All posts by AlexG

seperating dirt from gravel

Next step up the hill done! This time I did not use rocks to seperate earth and gravel. I used metal plates. I bendend them and hit them into the earth. Then I put off the earth in between and fill them with foil and gravel, as I did before.

This technic is easy and it helps to keep the gravel and the earth seperated…

First 3 meters done!

First 3 meters (9 feet) of laying tracks done!
I used to dig the earth away a little, but a foil down below against weed put around 10 centimeters gravel in and added some concrete plates on. Then I screwed the tracks to them, and finally put some gravel between the sleepers. The result is pretty perfect!

Just to support the electrical power supply, I hide a plastic tube in the gravel in parallel to the tracks. The aim is to connect the tracks every 2 to 3 meters with the parallel power supply – just to garantee a good connection.

First track laying

First installation of a half circle with a grade up to the planned station area. Well – I have learned, that creating a garden railway is a hard job, with earthworks, concrete, setting stones, etc.

But I think, as soon as it looks integrated into the garden, it is absolutely worth it! As long as it is under construction, is looks like a toy. But as soon as we put some flowers and grasses in between, I think it will look really great!

waterfall feature

Springtime has come! Good time to proceed in the garden!
First water feature build at the edge of the garden. The blank earth is still showing through, but it is just a matter of days, until I will get it looking better….
In addition, I installed some power plugs to control the lighthouse and the pump using a Raspberry Pi. This one os mounted in the garage and setup as a webserver. It is caluculating the sunrise and sunset everday and will turn on the lighthouse at sunset and shut it off again at 11pm. But that was another project….