My Astro Pics

June 12th - Additional Yesterday evening, I took another photo of the gate, at a similar angle to a picture of one of the locos from Tanfield Railway. The two pictures have been merged to create a ghost loco crossing my track. June 13th Before the ballast can be laid, I needed to get the fence made to the left of the gate. The posts I got from my neighbour were slightly over long so they were trimmed down this morning. The first post was screwed to the hawthorn sleepers and the height was then projected across to the gatepost so the height of that could be cut. All the fence parts were painted in Dark Oak shed paint, however, the rungs of the fence all needed cutting to length and a matching width out of the varied scrap pieces from my neighbour.

There was evidence of rot, splitting and woodworm in the planks, so there was some gluing and clamping first to fix the splits. To harden up the rot, I mixed a batch of waterproof PVA glue, water and shed paint and painted several coats onto the planks, allowing the mix so soak in. Eventually they were given a couple of normal coats of shed paint to fnish them. The top and bottom rails were fitted first and then the third rail added half way between. The bottom rail was mounted quite high, to allow for ballast height below it.

June 21st Around noon, a big delivery truck turned up and dropped off five 850Kg bags of river gravel. The one day I wanted overcast and cool, it was at least 24 degrees. I started decanting gravel from the large 850Kg bag, into smaller half ton bags, to split the load into three. Two large bags were split giving me six loads to move. The Dodge was brought out of the garage again and the crane mounted. I then drove to the front of the house and hooked up the first bag. It was hot work, but eventually I got the six bags driven across the lawn and dumped on the new lawn, ready to start spreading. By this time I was melting in the heat, so packed up and came indoors.

After 7pm, it was still 22 degrees, but I went back outside to start spreading gravel. The gravel was quite dusty, with a fine silt all over. Having this wash onto the the weed membrane was just going to provide somewhere for weeds to grow. So all the gravel was washed as I scooped it out of the bags, to get the worst of the silt off before spreading it around. By 9:30pm, I'd emptied one 850Kg bag.


	June 22nd Further gravel washing and spreading continued on the 22nd, filling the area across the end of the track, closest to the hawthorn hedge. This area ended up taking a full 850Kg bag to fill it.
June 23rd I spent much of Friday the 23rd decanting the three remaining bulk bags, into six other bags, giving me a total of nine at a little under 300Kg each. Nothing was done over the weekend as I was at Fly-In in Yorkshire on Saturday and a local Jeep event on Sunday. June 26th On Monday morning, I got the Dodge back out, re-assembled the crane and started transporting the gravel to the bottom of the garden. Eighteen trips from the front of the house to the back in all. This took me until lunch time. I took seven bags to the build site and because I may have a little more than needed, dropped the last two at the back of the workshop. If I need them for the railway, I can move them, otherwise, they are in the right place for spreading on the drive.
	Out of the seven bags dumped on the new lawn area, another two bags of gravel were washed, tipped into the wheel barrow, wheeled around to the fence section and tipped out. That was then spread around with a garden rake, used upside down, so the prongs didn't cut into the weed membrane. The rake was the easiest way to move the gravel around the sleepers and rails. Everywhere has at least a thin covering of gravel, but along the gate and three gaps between sleepers all need building up in height.