seven year old daughter to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs yesterday. We’re of mixed opinion…I thought it was great, my wife thought it was awful, and it scared my little one. Boy…all that from one movie! My wife pointed out that there is only one character in the entire film that doesn’t have a deep psychological flaw, and he’s a monkey. She also pointed out that there is only one African-American in the film; the rough, nasty cop played by Mr. T. Yeah, I countered, but the dialog is snappy. My daughter thought it was too scary…you’ll see a review later this week.

But, hey, this is not a post, so no more writing! Changes in our hosting circumstances may interrupt our ability to post this week, but keep checking back, and stay tuned for a whole new look!

And thank you for staying with us! New Post Tomorrow

You saw in yesterday’s post that I’ve come up with a nice little set of landscaping plans for the China section.

That started me thinking about plans in general. I’m a fan of plans, really. A good plan is worth its weight in gold when it’s practicable…you can draw up the most exquisite plans in the world, but they are useless if they cannot be put into action.

What’s been drifting around in my head has been the plan for the control panel on the Paris to Peking Garden Railway (if you’re watching, you’ll notice I just squeezed in a key word, there). The design needs to be both complete and something I can build.

The panel will need to deal with track power, broken into zones, with the two turnouts, and with the structure and streetlight systems. For the sake of simplicity, I’ve decided to put all streetlights on one circuit and all structure lights on another. As you’ll recall, we’re stringing our wires overhead to the Nexus points (I think the plural is nexi, but that’s just too darned esoteric of a word!) in each section. Putting the two lighting systems on common circuits will mean only four wires on the poles…prototypical and easy to repair when The Wonder Dog strikes!

So, this is the plan for the panel. The transformer is fit into a recess on top of the panel for breathing space and ease of access.

Ah, access: the magic word for model railroaders the world over. How to provide access? In this case the question is where to provide it…where does the control panel go?

The main AC supply is in Paris (are you surprised?), which means the panel should go up there. Paris, city of lights even in 1910, will look just fine with wires traveling along some sort of bridge to get outside the rails. I’m sure this is how they do it in real life!

The panel will have its own little stand, independent of but wired to the railroad, and I’m thinking it will go right about where that big fern is now. The Maintenance Operations Manager and I have had a discussion about said fern, and all parties agree it is time to move.

I know what you’re thinking – what about the other side of the panel? Where’s the wiring diagram to make the switches work? Well, Slim, you got me there. I reckon to install the switches and then figure out how to wire ‘em – I’m not so good with thinking my way through wiring on paper. Just tellin’ you the truth, there…

The panel and its attendant stand can be built out of the junk plywo…I mean “extra” plywood I happen to have on hand as the mysterious dumpster has not yet arrived. Man! I’ve got to get working on that plywood…I have a gazillion things designed and that dumpster could show up any day!

*****

Now, I don’t normally do this, and I promise not to do it on anything except extremely important occasions, but this is one of those, so here goes:

You know how I was joking the other day about how the word “China” goes great in front of all kinds of things. I learned yesterday about an 11 year old girl named China. She’s the daughter of a friend at work. The daughter called her mom from school yesterday because she’d been hit in the face by a tennis ball. The mom, my friend, told China to wait the 25 minutes for her father to come and pick her up.

I asked my friend how China was today and she started to cry. China didn’t get hit by a tennis ball but by a tether ball intentionally whacked to hurt her. It hit her on the side of the head so hard it caused internal bleeding in her eye socket, and knocked the retina loose from her right eye. At this very moment she’s lost the sight in that eye, and the doctors don’t know if she’ll get it back.

I don’t know if you’re the religious sort, but, tonight, before you turn out the lights, could you please say a little prayer for China and her family? She’s just a kid, and I know she’s terribly scared. Your prayer would help. Thanks.

It’s no secret that I have a black thumb. I actually killed a geranium plant, and you’re not supposed to be able to kill those. In fact, it was the death of that fine looking geranium that got me banned from any manner of plant pruning here at the Turner house. My wife glares at me when I pick up the hedge clippers.

“Where are you going with those?”

“Just to trim some bushes…”

“Uh huh. Let me do that for you.”

That’s the reason I haven’t planted plants along the top of the China Mountain: clipper shock.

I was discussing the lack of plantage along the top of the hill with the Maintenance Operations Manager, or MOM, as my daughter calls her, just the other day. She suggested two things that I thought were terrific ideas.

