Bladebender's Bent Creek Garden Railway Construction Begins / Trenching & Subroadbed / TRESTLE construction / Trestle Crossbracing & Cheap Bridges / Wiring and Test Run / Scenery & Buildings / Scenery & Buildings Page 2 The wife and I moved into our new home, in Fort Smith Arkansas about 2 months ago and as a die hard garden railway scratchbuilder, it only took about one day after the last box was in the house for me to turn my attention to our back yard and the garden railroad in my head dying to get out. What follows in the coming pages is a sort of construction diary of how it went together and continues to, as I suspect it will never be totally "completed".

Here's the view of the backyard prior to construction:

My first major task was convincing my wife that I could integrate the railroad into the surrounding landscape without tearing the existing plants out. Second, as you can see the backyard is far... FAR from level. So, I laid out a couple of garden hoses to visualize where I would lay the track and then took all of my track and loose fitted it and adjusted my plan to meet the track I had on hand... My son Jeremy and I then took stakes and string and staked both sides of the track, going about 1 1/2 inches on both sides of the track. This made it MUCH easier to dig out once the track was up.

Below, the track is loosely fitted. Note in the right photo, the over/under near the top of the bird bath. The entire back side of the line will have a 35 foot run of trestles. Note the PVC pipe for wiring at the bottom.

The PVC pipe will house wiring for the RR, under the track and to an upper deck where the controls will be placed. It's at this point, I'm also noting the natural washes in the yard, due to the slope and I intend to deepen them and incorporate them into the railroad as natural drainage. I mean hey, why fight mother nature?

The construction continues on the following pages... Construction Begins / Trenching & Subroadbed / TRESTLE construction / Trestle Crossbracing & Cheap Bridges / Wiring and Test Run / Scenery & Buildings / Scenery & Buildings Page 2

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