the rockery railway cutting completed ...

The main ground works for today, adding more soil to the border down by the shed, and re-organise the rocks;  the border is now ready for extra planting  ...

but where did the soil come from - the spoil from digging the out trench for the garden railway's "rockery cutting", the rockery now has some more stones too ..

a bit more digging ...but to some purpose

Managed to get a session in at the weekend; moved two small conifers over to the proposed 'rockery area' - then did an initial dig of the trenches where the garden railway will run at the top of the garden - just really to loosen the soil so I can get it done properly later.

hard at work in the garden again ....

After two sessions this weekend, all the old weed fabric has been taken up. I haven't dug everything over, but just given it a rake in some areas. It feels like I've got a back garden again - even if it is a bit bare. Work can now start on the garden railway - hoorah !

With the lovely weather on bank holiday monday -  I got the garden furniture out of the garage at last and in place, with a newly assembled garden bench ....

 

One of the azaleas have started to flower, the gnome has been looking after them...

working on the track ...

The wargames table has been co-opted to provide a workspace for track cleaning and maintenance

Things are getting there, lots of track sections to sort out, each one has to be brushed to get the dirt off, the rail ends cleaned, new rail joiners added and the rail tops cleaned with a track rubber.

I've about 90+ rail sections to do and I'm about a quarter of the way through - keep me busy for a while.

still digging ....

Another session of work on the bottom part of the garden has seen the last of the old weed fabric removed and the area mostly dug over

 Also for some relief for my back from digging a bit of wood working has been done to make a small work surface/table out of decking parts in the lean-to; just the right height to assemble track sections or fiddle with rolling stock.

Still more to do, next planned job is to get the old weed fabric off the top half of the garden.

The hard work begins ...

First job was to save as much gravel from the old trackbed from the area to be worked on, this was put in an old container - quite a bit recovered which is good.

A couple of plants were saved and moved up towards the top of the garden, this starts a border area off - the intention is that the garden railway will run by it on the right

The main area where all the work was done this weekend, all the old weed fabric removed and the area dug over. Then a gravel section put round the inspection hatch with a couple of pots added.

The next stages will be to remove the weed fabric from the rest of the garden, dig over and start work on a small rockery - digging the trench in places for the new trackbed.

track cutting .... small curve sections

for the new track plan in the garden I needed some smaller curve sections; the LGB track is a 30 degree section; so I decided to cut some spare curves in half - these needed a clean and some new rail joiners. I ran out of rail joiners - waiting for some more to complete this job then it will be on to checking the rest of the track and turnouts.