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The Brock Railroad June 5, 2010 While it is certainly common for ILSR members to lend a hand when a fellow member needs help with his layout, having an official work session, with several members helping, is a first. Lance and Vickie Brock have a beautifully landscaped yard with a wide variety of plants, rocks, flowing water and bridges. A "moving feature" seemed like a great addition to the garden so they joined the ILSR to learn more about garden railroads. After Lance decided on a layout design, he prepared the roadbed. A couple of simultaneous events in the ILSR were happening, fortuitously, at the same time. Mike Smith, as president, began to promote the idea of a club-sponsored work session to help members work on their layouts. Also, Jeff Carter had come up with a clever foam roadbed for his layout and for the club's temporary display layouts. When all of these ideas came together, Lance agreed to be the first of our official club-sponsored work sessions ( or "rail raising", with apologies to the Amish and their "barn raisings"). The Background When we arrived, you can see in the first group of pictures that Lance had already located the right-of-way with pea gravel and positioned the sectional track. Straight rail was to be custom bent for the large radius curve in the first picture below:
The Work Session The first job was scooping out the pea gravel and laying the foam road bed, Lance gets the ball rolling and the crew jumps in:
A two-rail bender was used to custom bend the large radius turn in the picture below:
Below, the final section of foam roadbed ready to be installed:
The last step, below, is putting the pea gravel ballast in place:
No wiring was required since Lance's trains are powered by batteries and controlled by radio. The Result After a 6-hour day by 6 or 7 club members (with timeout for a great lunch by Vickie), the job is finished and trains are running. Lance has his Mikado-powered passenger train highballing on the layout.
An excellent (and learning) experience for everyone. Great job and terrific layout and something we hope to do again - helping build, or rebuild, member's layouts. |
