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How Do You Get Ready for Spring?
Apr 29, 2009
By Jon C.A. DeKeles
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A few weeks ago we had a Tuesday Topic about getting ready for spring. Spring has sprung. What do you need to do to get ready? I enjoyed reading the posts and thought I would share with you my experience that we have getting the BIGD LINE ready to run. It is still a little cold to run trains, but our motto on the BIGD LINE is "If the wind chill will not freeze your skin in under 30 seconds, we can run trains."
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Getting Ready for Spring
A few weeks ago we had a Tuesday Topic about getting ready for spring. I enjoyed reading the posts and thought I would share with you my experience that we have getting the BIGD LINE ready to run. It is still a little cold to run trains, but our motto on the BIGD LINE is "If the wind chill will not freeze your skin in under 30 seconds, we can run trains." Weeds, Weeds, Weeds
As we are recreating our railroad we still have areas that I call undeveloped. We have not yet created any landscaping. So for right now there is nothing to stop the weeds from growing. It is a amazing how they can get going with just a little sun and water. 
We have two kinds of weed problems when the snow melts. One is the big old weeds that start to grow on the back side of the railroad. We use good old fashion hand power for that and also use chemical warfare to keep them from coming back this year. 
The second kind of weed problem are the pesky ones that grow near the mainline. We have weed fabric under all areas of the developed railroad, but weeds can still push through and they can also grow on top of your landscaping. We use the pull and spray method on the mainline. We go around and pull the weeds that have come from nowhere, and then go back and spray the mainline to keep their friends and family from coming back for this running season.
Washouts: Rocks, Dirt and Bark
Our next step in clearing off the mainline is to walk the track again and look for washouts and places where the rocks and dirt have blocked the mainline. As our plants get more established and more of our railroad is developed we have fewer and fewer problems. Here are some examples of our little and big problems. Not a big issue to clean, but something that really has to be cleaned up before we run. 
Another area that we have on our clean up list is to reshuffle the bark to cover up bald spots. We find that on the slopes of the track that all we need to do is use our foot to push the bark back up to the track and we are good for another season.  The last thing we look at is the track. We have found it is better for us to not try and do these the items I have listed here at the same time because we tend to forget what problem we are looking for and If you do that, bad things can happen. 
Honey I Shrunk the Brass
One of the things we find in our railroad is that some how snow shrinks brass. We find at least one or two places where the rail has a major gap. Even using rail clamps we see things like this. 
 The interesting thing is that we find these gaps in the middle of our straight lines and there is no corresponding gap anywhere in that area. We repair these problems one of two ways. Replace a Section of Track
The first way is to just replace a section of track. When we do that we sometimes replace a full piece of track rail clamp to rail clamp. Sometimes we use our Dremel tool to cut out a piece of track and then replace that piece using rail clamps to secure our new cut in piece. We just make sure to cut the new track a little longer to fill in the gap that has been created
Extened Rail Clamps to the Rescue.
The second way is to fix the gapping problem with an extended rail clamp. An extended rail clamp is a rail clamp that is longer than a regular rail clamp. We place the rail clamp on the track and place a small piece of rail into the gap to fill up the space. 
Here is a gap that we found in the rail. There are no gaps anywhere else and the track is still straight in each direction. 
What we do is get a piece of rail and use our dremel tool to make a small mark as to where to cut the rail to fit in the gap. 
This is what we are going to be doing. Place the cut piece of rail into the middle of the extended rail clamp. Then we remove the old rail clamp and place this new extended railclamp in with our new piece of rail. 
We might need to adjust the mini rail length with our dremel tool. But once it is in place we have resolved the issue without have to do any major track work.
Cleaning Track the Easy Way
Once we have walked the track, it is time to get out our old reliable LGB track cleaner. We have about 300 feet of track and if we just run the track cleaner twice in one direction and then twice in the other direction we are ready to run trains. Now that there are companies making replacement cleaning wheels we use our track cleaning all the time. This really is one thing I will miss about LGB products. It works like a champ. (Yes, we run battery, but we have friends.) 
Working on the Chain Gang
One other thing we do is go and find rocks for our railroad. Rocks are the other big crop in North Idaho, second only to potaotes. We find the local farmers are more than happy to give them to us for free. They kind of look at us a little funny as we load up the back of our SUV and our little trailer - trip after trip. Best part is Bryan is now almost 16 years old and can lift that barge and toat that bail with the best of them. 
So our railroad is ready if only the weather would get on board. For the next few weeks it will be hit and miss here until we are ready for seven day a week operations.
| Spring Has Sprung |
I want to thank all of the G Scalers who do this hobby in the mid west and east. It means that I have no excuses here on the left coast. And yes, there is nothing like LGB's track cleaner. I love mine. |
| Kell Schmidt - 04/29/2009 - 09:26 |
| Major rock slides. |
| Wow, you have some major rock slides of your retaining walls across your track. I get frustrated when a few stones fall from my retaining wall due to frost heave or animal crossing. but you have had a whole rock slide inundate your tracks. I guess my small rock migrations and occasional errant rock isn't so bad. Now I will think of you when I have to fix a rock wall or return the stones to the wall. Thank you for your article. |
| Glenn Habrial - 04/29/2009 - 18:16 |
| Sprung |
| After seeing your track gap I'm glad I use the SS track and fiddle with those darn tiny screws. I've never had that problem! My gandy dancers are always moving rocks, I only pay them peanuts and they think the roadbed is a great place to bury them! It's no big deal tho' I just pour on some more gravel and brush it out with an old paintbrush, lift the track over sags and push some ballast under and smooth out with that 3" brush... this is yearly though. John |
| J0ohn Caughey - 05/01/2009 - 06:39 |
| Spring has sprung |
| Hey Jon maybe you should stop washing your track in hot water lol |
| Jerry madsen - 05/03/2009 - 02:22 |
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