Army_Air_Force
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Posts posted by Army_Air_Force
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April 20th & 21st
The clear Friday night developed into a clear, calm and dry weekend, so it was time to get back to the wall. I've built walls before at the Washington house. Made from modern metric bricks, they turned out so neat, that some people thought the pictures were CGI of what I planned to build. This wall isn't like that at all.
The bricks are Victorian, dating from around 1860, appear hand made. Some are huge, around four and a half to five inches wide in places and none are exactly the same size, nor have flat faces. Some are bulged, some are con-caved, the ends aren't necessarily square and the proportions aren't right for the length of one brick, to work with the width of two bricks for the pillar.
All of this is made laying them a real challenge. Straight and level needs to be an average, as a small level won't sit flat on any of the bricks! Several bricks broke or crumbled during dismantling of the wall, so multiple half bricks were used on the far side, below ground level. They are all being reused from the original wall, so all are stained from age or lime mortar. I may try cleaning them once the wall is finished.
By the end of Saturday, I had four courses added on the front and two on the back.
My back really didn't want me to go back out on Sunday, but I couldn't waste another good weather day. Another two courses were added to the front, with four at the back, though every fourth layer has the bricks laid across the wall, to tie the two sides together. It was all covered in plastic by the end of the day, as the rain came back that evening and has continued on and off to today. Lynne also gave the lawn its first cut of the year. It was still a bit wet, but had got so long, it took her two hours.
I'm hoping a rotary wire brush or grinder can clean off the bricks a bit. A quick test seemed to suggest that would work, but they've got 150 years of weathering to catch up on to match the rest of the wall - which also needs pointing. Yet another job!
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April 19th
Funny how life is circular. When the old Victorian school was knocked down in 1969, to make way for our house, the site was around one acre, with the bungalow only taking up a small part of that plot. The rest of the land was used as a plant nursery.
Here we are in 2024, with plant production now going into industrial levels to fill the garden. We've multiple seed trays on the go, which have started to come to life in the last week. Having already spent around £200 on plants for the railway and path, I'm now looking for a cheaper source to fill in gaps.
The postman also brought another box of twelve Purple Rock Cress plants. Right now, they are tiny, but they will go along the edge of the railway to complete a solid line of these plants as a barrier between the ballast and embankment. With night time frosts still possible, I've potted them for now, until we can be sure the frosts are behind us. Lynne was fretting a couple of nights ago, that we might loose £200 of plants to a late frost!
In the picture below, I've got three pots of Forget-me-nots, pulled from the lawn and the grass separated from them. To their right, in the Flash box, are three pots of wildflower seeds. I think the seeds are tiny, so the box has a white powder mixed in to help to show where they've been spread. With it being still cold outside, I planted some in pots, kept indoors, to see if anything would emerge from the powder mix!
The remaining two pictures are Candy Tuft seedlings, which were big enough to separate from the seed trays and plant in their own pots. The Slushy pots, complete with lids, make quite nice mini greenhouses which also helps to keep the moisture in. The open top still allows fresh CO2 in, for the leaves to breathe. I'm interested to know if those with lids grow faster or slower than the others.
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We are still looking for some more Purple Rock Cress, to make a more solid boundary between the plants and the ballast. Other than that, for now, the planting is done and we need to wait and let everything grow and spread. Next year, we can take another look and see if anything died and whether there are still spaces that could do with filling.
There's one chair screw left to fit on the rear sleeper - the "Golden Spike" to complete the railway. I need to drill the sleeper for this, then the family will all take turns on the two feet stilson wrench, to complete the railway! I'm looking forwards to the Summer, leaning on my crossing gate, with a cold drink in my hand, watching the buzzy things going mental around all the flowers!!
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It took a little rethinking of where some of the plants would go, because the replacements were the wrong colour or would spread further or not as far as planned. Obviously they need to grow and fill out the area properly, so it still looks a bit thin for now. The pictures below show the completed embankment, one with all the plants identified.
All around the back of the planted area, we sowed wildflower seeds, to form a backdrop to the rest. We also bought five more spreading plants, to continue the plants along the hawthorn hedge, up to the garage. That's thirty four along seventy feet of hedge.
