Room for Railway

We had a heap of rain these last couple of weeks. Some 110 mm or so in all. The countryside is verdant, the air is cooler, the sun is out. Favourite time of year.
The big excavator was brought back for one last job. That is to build out the shelf further to make room for John's magnificent garden railway! Search for "big sky rail steamup April 2024" for a youtube video of it. This is the very same railway from the house near Gunnedah I stayed at. See the blog entry from last May. They sold their lovely house, but had nowhere to put the railway, so I offered up the space. I wanted to build one anyway, but John's was pre-designed for a tennis court. Unfortunately the space I had was not the right shape, so we scavanged for some more dirt around the various build sites nearby and brought it back and dumped it over the edge and pack it down. Now with a steeper slope we are in a race against time to get it covered in grass to stabilise the slope. The pile of stones you can see had just been delivered. We have spread this out so that boots and car tyres are not caked with clay when it rains.
While we had the big excavator on site, Paul thought we should make it safer to drive up to the very highest point of the block and be able to safely turn a vehicle. This is what happens when you hire a site manager with a background in road construction. Note the stack of track bases for the railway lined up to the left.
Again, while we had the big machine, Paul decided to have a go at building a dry stone wall at the front out of the big sedimentary rocks that came with the block... He says it is not finished, but is already looking like a wonderfully mesolithic boundary.

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