Railway design, construction, and gardening

Hello, I've been planning to build a fairly large mountain for my G-scale layout.  The mountain will be about 4 feet high,5 feet wide and 10 feet long.  How should I go about building this?  How do I add a waterfall?  How should I place rocks?  What tools do I need?  Dirt, bricks, etc...

Any help would be greatly appreciated

RR21

I'll tell you how I did mine, of course, there are many other ways to accomplish the same outcome.

In my case I needed to put the waterfall directly above the track in the middle of a 90-degree curve. Not recommended, I did not want to do it that way, but real estate constraints dictated doing it this way.

Start with the tunnel. I built the tunnel with cinderblock. I "played" with several combinations and spacing to ensure that there was more than sufficient room inside the tunnel to allow the longest cars to pass through without hitting anything. After achieving the spacing I desired I dry stacked the cinder blocks, two blocks tall. I cut slots in the top block every six inches so that I could form a re-bar "roof support" system. (Think of a "giant staple" formed by the re-bar connecting the two walls.) On top of this I used cinderblock top cap bricks spanning the gap. I then put two layers of roofing felt. Since the water out fall box was to go above this I also put a layer of pond liner as I did not want any leaks getting to the rails. Atop this structure I sat the water box and started cementing stones to form the mountain. I included clay flowerpots in a few places to allow for plantings at a later date. I wanted (read Wife wanted) a rough rock mountain. So, cement and stone mainly form my mountain.

Others here use large diameter pipe, and dirt. They will have to speak of their techniques.

Things I wish I had known about BEFORE I built the tunnel.

1. Proper internal drainage: I did not allow for drainage of rainwater that would accumulate inside the tunnel. I had to open things up a bit to install some drain piping to remove the standing water.

2. Texturing the inside of the tunnel: After watching some of Ray Dunakin's videos (he has some fantastic mountains and tunnels) and looking at my own videos with the trains running through the mountains, bare cinderblock walls inside the tunnel detract form the overall effect. I'm planning on reaching inside the tunnel to spread some quickset mortar to put some sort of texture inside. LESSON LEARNED: texture the inside walls before putting the roof on your tunnel.

Here is a glimpse of my mountain.

 

 RR21 - Greetings - We just constructed our layout this year and may be able to help. First I will refer you to our web-site covering our railroad - Croaker Diggs Consolidated Rail Road - CDCRR. Check it out at http://www.ironhorsereplicas.com/croaker_diggs.html - Click on BUILD UP also take a look at the VIDEOs. We started with cinder block, rocks for filler between the blocks, chicken wire, concrete (no rock), then 'white' concrete with fine mesh sand and red/brown powered concrete dye. Worked great - my good friend held my hand all the way - he's a tiling contractor and knows his stuff. I will be adding to the layout pretty soon. Will also be extending the track another 100 ft - track is on order. Check out the site and get back to me if this looks like something you may want to do. I'll help how-ever I can. Shu

ttrigg I see in your picture your mountain is agains a fence. What precautions have you taken so the fence doesn't rott with the dirt gainst it. Or the weight from leaning it over?

SP Trains:

ttrigg I see in your picture your mountain is against a fence. What precautions have you taken so the fence doesn't rot with the dirt against it? Or the weight from leaning it over?

Step 1. Fence is built using screws (spaced for direct access about 2 inches "above" the ridgeline of mountain), so that the two end planks can be pulled off. Then slip over to other side of fence, pull the 2 screws out of both ends of the two 2x4s and the whole thing lifts out. Makes painting MUCH easier. Since this photo was taken the fence has been replaced with new boards.

Step 2. Back "wall" of the mountain (both against the redwood fence and the wrought iron fence) were built using cinder blocks. There is a 2-inch gap between the cinder blocks and each fence. The only problem here is weed control, however Round-Up and Preen solved that problem.

 I used corrugated plastic attached to the fence bottom to keep the dirt from contacting the wood. It also allows air to circulate thus preventing mold, etc.

Walt

TY very much for your input. I had over looked the problems of needing to paint the fence someday. Glad you mentioned that ttrigg. I had already thought of leaving a gap between the fence. Your photo just didn't appear to have one. Lucky nothing is built. I am just thinking of ideas plans and problems to engineer around. TY again. F/SP

SP: The way I built the mountain/water fall, the only time you can see the air gap is when you are standing at and looking down upon the trolley station at the top of the bridge.  I didn’t plan it that way, just got lucky I guess.  I did plan the fence for access for maintenance.

I was lucky enough to have a hillside on which to build my layout, so that provided a perfect base for my mountains. But I had to dig out much of the hill in order to build the tunnels, which were made from concrete blocks topped with reinforced concrete slabs. Then I built the mountains over the tunnels, using tons of rock and mortar plus some of the soil that was dug out of the hill. Because of the steep terrain, I had to cement all my rocks together with mortar. If you're building something less steep, you can just pile the rocks with the soil, taking care to position them in a way that looks like natural mountain features. Of course mortar can still be used as needed. If you use a lot of rocks, be sure to leave plenty of deep "pockets" for your plants (assuming you want live plants).

The GR February 2010 issue has an article about building a mountain - Peter

 

Check out the latest GR magazine it gave me the solution to the mountain that I plan on building. I plan on building a 7-8 foot high mountain range 12-15 feet long. The solution was to built a retaining wall and build the mountain against the wall. This way you only have to make half a mountain using less material. Will start working on it once the yard dries out.