Moving

[IrishPeter]

As I mentioned back in the Skebawn and Castleknox thread, I am due to take up a new appointment at the beginning of next year.  Knowing the general area in which I would be working, the missus decided that we ought to start house hunting early.  Unlike last time, when we were pushed for time and found a house at the last moment, we found a Victorian that we both liked during the first weekend's hunting, and we have signed the contract for it.

Now I liked the house so much, I did not think too much about the railway side of things and I have set myself a bit of a task.  Whoops!  Unlike our present hut, the prospective new house has a large, almost dry, basement which is about 40' long and 14' wide, with a forward extension of about 14 feet by 10 feet under the parlour.  From this there are three 3' by 18" vents/windows (depending on whether one has the storm windows in over the bars) leading out into the garden, from there, the back garden slopes upwards and narrows from about 66' down to 30' as it goes back about 120', whilst the front yard is elevated above the road, and is a rectangle of 66' by 33'.

The first planning decision was the easy one - put the harbour of SG to NG transfer station in the basement, along with the workshop and Herself's yarn store.  After that it is a case of how the h*** do I get up that hill!  No doubt a subject familiar to many a narrow gauge railway engineer.  The cowardly course would be to have a purely basement layout, but I like the outdoorsy side of the hobby, so up the hill I will go!  I am envisioning an end to end switch back route with a block post or two along the way.  I reckon I will need 400 to 600' of track to conquer the 12' rise from the basement to "the level bit at the far end of garden," plus about another 40'of level bits to provide for the stations.  My initial imaginings are getting "interesting" to say the least, and I can envision being 'broke' for quite a long while.  :)

Cheers,
Peter in AZ

[LNR]

Go on Peter, admit it you relish the topographic challenge of garden railways.
On a serious note would a terraced area across the block not so high up be an idea.
Grant.

[IrishPeter]

I think some would suspect that coming from Lincolnshire has given me a bit of an obsession with hills,  :D but it actually has to do with keeping the place cool in summer.  As a result I tend to like houses with high ceilings on a hill side that catches the breeze.

Yes, terracing an area would make sense from the point of keeping life simple, but being a contrary so-and-so it is a bit too much like building a baseboard - and plywood is a good deal lighter!  It would also preclude using the basement as a storage/steam-up area, as the most suitable area for terracing is behind the house, and about 6' up.  One handy thing about the area where we are moving is that they have an online topographical map with the 2' contours marked on it, so between that and photographs, I should have a fair idea of where I am going to run the railway before I get out there with my surveying tools.  The biggest head ache is a flowerbed at the back of the kitchen which is built up from sleepers of the 12" to the foot variety, and is right where I would need to take my first run across the lot to gain height. Other than that 2% with the odd bit of 3% should do it.

I also have a bit of a philosophy going on what my railway should look like, and a big part of that is that it should look like one of E. A. Calthrop's well engineered scrapes in the muck.  I am sort of the opposite of the usual American garden railway philosophy in that I avoid big structures, and heavy engineering, and one goes around, not through, obstructions if that is the cheapest way of doing things.  

And... I guess I may actually like the challenge of a good hill.

Cheers,
Peter in AZ

[Dr. Bond of the DVLR]

This sounds a most exciting project. Seems like a best of both sort of solution!

[Big Jim]

Been there and not done it with hills,

Good luck with the house move, We are moving in a few weeks so I know a little of what you are going through.

I look forwards to seeing pictures of the new line.

[IrishPeter]

I contact here runs out at the end of October, but I have given them through Christmas, so the new chap does not have to come in on short notice.  That means I should be moving in January, but there are a whole heap of variables.  At the moment I am heavily involved in dealing with the house roundtuit list before we sell the thing, the big worry is that we put this place on the market and it sells in three days to part of the SoCal invasion force.  

