There's a family here in Sierra Vista with an elevated G-scale layout. Pictures of it are at http://members.cox.net/cacole2 Look at the Rose family layout.
My G-scale layout is also raised on both an elevated, filled-in section and on trestles and bridges.
My railway is a raised bed... which makes it easy to deal with the outside loop, but it's still a railway on the ground on the insiude loop.
It is very easy to deal with the rest of the yard. I used pave stone and castle rock from lowes and Home Depot. Buried the first stone at least 1/2 way and continued to level and bury the stones until I had to step back and set a full course below ground to provide a base. The second course (and all the rest) was set with glue and backfilled with dirt. It runs from 3 courses or blocks high in the front to 6+ in the back. Roughly 16" to 40" as a base height for the perimeter cap. It is 30' deep at one end and almost 40' at the other and 45' wide
It's very easy to do, but labor intensive, and each pave/castlestone weighs in at 22 pounds. I used over 500 (5 and 1/2 pallets at 128 per pallet), and they run in the neighborhood of $3 each now. If you can dry stack real stone you might have a significant cost savings, but when I started I really did not think I could do the job with real stone work. I am very satisfied with the look and the opportunity to structure my rail way the raised bed gives me. I also contains me to some extent, keeping me from running wild across the yard with various ideas....(provides a clear demarcation for the weed eater.... and no problems in the yard for the mower)
either way the fill and additional stone to landscape is another consideration...I believe at last count I had 90 yards of dirt and still need 4 to 5 more, and an additional 6-7 tons of stone in the bed to provide conture and elevation. you will need to allow the dirt to settle or utilize a plate/ditch compactor. I have seen about 10% settling, but my roadway is on hardiplank on PVC posts so it doesn't effect level or grade.
I had most of the materials available, but have purchased at least 3 1/2 tons of moss rock and holy wall rock.
A narrow raised bed with access on both sides would be much easier to access and deal with all the train traffic than the bed I created. However, that said, I like the separation and vertical distance between the track loops on mine...
so what if I have to get in the garden and pick up a derailed or recalcitrant train....
I've got knee pads.... from all those years in corporate life....
Mark
Dave
One other factor to add into your thinking, when I figured the amount of dirt I would need they told me I would need to add 6 or 7 percent to allow for setting. By the time I was done (we had some VERY hard rains during the process) I think the setting was closer to 10%. My little wheel barrow was very tired by the time I was done as I too have a very small gate that leads to the back yard.
Raised layouts have several drawbacks. They too often resemble a virtual HO tabletop look. At 30" high, you have to have a means of servicing and moving about the landscaping. That is why it is best to keep trains running only at the outside edge. I too am a gardener and enjoy playing in the dirt. But not everyone is like us. If you choose to sell your home in the future, one of the first things you will have to remove is the raised layout. Solution...Make it half as high, have the trains run the outside edge, but in the center use taller buildings and even a small mountain range. Good luck on the project,Dennis
Hi Bob,
Sounds like a bundle of work for sure! The raised islands idea is something I mentioned that would allow access in and around the raised area without having to walk all the way around. The islands could be connected by removable or raised bridges or even duckunders (de ja vu indoors)
As I mentioned, I'm not fully committed to the raised idea until I ponder how long I'll be living in the house as the raised element is more or less permanent. If I don't do raised, I'm gonna try building a field railway sans ballast, of the type used in constucting roads, dams and so on; narrow gauge with critters and V-dumps. Not many people are aware of these temporary railways, as they often existed for just weeks or even days. They allow you to follow the terrain without having to do too many fills and cuts and heavy bridgework, if you like the rough hewn look
Dave, been busy with other projects and haven't been keeping up with forums. Paul gave me a heads up!