The first was to draft up a landscaping plan to give her an idea of what to plant where. I drew my plan in MS Paint because I’m absolutely terrible at drawing curves in real life. Well, that and I’m lazy. The plan shows the shape of the China Loop with reasonable accuracy, and, when compared with the topography, should make it rather clear what to plant where.

I must point out that the word China goes really good in front of almost anything. You’ve got your China plates, of course, but here on the Paris to Peking Railway we have the China Section, the China House, the China Bridge, the Western China Turnout (I’m particularly fond of that one), the China Mountain, and the China Loop. West of the China Bridge is that much larger mountain which we shall call Magic Mountain just for giggles and grins. Anyway, things just sound more official and mysterious with the word China in front of them. I have yet to call myself China Bill, but I’m thinking about it!

Idea number two is rather novel, but it makes a lot of sense. As you know, Zorro the Wonder Dog (we wonder what he’s going to wreck next) is a major nuisance down there in the China Section (see what I mean about that China thing? Sounds cool, huh?). He’s not a digger, as I’d feared, but a jumper. His favorite place to jump is right up there to the top of the China Mountain. I had hoped that planting the Mountain would discourage him, but my wife doesn’t think so.

Her suggestion is to build a curving screen that is perhaps three feet high that fits around the outside brickwork of the China Loop. Such a screen will discourage Wonder Dog from jumping over it. He will, of course, find a way to scale Magic Mountain, but we can at least ease the pressure on the China Mountain.

My idea…I’m particularly brilliant at these things, you know…was to cut the screen in the shapes of trees. Painted a nice forest green, perhaps with detailing, the screen would provide a nice view break when seen from the railroad side, and give the shorter viewer the illusion of looking through a forest when seen from the outside. I drafted a very, very rough plan in MS Paint just to give you an idea of what we’re talking about. Pretty cool, huh? The screen will be movable to provide access to the railway, but will spend most of its days in place around the curve. I think it’s an excellent idea. And my rendering of it is, of course, brilliant.

So, what have we got? Well, now we have a landscaping plan. Maybe, with plan in hand, we’ll see some plants actually hit the ground this weekend. Maybe.

And, as the fabled dumpster has not yet arrived, I have a supply of plywood, although it’s naily, nasty stuff with a gazillion splinters. A quick cut with the jigsaw of death, a little sandpaper, a nice heavy coat of Rust-Oleum Forest Green, and, voila, an innovative Wonder-Dog-Blocker. Oh yeah, it has to be curved. Well, back to the drawing board!

Okay, I’ll admit it. The bridge looks stupid. Just for the record, my seven year old told me she thought it looked cool.

“Why in heaven’s name did you build it so big?” the CEO asks, coughing out a perfect smoke ring from his cigar.

“Ye dunna see its true size,” the Chief Engineer chuckles. “Once it’s buried it’ll seem right as rain!”

“Buried?” The gasps go ’round the room.

The Chief Engineer smiles smugly.

I had planned to dig the bridge into the ground from the outset – nothing looks more unrealistic than landscape features set on top of the landscape! Think about mobile homes you’ve seen…those can’t be real!

So last Saturday I was trying to watch cartoons with my little one when my wife announced she was ordering a dumpster to get rid of all the junk I’d pulled down when I tore the roof off of our patio. Junk?!? There’s some good stuff in there.

In all honesty, there’s very little good stuff in there, but to just throw it all away, willy nilly…that’s an odd phrase, isn’t it? Willy nilly. According to Merriam Webster’s it dates back to 1608, and is the contraction of either “will I nill I”, “will he nill he”, or “will ye nill ye”. Well, I for one am certainly glad we cleared that up!

I knew I had to design something fast that would use the one or two still good pieces of wood before the whole pile hit the dumpster, so I designed the bridge, trying my best to avoid doing it in a will he nill he fashion, using a ruler and everything! It turned out to be rather easy.

Translating that plan to the real world of crappy, nail studded plywood proved a little more challenging. Using the dimensions I’d documented in the plan, I drew the outline of one side of the bridge onto a rough, partially painted and splintery piece of plywood. That was the good piece!

I cut the shape out using a combination of my Hitachi circular saw and this really old Groves-Ashland jigsaw that belonged to my late father-in-law. It’s really cool, with a brushed metal body and everything. When it runs it smells like hot machine oil. Cool!

“Ye cut like an ape, y’idiot!” The Chief Engineer does not admire my wood-cutting skills.

