Andy's Cyber Ride: Mojave Desert and Southwest Mountains Railroad G scale garden railroading






August 6, 2006

After a four week trip to visit my late wife's family and some vacation time, I am back at work on the pike. It is good to have this project to both keep me going and to have as a place to invite friends for some good old manual labor.

About a week ago I had Fred, the club concrete specialist, over to help me put in the short retaining walls for the new patio. We got shallow footings and the first course of bricks in place. Here I have the second course temporarily stacked in place.

A lot of things got done Saturday, August 5.

I have been having continual problems with water leakage in the transition from rubber liner to rock water fall in the stream filling Lee's Mill Pond. I decided last week to go back to concrete in an attempt to fix the problem.

I was up early Saturday morning to work on the stream and falls. I used the fine real hard mortar/patch concrete and cemented in right over the rubber liner. I decided to give the stream and falls transition 24 hours to cure before turning on the water.

Ken showed up mid morning and helped me start moving the old patio. Unfortunately we could not just pick the whole thing up and move it. We had to do one paver and one shovel full of sand at a time.

Sand is readied for pavers.

For some reason, Ken thought there should be a picture of me in this construction process.

By mid afternoon we had half the new patio in place. I need to get another scoop of sand before I can finish the job.

Another project that has been ongoing is the tunnels on the southwest and southeast corners of the layout.

Fred and his apprentice (also Fred's wife and grandson) came over in the evening and did some mortar work for me. They got most of the walls for two tunnels and the second course on the patio wall set in mortar.

I turned on the pond pump today when I got back home from church. It looks like I still have a small leak. I'll see how much water I lose and maybe do some repairs the next time I'm out there.

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