Garden Railroad Site Survey

Yesterday, Sheila and I did a site survey for our proposed garden railroad.  Once we staked two known points (the straight-away) we were able to stake the rest of the points using basic geometry, a ruler, a level and a measuring tape.  Things are looking good for using this particular garden for this purpose.

I plan to have a rather large wooden trestle bridge on one of the compound curves at one end of the garden.  This curve will be located around the tall growth shown in the photo at right.  This is the most visible curve on the layout so I figured it would be a great place for a feature such as this.  It borders the short path to the horseshoe pits and is visible from our firepit where we spend most of our time in the backyard.  As the trestle curves around to the right, the trestle gets taller in order to keep the track level over the downward sloping ground.

We used some basic geometry to find specific locations of the track.  I have a scale printed plan of the layout so I took some measurements using three points in the shape of triangles to find the third point from two known points.  I did this to find multiple points along the track layout in our garden.  

Measuring these points in the garden was a bit of a pain in the butt due to the thick growth.  The tape measure kept bending backward and sideways when I was trying to push it through the growth.  The tape measure would hit a stalky plant stem and then bend backward toward me or bend to the right or left.  I'd have to pull it back out and start over...  and again...  and again.  Some places on the layout were easy while other places, like through this thicket of growth seen around the site of the trestle bridge, was difficult. 

The track will be elevated above the ground ranging from about six inches where the main straight-away joins the beginning of the wood trestle bridge to about 18 inches on the back side of the garden.  This is one of the main reasons why I want the track elevated.  Finding level ground in the backyard is almost impossible too but the main reason for using an area with unlevel ground is that I find railroads on flat level ground to be a bit boring.  Also, I'm not too fond of track being all the way down on level ground either.  I like it a bit closer to eye level although this one will indeed still be close to the ground on the front side (around 12 inches above ground).  These trains are quite large too so with the track on the back side being around 18 inches off the ground, the top of the train will be at the 24-26 inch height.

There will be a train station on the 10 foot straight-away facing the main area of our backyard.  I'm still toying with the idea of making this a 12 foot straight-away since I have the room but I'm not completely sure yet.  I don't think I have the extra track for that.  I do need to decide today though.  The pieces of track have been the most expensive part of this project.  (Note:  I chose to add a foot to the length of this straight section since I do have enough track on hand for that.  So it will be 11 feet long.)

This photo, below, shows where the wooden trestle bridge will end.  It ends right at the short pilings but is the whole length of this curve.  Designing and building a curved wooden trestle bridge is a bit more challenging than a straight one.  Compounding the difficulty is the fact that the ground is on a slope too.  This will be a really nice feature!

What is shown below is the beginning of the straight-away at the height it will be.  I'm liking this height.  It is high enough to get the wood and track off the ground but low enough to still allow plants to hide the train when it is on the other side of the garden.  

Below, is a photo showing a look down the straight-away from the trestle bridge.

I also did a quick sketch of some of the wiring inside the tender.  This is the schematic to get power to the circuit board (marked 4408).  This schematic shows me how I should wire the battery so it can be charged in place or switched to power up the locomotive.  There is also a fuse to protect the circuit board.  It is really pretty simple but I prefer to have a schematic to follow while I am soldering connections.  The circuit board has a lot of wires coming out of it to control various features of the locomotive including each individual light, power, speed, sound, etc.  For the output wiring, I'll use the manufacturer's schematic.

Right behind the garden where the garden railroad will reside are the new horseshoe pits.  This is where the putting green used to be but the putting green required too much work and too much water so we decided to convert this play area to horseshoe pits.  The two oldest grandchildren are getting older now so throwing horseshoes shouldn't be a problem for them.  Plus, I shortened the distance between the stakes by eight feet so, rather than stake-to-stake being at 40 feet, we are at 32 feet which is much more manageable.  The "stakes" in the photo are just wooden markers.  I have real steel stakes stored indoors.  For those grandchildren who still want to play some golf, I'll be installing the putting green cup in our front lawn.

I have enough wood on hand to begin this project so that is good.  We'll need to make another trip to Lowes sometime this week though.