Once I’d hacked one side profile out of the crummy plywood I searched and searched until I could find a good piece of plywood big enough to accept the traced outline of that first side. Instead of tracing it carefully I got lazy and raped the environment with my can of purple spray paint, spraying the cutout while it was lying on the new plywood piece. The result was a plywood-colored shadow of the bridge standing out of a cloud of purple.

Although it seemed like a good idea at the time, I subsequently found the contrast between the paint and the wood too low to see clearly when I was cutting with power tools. And I will tell you this: roller coasters have NOTHING on the scary thrill of running that forty-plus year old jigsaw through dusty, splintery, nail-laden junk plywood! Yeeeee-haw! I think I still have all my fingers!

Because I didn’t do a craftsmanlike job of cutting out the first side, and because I only had the purple haze outline as a guide to the second side, the resulting two sides just don’t match up very well.

But, there they are, held apart by a six inch piece of 2 x 2 on either side of the arch. It looks stupid, and it’s too tall. I will dig it into the hillside on either side of the roadbed, but I imagine I’ll cut it down a mite in the center.

“I should say so,” chuckles the CEO.

Everyone’s a critic.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking now that I’ve developed this passion for streetlights down there in the China Section. Actually I’ve been doing a lot of thinking in general. That’s what explains the burnt rubber smell around here.

I think, as I’ve been thinking so much of late, that we shall no longer refer to Zorro The Idiot as The Idiot, but as The Wonder Dog. I got a chance to spend some quality time with him this weekend, and I truly believe him to be a very, very smart little guy. We’ll be celebrating his first birthday at the beginning of October…we’ve only had him since early July. Yes, he chews everything…today I spotted him with an old army man I dug up in the yard, a plastic bottle cap he stole from someone, a shoe, a piece of wood, and a little chunk of feline fecal matter he lifted from the catbox. All that notwithstanding, he’s a good, good dog, and, if you watch him, you can see that he’s trying really, really hard to do the right thing. His little puppy programming just gets in his way. So, from here forward we shall refer to him as The Wonder Dog, as in I Wonder what he’ll destroy next?

Back to streetlights. Would it not be best to have the streetlights on their own circuit, separated from the other lights along the railway? I imagine all of the streetlights along the entire railway will be on one circuit, while…now, you see what I mean? The Wonder Dog just ran by with one of my wife’s slippers. This dog, huh? …while all of the structures will be on another. Although, in thinking about it, one could in fact wire separate districts for both streetlights and structure lights. Perhaps one could have the structure lights on in Paris but not in the Ukraine.

Wiring presents a particular challenge, now that we’ve decided to go overhead. I can’t see any way around running separate wires for each of the separate circuits, which means those trackside poles will be carrying a bit of weight. In Paris it’s not a problem because we’ll be able to wire from building to building, and a spider’s web of overhead wires would actually look authentic. But there will be fourteen wires on the pole leaving Paris…two for the Ukrainian streetlights, two for the Ukrainian structures, two for Kazakhstan, which has no structures planned but may have a couple of lights on the bridge, two for the Western China structures, two more for the Western China streetlights, and four more, two each for the Peking structures and streetlights. I’m not certain that’s going to work….if we wired each streetlight and structure to a common ground, that would eliminate six of the lines…that’s a little better! That’s going to take some sharp pencil work to get that one right.

I’ve been working on a preliminary plan for the control panel, too. It will have to be either portable or in a weatherproof box. The more the wiring develops the more I see the need to have the control hard-wired in place. Maybe we can fit it in a big Tupperware box of some sort.

OOPS! The Wonder Dog is chasing the cat! He’s smart, I tell you, he just has a lot to learn. I’m certain that cat’s going to teach him something here in a second! I better step in!

You know how I keep emphasizing that garden railroading is real railroading. Well, I realized today that we are at one of those junctures where we have to think real-world.

As you’ve seen, I’ve now become a maniac for streetlights – streetlights and house lights. I hit upon this groovy idea to install “power nexus” locations…”Power Nexus”: pretty good, huh?

For those of you who aren’t inside my head, here’s what I mean; wiring in parallel means you can connect light systems over vast distances by installing connection terminals at strategic locations. Those terminals serve as hubs that support a flock of local lights. We’re calling each hub a nexus. Does it make sense?

