Stonehedge Railway

2021!
A hopeful year begins, we hope.

Emma Hoot hangs out on the railroad in early 2021. photo by Deb!

April 3, 2021
Video 69., first look at the railroad for 2021:

April 24, 2021
A look at the railroad at the beginning of the season.

May 1, 2021
Video 70, starting up work on the pond, stream and waterfalls:

May 5, 2021
running the Piko track cleaner.

May 14, 2021

May 30, 2021
Some scenery is finally on the left platform! The large "meadow" is in place, now it needs some more filling in! But for now it's the "King's Meadow", patrolled by one solitary Knight, contemplating how he can get his castle on the hill away from the marauding dragon. The left platform is now complete except for ballast for the track, and additional scenery for the large empty meadow.

May 31, 2021
Video 71 - A look at the completed left platform, and some planning for the mainline bridge

June 13, 2021
Re-working the Celtic stone circle.
The five "standing stones" came from my Dad's original garden railroad. He found these stones among the native Southern Tier NY stones that he gathered from the countryside, and singled them out for special consideration because of their shape and style. He stood them up as special markers, "standing stones" in the tradition of the Druids of England, and I am keeping them for the same purpose on my railroad.

The stones are temporarily removed for rebuilding of the circle:

Engineering of the new circle begins:

The five standing stones are returned to their place along the edge of the circle. The large round glacial erratic in the center, and the upright trilithon behind it, were experimental, and were removed after a few hours. The Stonehedge-like upright trilithon was found to be too tippy, not stable enough, and likely not sufficiently cat-safe if a cat chose to jump on top of it, so it was quickly dismantled.

June 15, 2021
A new addition to the "Upstate NY Rolling Stock" collection is added!
(see link for upstate NY rolling stock)
https://sites.google.com/site/1991gggrs/projects/upstatenyrollingstock

I've had the Kodak tank car, and the Hooker Chemical tank cars for some time, Marvel Oil is new! (I love the design so much, that a second car was added a few weeks later) Aristocraft new old stock, about 20 years old and brand-new on ebay.

June 27, 2021
Video 72 - First look at the new PVC mainline bridge:

July 1, 2021
Emma Hoot and the chipmunk. (She's never caught a chipmunk! they are too fast) ;)

July 6, 2021
The upper pond is complete!
As I discussed earlier, I removed the pre-formed plastic pond "shell" and tried building the pond basin "from scratch" using a pond liner and rocks.. looks much better! :)

August 7, 2021
The second pond is complete. (except for the second waterfall)
I'm hoping to finish the complete pond and stream this year!

August 14, 2021
I did a modification to one of my USA Trains GP38-2's, which I have wanted to do for as long as I have owned these locomotives (10 years or so) and that is "correcting" the odd choice that USA Trains made concerning their cab windows. For some reason USA Trains has added a really odd silver border around the windows! I've always disliked it.. looks terrible IMO, not prototypical, makes the windows look too small, and there is no need for it. I assume it's intended to represent the window gasket, (which 99% of the time is black on real locomotives) but..the gasket is already there! It's molded into the plastic around the edge of the windows. There is no need for that odd silver border at all. (the Aristocraft GP40 looks *so* much better..no silver border!) So! I had to try a silver border removal! I removed the plastic cab "glass" from the cab, soaked it in 91% isopropyl alcohol to dissolve and remove the silver paint, hand-painted black paint on the molded-in gasket, then reassembled. looks SO much better! (Im now going to do this all of my GP38-2's and SD40-2's) Modified locomotive cab on the left, original un-modified on the right:

I wrote up a more detailed story of the modification, with more photos, if you are a member of the G-scale Facebook groups, you can read about it here.

August 21, 2021
Video 73 - Pond, waterfall and stream update:

August 31, 2021
Digging out the main lower pond! Ideally I would have liked it to be larger, but there are large trees nearby, and the ground in this area is heavy with tree roots. I had to cut away quite a bit of roots just to create this relatively small pond.. but that's ok, it works! it will achieve the look I'm going for.

The fan was because of mosquitoes! August was terrible for mosquitoes this year, they were brutal for about a month. I set up the fan and ran it on "high" just a few feet from me as I worked on the pond, it created a strong enough wind that the bugs couldn't land on me.. it worked! mostly..

September 3, 2021
Painting and "decking" the mainline bridge. Previous owners of our house left behind some roof shingles! presumably left over from the last time the house received a new roof. A pack of asphalt roof shingles was up in the rafters of the shed, I used some of them last year for the roof of the engine house, and now they also make a great deck/floor for the bridge! they have a "look" of ballast, even though the "stones" don't reach the top of the ties. I considered using real stone ballast on the bridge, but was concerned about the weight, so I decided to skip that. I think the shingles work great! With the deck in place, and the white plastic painted black, the large mainline bridge is now complete except for supports, new bridge supports will be made next year.