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April 13th
On the 13th, we had another push on the railway embankment. After dropping my daughter off to see some friends, Lynne and I continued to a garden centre and splashed out on more plants, compost and some small garden tools. By the time we got back home, it was lunch time, but after a quick bite to eat, we were out working at the railway.
The first job was to dig more sand and compost into the embankment, to break up the clay soil. With that done, the exciting bit, planting. We couldn't get all the plants I'd picked out two weeks ago, so had to get some alternatives, but it all worked out.
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For those who are green fingered, here's what we have planted so far.
It's so close to being finished in this area. I'm looking forwards to seeing the rest planted, though it is going to look a little thin for a while until the plants get established and spread out.
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In early April, I spent a day weeding the small border along the hawthorn hedge - 70 feet out of 100 feet. I've left the bit behind the garage for now. I then dug in a load of sand to help break up the clay soil and help drainage. A week ago, Lynne and I went to a few local garden centres and came away with £120 worth of plants.
These were planted a couple of days ago and calculating for their future spread, they only did 60 feet of the border! I've got some other stuff that I'm growing from seeds, but wanted something down that would eventually help to control the weeds which spread from the other side of the hedge.
We also made a start on planting the railway embankment. Up by the kitchen, there's an area where we are going to enlarge the patio. It's a bit small with a few people, chairs and a table out. So from the area that is going to be buried, we've dug out several plants which have moved to the railway.
These include "Lady's Mantle", "Purple Rock Cress" and "Water Avens". I also dug out some "Forget-me-not" from the edge of the lawn. We still need to shop for more plants, but I also have some wildflower seeds that I will spread around the back edge of the embankment.
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It's been a while since I updated this thread. I want to finish the story of the garden rework, which is almost complete.
I left the story with news that was garden wall rearranged, thanks to an icy road and a BMW that buried itself in my front garden wall and snapped the telegraph pole in December. Here's some pictures of the fun!
I haven't done any more of my back garden wall rebuild. The weather has been very poor over the Winter and even now, well into Spring, it has been chucking it down or blowing a gale. I'm still hanging out for a few warm, calm and dry days!
Another Winter project, built inside in my workshop thankfully, is this Anti-butterfly air defence system. When we put the veggie planters in, the neighbours warned us about slugs. Nobody mentioned butterflies laying eggs and the hungry caterpillars! This frame has a 5mm mesh, which I'm told is too small for the butterflies. The 7mm netting we had over the planter last year didn't stop them.
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I might have more wall building to do after this morning. At about 7:15am, I think due to icy roads, someone buried their BMW in our front garden wall, also snapping off the top eight feet of the telegraph pole through whiplash! Phone lines and internet down for us and our neighbours!
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Finished, with the addition of the black lines on the leading edges of the tailplanes and Ezra Stiles now sitting in the cockpit.
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What was worse, is that in the best traditions of British Rail, it was the "Wrong type of snow", so all trains were cancelled again! and we'd only just recovered from the leaf tragedy! 😁
So here's my wall today, December 2nd, lost under a plastic sheet, several more blankets and a couple of inches of snow. I did get the fence across the end of the garage done before the frost and with the lawn, railway and path complete, all the main goals for the year were achieved. If it warms up after this snow goes, I'll get back to the wall, but overall, I'm very pleased with year's work.
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November 28th
By the end of the 28th, I'd got two courses of cleaned up bricks, rebuilt into the wall. Towards the end of the day, the temperature began to drop, so it was all covered in some fleece blankets.
November 30th
Thursday the 30th dawned very cold and very white. With very cold weather forecast for at least a week, building work stopped. Without the effort and expense of warming water, bricks and sand, my mortar wasn't going to cure properly, so garden work has paused.
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I'm hoping it won't take 11 more months to get Ezra into the cockpit, then some final photos on my proper camera, rather than my phone.
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So, it's not quite finished here, but very nearly. It's a bit rough in places, but for a battered 1970's model, brought back to life in a new form, I'm quite happy.
At 1/72 scale, it's quite small and my hands are much bigger than when it was first built. My hands aren't so steady these days and my eyesight now needs lenses and magnification to work!