So, here’s my thought;

We start with the transformer stationed just north of Paris. Main AC feeds supply power to the Parisian Nexus, a pair of terminals to which all the lights of Paris are connected, and to which a pair of power leads are connected, too. These power leads travel south and into the Ukrainian station, where there are two more terminals. This is the Ukrainian Nexus, to which are attached the Ukrainian lights and the power leads that pass through Kazakhstan and into the China House in western China. Here we find the Western China Nexus that supplies power to the China House, the Hilltop Castle and the China Bridge. In fact the power leads coming out of the Western China Nexus travel underneath the China Bridge and on to the Peking Station Nexus, last stop for the electrical system. This last nexus supplies electricity for the station, the China Trestle, and the streetlights along Chung King Road.

What do you think? Pretty comprehensive, huh? Just like that I’ve got a power grid designed along with a name for that stupid concrete road I poured a month ago. Chunk King Road is the name of the main drag in the Chinatown in Los Angeles. Just look at the stuff you learn by reading my posts!

Here’s where the garden railroad and real life converge: how do we transmit the power from one nexus to the next? In my head I pictured cheap extension cords from the 99 Cent Store, and that will work well from the Ukrainian Section through Kazakhstan and into Western China.

But my railroad features those “ornate” stone columns. Getting a power line past them looks bad no matter how you slice it.

Here are the three options:
1. Extension cords hidden in the scenery. This is the easiest way to do it, but has the burden of being ugly where exposed.
2. Extension cords buried wherever possible. This is a useful option except when The Idiot attacks and digs ‘em up. Plus, an Edison guy told me that underground cable it twice as deadly for line crews as overhead lines. Not that it’s a concern in the backyard, but still…
3. This is my favorite: overhead power lines, just like real life. I’m not sure what gauge of wire to use, and I’m certain The Idiot will blow ‘em up, but how cool would it be to have real working power lines? Man, you could spot a problem in the blink of an eye! You want to drop a feed to a new building? Piece of cake! This is the most difficult, and most time consuming, but also the most realistic.

What do you think? It would be a pain in the keester to build all those power poles…how far apart do you space ‘em? But wouldn’t that be way cool?

What would they do in real life? Well, they wouldn’t string mondo cables along the ground and hide ‘em in the bushes, I can tell you that!

Before we go any further, there’s something we need to clear up. You may well ask why every posting has a title like “bumpity bump on the Garden Railway”. If this annoys you I am pleased, because it means you are a regular reader. If you never noticed it before, well, read more often! I use the term Garden Railway in my titles for search engine purposes. I hope some person out there Googles Garden Railway and is brought to these illustrious pages. Perhaps they’ll click on an advertiser, and we’ll all go home happy. Of course, they’ll have to click on the advertiser about eight million times and buy something…THEN we can go home happy!

I hinted earlier this week that a secret clue about an upcoming posting was in one of the pictures. If you figured out what it was…CONGRATULATIONS! If you didn’t, well, read more often! But that’s in a moment. First this wacky but true story:

Last year I was in a customer’s account in Bakersfield, CA…literally a hundred miles from my home. That was an awful job, and I really hated it. It was hot in Bakersfield that day, and I was called upon to fix a customer’s mailing machine. Now, you know me. I’m an artist, not a mechanic. But I had been forced into the role of mechanic for that particular circumstance. The customer’s mailing machine, a critical piece of office equipment, was truly broken. I took it all apart using my favorite tool, a Leatherman Juice C2 given to me by my family for father’s day. The customer got nasty as the day wore on, especially when I eventually determined that the problem was with the machine’s software, not hardware…as I say, I’m an artist, not a mechanic. They were about 10% overjoyed to hear that I had wasted their afternoon for nothing, and the other 90% was rapidly being expressed. I dashed out of the office with only my skin intact. I got all the way back to Ventura before I realized I didn’t have my Leatherman. It was nowhere to be found, and I figured sadly that I must have left it in the nasty customer’s shop. And boy, they were nasty, too. I couldn’t call them, because, well, because they were nasty. I got suckered into going back the next week to upload the software in their mailing machine. Of course the Leatherman, a nice $50 tool, was nowhere to be found.

Last week my wife expressed a concern that the brake warning panel light kept coming on in the Windstar. It happened at odd times, like going around curves. I drove it yesterday and found the same thing. The parking brake handle seemed oddly floppy, like it wasn’t seating properly. I stuck my fingers under the thick rubber boot at the base of the handle, and what do you think I found? A whole year it sat down there, bouncing around inside that rubber boot. How the Leatherman got under the boot I’ll never know, but I’m awfully glad to have the tool back!