My layout is 30" high at the outer or first level! 2008 block in it that my wife and I layed in 3.5 days. I ran electrical and water lines in conduit under where sidewalk was going to go so as to service the area of the layout. I had a rough track plan in mind, and had a contractor come in and pour a 3' wide sidewalk in conformance with that plan so that I could use the inside edge of the concrete as the back edge of the wall! That method also took care of levelling things as there was an 18" drop from left front to right rear! The blocks are 4"hi X 12' W X 9"D and weigh 35 lbs each. They are dry laid and the top course is glued down using an exterior grade construction adheasive. After I got the wall built, I removed (and numbered for replacement) the block from one end.
I had a guy with a bobcat who needed work on a flexible schedule (at a very attractive price per hour), so I had packing sand delivered in the yard and he moved it inside the walls. There were 30 - 12 Wheeler loads to fill it to the 30" level, and we didn't put fill where I knew the pond was going! After it was full, I replaced the end wall blocks and pulled fill back down from a pile I had placed on top for that purpose!
I then had another 9 loads placed on top for the mountains using a gradall to dig it out of the trucks and place it on top! (Again, by getting the work done during the slack season when they were getting ready to lay crews off for the winter saved a ton of $$$$).
Entire space is about 55' by 80' and has about 16,000 gallon pond in it!
If I were doing it over, I'd go with a series of raised islands or fingers that would permit working on the interior without the crawling around.
Dave,
I only raised mine about a foot off the ground so my pictures wouldn't help (also I just nailed landscape timbers together to form the outside framework). But after doing this I have one question for you, how close can you get a dumptruck to where you are planning to build. It takes an amazing amount of fill dirt and unless you have many strong backs to help a wheel barrow quickly becomes a royal pain. Since you are talking waist high also remember to plan for ramp(s) to get the top soil up to it's final destination.
- Bob's raied layout is an engineering marvel. Would esp. look nice with some ground cover and structures. Must have cost a pretty penny for all those stones. He's lucky to have a lot of space. One can only dream.
- Tom. How true about S. Calif rivers. Used to live in both SD and LA. The climate there is #1 in the world (except for this week). The layout looks exactly like the one I described in GRR and is oone I'd like to emulate. The one in the magazine had some low sedums near the track that made it esp attractive
- Ralph, your ideas are the best. Give me something to chew over. And yes, I'm considering dual gauge as I've got 7/8 trains in both 32 and 45 mm.
Thanks, all and here's a toast to those coooool raised layouts.
The Home of Articulated Ugliness
Tom Trigg
Here is a look at Bob Johnson's raised layout. He is a frequent contributer to this forum, and probably will comment with more details when this picture appears.
Hi Brian,
Nice natural stone; mine would need to be higher, of course and rocks perhaps need to slope inward to avoid a blowout. I've seen New England (and upstate NY) stone fences, and might try that out. Some of those stone fences have been in place for centures.
I'm thinking maybe make a few raised beds with walkways in between and liftout sections of bridge connecting.
Thanks
Club member, Peter Drymalski, has a beautiful raised garden railway built on dry stack stone raised planters. It runs around the perimeter of his backyard. Lots of pics at - http://www.wvmgrs.org/ go to the menu at the left for Archives then scroll down to the 2007 meetings and click on the May meeting. Here is one -
It took him a few years to complete using something like 7 pallets (over 10 tons) of wall stone and that doesn't even count all the soil to fill it.
-Brian
I'm pondering a raised garden layout. Not a simple platform like those used by live steam enthusiasts and not redwood benchwork, but an actual raised platform at least waist high, framed by bricks, blocks or rocks mortared together with fill inside and soil at the top. I don't recall ever seeing anyone do this, except in GRR last year, a fellow in England or Wales modeling 16mm (he's 86 years old).
The only thing holding me back at the moment is that I don't know if we are going to live in the house for many many years, so I'd need to design it tastefully enough so the house sells (think raised flower bed).
As to dimensions, I'm thinking 30' X 6', could be curvy. Modeling 7/8n18 so curves could be kinky
Any discussion on this topic appreciated.
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