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Some thin acetate was heated over a soldering iron to bend it into the small windscreen and this was attached with some PVA glue. Shortly after this, the prop was fitted.
At the end of the afternoon, the Stiles Skystreak was parked in my photo booth for some pictures, just waiting for Ezra to dry.
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On the film aircraft, the rudder had black painted along its rear edge, I think to give the fabric a scalloped look. This was done on the model with a black Sharpie.
Ezra Stiles was also painted today, with a brown flying jacket and helmet, silver for his goggles and some cream seatbelt straps. He needs to fully set before he can climb in.
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Rigging done and pitot fitted!
The centre pylon was also painted black.
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For the bottom, it appeared there were only rigging wires from the wings to the wheel. As the wires were non-functional on the original Chipmunk conversion, I don't think they fitted bracing wires inboard of the landing gear. For my wires, I folded one in half and glued the point of the 'V' to the centre of the wheel and left it to set. The other ends were then pushed into the wing holes and glued.
The pitot tube was soldered up from some brass rod. The round section was hammered flat for the pitot mast and soldered to a tapered piece for the pitot head. That was also glued into the wing with cyano.
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So with the wifey and daughter out all day, the workshop cleaned and tidied yesterday and unable to work in the garden, out came the Skystreak. Time for rigging. I've used various methods for rigging over the years, but for this, the finest wire I could find that looked right was some 0.1mm stainless steel wire. I did the top first, gluing one end of each wire into the port wing. The cyano was left to set for a minute or two, before pulling it tight up to the top of the pylon and gluing again.
Once that has set, it was fed through the holes in the starboard wing and a small clip fastened on the end to keep the tension. Another drop of cyano in each hole secured them and then the excess wire was cut off.
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Things have been very quiet on this thread for most of the year, however, I actually did some Skystreak modelling today! More of that shortly.
As you may have seen from my garden railway thread, I've been working in the garden non-stop this year since the start of February. This has left me little time for modelling and I've been too tired when I have had a little free time. The basic build of the observatory was completed in 2022, but there was still lots of landscaping to do around the area. This involved some vegetable planters between the shed and observatory, a new lawn, a 1/1 scale railway garden feature and a 100 feet long path along the hedge and garage. See below.
One of the last jobs of the year was felling my neighbour's tree, which was pushing over the garden wall. The wall was dismantled and the tree felled. A few days ago, I'd just got the first two courses of bricks laid, then the frost and snow came! It's all lost under fleece blankets, a tarp and a couple of inches of snow right now, so I suddenly had some free time to do modelling!
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Tragedy struck the Carr household on Sunday the 12th. It was bound to happen sooner or later.....
Leaf on the line!! 😁
I'm working on a replacement bus service!!
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I'm planning to add a six feet tall fence, next to the garage door, blocking the path access from the front for better security.
I also need a low fence to fill the gap in the fence, currently filled with a shipping pallet.
We're well into the Autumn/Winter weather now, so my next priorty, as the weather allows, is the rebuilding of the garden wall, damaged by the tree.
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The last stretch took two full paving slabs and a twelve inch cut slab, which were laid on November 5th. At some point, I need to build a low retaining wall next to the path behind the garage, due to the ground height along side the path.
I also want to make a gutter along the rest of the path, down to a soakaway at the bottom by the railway. That's not a priority right now.
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October 26th ~ November 5th
From late October to early November, I was working on the path behind the garage. There was a lot of earth to dig out, around two and a half 850Kg bulk bags worth.
Foundations were prepared, paving laid and repeat. The area of the last three slabs was tarmac covered hardcore. It wasn't flat and was a bit too high, so I took an inch or so off the top by slicing it with the diamond cutter and breaking it out with a hammer and chisel.
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My Garden Railway Build - 1/1 Scale :-)
in Locos, Trains and Layouts
Posted
Thankfully, no!! Struggling to manage my own "Honey-Do" list!!
I normally mow the lawn, but after two days bent over the wall bricklaying, I was struggling to stand up straight, so Lynne decided to do it, as it is garden bin collection week.