JimG
Western Thunderer
This is not my first attempt at a garden layout - I've had three previous attempts. The first two attempts were in my house in Scotland which was located on the side of a hill so the three quarter acre garden was terraced and the two attempts there consisted of a lot of digging and barrowing to try and get a level trackbed on the hillside. No track ever got laid, but a lot of earth got shifted. The third attempt was in the half acre garden at my first house in Yate and work had progressed well until we had to move house, just before I started laying track. So maybe fourth time lucky.
The activities of other members of this forum persuaded me to re-assess my present garden, which is small and nothing like the size of my previous gardens. I had written it off as too small when I first came to the house and I suspect that my late wife would probably have objected anyway since it would be difficult to integrate a railway into this smallish garden without it taking the garden over. However, I can live with it taking over and a quick survey was done of the garden and a quick bit of doodling was done in Templot to see what was possible. I find that I can get an egg-shaped oval with curves of twelve to fourteen foot radii in the garden with space for a terminus about twenty two feet long along the wall at the side of the house.
Work started a couple of months ago to clear the accumulation of ivy, weeds and general clutter which had accumulated over the past five years or so - especially last year when my hip problems precluded even minimal work in the garden - well that's my excuse.
Here's how it looked in April with some pictures I've already posted on another thread. First the original jungle...
...and the first attempt at getting rid of the ivy..
...we can see the wall now.
During May and the beginning of June, work was done on other parts of the garden which also needed a lot of work - necessary since it woudl probabyl never have got done once the railway had started. But come the beginning of June I got round to clearing up the bed beside the wall.
...and did a bit of kit building as well - the brown thing on the left.
Then this week I made the final assault on the station area...
...which revealed my late wife's rock garden feature which surrounded our fish pool setup. The main pool had been removed a few years ago - we got fed up feeding the herons. But we had retained the small top pool and a fibre glass waterfall effect - which you see propped up against the wall. If Steve Cook thinks he's got a snail retreat, I raise him.
...my snails' graveyard which was under the fibreglass waterfall feature. There were also five quite large and very lively frogs who scuppered immediately before I could get the camera. I suspect that they disappeared into the small pool still on the top of the rockery feature which is why I left all the grass in the pool to give them a bit of shelter. I'm considering putting the fibreglass feature down again to give any future frogs a hiding place.
Another task was getting as much of the ivy roots up as I could manage. this blighter took about an hour to dig out to a fair depth then cut through what was there.
The next work will be to realign the bed so that it will be under the station baseboard and dig out a lot of the topsoil and replace it with bark to get some future weed control.
The station will extend along the wall to about where the signal finial is, then one line will extend along the wall to meet the oval and the other line will curve round the rock feature to meet the other side of the oval. The one possible problem I have is what to do about the apple tree, which is just behind the compost bin. Since it was planted a few years ago, it has hardly produced an apple and I was quite prepared to cut it down this year. But it is now covered in growing apples so the line along the wall will have to take a slight deviation from the planned route.
Jim.
The activities of other members of this forum persuaded me to re-assess my present garden, which is small and nothing like the size of my previous gardens. I had written it off as too small when I first came to the house and I suspect that my late wife would probably have objected anyway since it would be difficult to integrate a railway into this smallish garden without it taking the garden over. However, I can live with it taking over and a quick survey was done of the garden and a quick bit of doodling was done in Templot to see what was possible. I find that I can get an egg-shaped oval with curves of twelve to fourteen foot radii in the garden with space for a terminus about twenty two feet long along the wall at the side of the house.
Work started a couple of months ago to clear the accumulation of ivy, weeds and general clutter which had accumulated over the past five years or so - especially last year when my hip problems precluded even minimal work in the garden - well that's my excuse.
Here's how it looked in April with some pictures I've already posted on another thread. First the original jungle...
...and the first attempt at getting rid of the ivy..
...we can see the wall now.
During May and the beginning of June, work was done on other parts of the garden which also needed a lot of work - necessary since it woudl probabyl never have got done once the railway had started. But come the beginning of June I got round to clearing up the bed beside the wall.
...and did a bit of kit building as well - the brown thing on the left.
Then this week I made the final assault on the station area...
...which revealed my late wife's rock garden feature which surrounded our fish pool setup. The main pool had been removed a few years ago - we got fed up feeding the herons. But we had retained the small top pool and a fibre glass waterfall effect - which you see propped up against the wall. If Steve Cook thinks he's got a snail retreat, I raise him.
...my snails' graveyard which was under the fibreglass waterfall feature. There were also five quite large and very lively frogs who scuppered immediately before I could get the camera. I suspect that they disappeared into the small pool still on the top of the rockery feature which is why I left all the grass in the pool to give them a bit of shelter. I'm considering putting the fibreglass feature down again to give any future frogs a hiding place.
Another task was getting as much of the ivy roots up as I could manage. this blighter took about an hour to dig out to a fair depth then cut through what was there.
The next work will be to realign the bed so that it will be under the station baseboard and dig out a lot of the topsoil and replace it with bark to get some future weed control.
The station will extend along the wall to about where the signal finial is, then one line will extend along the wall to meet the oval and the other line will curve round the rock feature to meet the other side of the oval. The one possible problem I have is what to do about the apple tree, which is just behind the compost bin. Since it was planted a few years ago, it has hardly produced an apple and I was quite prepared to cut it down this year. But it is now covered in growing apples so the line along the wall will have to take a slight deviation from the planned route.
Jim.