Anyway, this weekend my daughter and I worked hard on amending the soil for the landscaping that I swear will one day crown the top of the hill in the China Section. At the same time we cleaned the dirt off the rails and built the now infamous rock retaining wall. In so doing we uncovered the remains of popsicle stick retaining wall that was mowed down by the Idiot. In placing the second streetlight on the Ukrainian Station I discovered that it shed light on a terribly out of scale flagstone column, part of the ornate landscaping effort of the home’s original owner. I use the term ornate lightly.

BING, a little light came on. What was needed was a simple fence to grace the end of the station platform and hide the “ornate” column. And what better material to use than the water-proofed wood sticks?

The frame for the fence is a simple square made from 1/4×1/4 square strips. The slats on the fence are not really popsicle sticks, but craft sticks…listen, buddy, in this business it pays to know your sticks!…glued against the frame with Plumber’s Goop. I blasted the thing with a very light coating of Rust-Oleum white…you’ll notice that the front side is painted better than the back side, just like real life and almost on purpose.

I realize in looking at the pictures that the fence’s white finish doesn’t work…it should be the same pukey yellow color as the station. Maybe I’ll fix that this upcoming weekend.

So, there you go; an old friend found at last and a new fence built out of found materials! AND you have a little secret insight into the working of the World Wide Web…see? Today wasn’t a total waste!

I thought it was going to be this weekend – I really did. I had visions of planted hillsides drifting around in my head. I even went so far as to spend time (precious time, I’ll have you know!) with my daughter on Saturday afternoon amending the soil to make ready for…ready for…ready for…nuttin’, that’s what!

Although it violates a sacred family rule, and is the kiss of death for those plants, I swear that one of these days I’m gonna rush out there and plant those darn things myself!

“I say,” the CEO nudges the CFO. “Isn’t that some sort of labor violation or something?”

“It would be,” the CFO replies sleepily, “if we had any labor.”

“Aye, ye cheap skin-flinty son of a mutant moose,” the Chief Engineer mutters into his stout.

The CEO looks over his pouty cheeks at the Chief Engineer. Clearly something is troubling his old friend.

I can tell you from a hundred miles away what’s troubling: lack of progress! Some days it seems like the railway progresses at a hundred miles an hour…new track discoveries, electrification of the rails, new buildings. But then come these terrible slows, when all we do is fight off the dog and wait for things to happen. I hate waiting for things! I want it now Now NOW!!!

Okay, that’s over with. We were actually quoite productive over the weekend. Perhaps our biggest triumph was The Rock Wall.

This new structure, assembled from the ultimate space-age material, rock, replaces the firewood logs, which temselves replaced the popsicle-stick retaining wall along the south side of the China Curve on the Paris to Peking Railway. Although compound, I do believe the preceding to be a proper sentence.

Finding the rocks in my backyard was not a problem: Zorro the Idiot Dog routinely rolls them down the hillsides and onto the rails. Placing them so that they are visually and logically pleasing was a little more challenging. Here in Southern California we have thrust mountains, with longs streaks of ancient seabed striping their faces. How cool would it be to model that?

Well, it would be cool, but it would take a lot more landscaping effort than I’ve got in these bones. I imagine you could stain concrete in various exciting desert colors and then stack ‘em up at odd angles…that would be cool, and not very hard to do. If you dyed the concrete while it was wet it would weather well, too!

Anyway, the north face of the southern side of the China Curve now has a rock retaining wall to protect the rails from the attack of Zorro the Idiot…Hold on a moment…there…I just went out and took a picture of the zone as it appears tonight, a full three days after the wall went up: holding like a champ!

As important as the retaining wall made of stone is, it is but a harbinger of things to come. The landscaping will secure the hillsides above the stone, blending all together in a natural looking pastiche that will withstand the onslaughts of wind, weather, and woofers!

“I dunna b’lieve it,” mutters the Chief Engineer. At last count he was on Stout Number Seven, which, when he’s allowed to get this far, is referred to as the “nighty-night stout”.

As if on cue, the Chief Engineer slumps face-first onto the boardroom table, snoring like a drunken railroad man. The rest of the board members tiptoe out, partly out of consideration, partly out of embarrassment, but mostly out of fear…when the Chief Engineer wakes up from the nighty-night stout he’s a real grouch!

“Just like daddy,” quips my seven year old. Yeah. Just like daddy. Charming child.