This past weekend I reconstructed the platform for the Hodderville station. It is 34 inches long and 4" wide. The figures are made from cast lead.They were acquired from another railroad enthusiast. In order to keep the raccoon, mink, and other mysterious night visitors from toppling the waiting passengers they are screwed to the platform!

The platform is also lit with three light standards for night time operations.

Now if only a passenger train would come along these folks might be a little happier. The life of a G scale platform figurine requires almost infinite patience and endurance!

Well, what seemed like should be a simple project just kept on stretching! Here is the finished Mill building waiting for transport to the South Bay Railroad. What started as a new  creek lead to to a 25 foot sluice, a working waterwheel, a stone foundation made with real stones, a scratch-built mill building shown here, and a new mill pond and waterfall.  Well the only thing left is to add the lights and glue a few more rocks in the river and it's done.  Needless to say I have  spent a lot more time on this project than i had planned, but it is a hit with females guests to the railroad.

In the photo to the left you can see the raceway wall for a mill wheel for the South Bay railway. Pieces of stone 1/4" thick are cut and placed in the mold and then quick set concrete is poured in the complete the wall. A little tedious but the result is very impressive looking. The second wall is in the curing stage and the two will be joined together with a poured base. The project is a kit from Stoneworks who sell a lot of building products for outdoor building modelling. The stone pieces were acquired form a local garden centre.

I've become a little obsessed with the mill project so no progress of significance on an automata piece to speak of!
I have seemed to recovered from the maladies mentioned in the last blog except for a nagging tender achilles. I'm down in the city for a few days, away from my shop, picking up a few needed supplies.

Great summer weather in Central Ontario this summer!

A tenacious ground ivy forced me to reconsider some landscaping on the South Bay Railway this month. Once you get started, things just seem to happen. The result is a new river on the layout. The Alan Creek when finished will be about 16 feet long and flow into a wooden sluiceway that is about another 16 feet long and will turn a water wheel on a mill before splashing into the existing St. John River on another part of the layout.

This photo is the headwater of the creek, a place that will be known as Flat Rock Springs where the water bubbles up from inside a piece of shale before running down the creek. I hope to complete the river portion this weekend and replant the construction area.

Needless to say while this is going on the automata work is getting dusty.

Spent some time at the lake this past week and managed to accomplish a few things...

The Garden railroad finally received a name. It is now officially known as The South Bay Railway. You can catch the new logo on the updated garden railway web page.

The South Bay Railway has a new forest fire watch tower. That's Ranger Andy, binoculars in hand, scanning the layout for smoke. It seems Forest Rangers even work when it is raining as in this photo!

Several steamers in the South Bay fleet received sound cards this week. There is nothing like the sound of of nice steam chuff and long steam whistle to calm the soul!

Ripped out an original rather aggressive ground ivy planting and replaced it with more manageable perennials. Too much maintenance!

Spent a few days getting the leaf litter off the garden railway and doing the initial weeding. All-in-all things survived the winter fairly well. I had to do a little ballast repair but things were not in bad shape. The highlight of the annual opening  is donning the bathing suit and reinstalling the two submersible pumps in the lake that feed the railway ponds and rivers. If you are wondering if the water is still very cold - I'd say about three octaves cold!

The first train of 2012 ran this past weekend, a CP rail RS3 pulling a short haul boxcar and caboose. It could have been a lot sooner but the "Urban Terrorists" kept me busy in the wood shop.


While puttering away on the garden and working a few a few leftover automata bits, I was still able to start a little prototyping for my next original piece. It requires an excavator boom. In the photo you can see one of the prototypes hacked together from masonite. It is a worthwhile investment to make several mockups in that it allows me to see which adjustments make the motion most realistic and integrate with other parts of the piece. This one uses one rotating 1-1/2" disc with a pin running in a slot to move the boom and oversized 7/8" cap acting as a cam to move the bucket. Overall it gives a fairly realistic motion.