The new house is much more to my taste, being Victorian, and has some intriguing possibilities from the model railway point of view.  The interesting part is going to be making the climb out of the basement and up to the back garden without exceeding 1 in 50.  There is about 3' of vertical rise in a restricted space which I need to get through without resorting to a spiral, which would be problematic as I need 10" vertical clearance if I decide to go with the SG/NG interchange idea and transporter wagons.  After that first climb is conquered then things become almost sane.

Cheers,
Peter in AZ

[ge_rik]

Twelve feet, you say .......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVq6dQMzn54

or

https://youtu.be/K86V3L9aAMg?t=1m13s

Rik

[IrishPeter]

Actually, Rik, given the nature of the site, it would need to be something more like the Foxton Boat lift. I am thinking that a couple of shepherd's crook curves give the necessary length of run to make it up into the backyard, but it looks increasingly likely that I will have to use 3% gradients. The other possibility is basing operations in the shed, but it seems a shame to waste a warm, dry-ish basement.

The one more-or-less helpful comment that I have had from the wife is that she does not want the garden to look like 'Toytown' which would seem to suggest that the main station needs to be in the nether regions, and there just be the essential railway buildings where she can see them.

Cheers,
Peter in AZ

[Peter L]

That's not too far off from the prototype - Tralee and Dingle had grade in excess of 3% climbing Slieve Mish (I believe that was the steepest grade on any Irish railway broad or narrow)

[IrishPeter]

The Schull and Skibbereen had some sections as steep as 4%.  The T&D was a bit less suicidal in that respect - I think their worst was 1 in 28, which is about 3.6% in US measure.  :D  One thing I have found is that 4% does nasty things to the moving parts of locomotives in that the wear levels are very high.  That said, the S&CLR suffered from AZ's dustiness, which may have been more of a factor than the actual gradients, as one was always walking the line between lubricant and grinding paste.  Virginia may be a much kinder environment in that respect.

Peter in AZ

[stoker]

Sounds like you need a tunnel as you exit the basement!

[IrishPeter]

Anyway, when we were over in Virginia last week to take care of a few things we happened to stop in at the local second-hand/junk shop.  Up on the wall was a perspective plan of c.1892 with various local railways and mills depicted thereon - Stove Co.; Critzer Wagon Co.; etc., as well as drawings of the houses that then existed in the city.  Now we had always been told that our house was built in 1896, but there it was, as bold as brass on an 1892 plan.  No possibility of misidentification, as the house across the street is recognizably the house across the street, and the position of the building is correct, not just in relation to street plan, but in regards to its alignment on the lot.  I suspect the National Historic Register managed to invert the build year of our house and the one next door (seemingly 1890 and 1896 respectively.) Apparently, our house was also just a block from the electric streetcar line, the existence of which was very cutting edge in 1892.

I would like to be able to report that I ran my first train at the new house, but the most I was able to achieve was taking a serious look at a couple of kits with a view to building them the next time I am in VA.  However, compared to the silence of Prescott, the regular sound of locomotive horns from the former C&O and N&W lines through the city was refreshing.  The sound of the American locomotive whistle or horn is a reminder of both the size of the country, and of the fact that the iron girdle of railroads connected the remote with the great centres of population.  If my brain had been in gear I would have walked over to the track side and watched the Cardinal come through on its thrice weekly peregrination from Chicago to New York and return.

Cheers,
Peter in AZ -> VA

[LNR]

You can't keep a good railway man down. Good Luck with it all Peter, and in case we don't run across you before, Merry Christmas.
Grant.

[IrishPeter]

I discovered that the print I was looking at was received by the Library of Congress 26 August 1891, which has me even more convinced that the National Register inverted the dates on our house and the one next door. It probably did not help the researcher that they were originally owned by two brothers, and the land had originally been bought by their mother. Lots of potential for brain damage there!

Anyway, the basement was given a serious looking at. The stairs, boiler, and water heater make it difficult to run the railway the full length of the basement without seriously irritating SWMBO, which was a slight disappointment, unless I run it on a narrow shelf along the street side of the basement.

Happy Christmas, if I am not back on here before Christmas (yeah, right!)

Peter in AZ -> VA