A raised planting bed in the garden

As planned I built a raised planting bed right after we came back from Germany. It came out really nice. I used an article from Sunset for the material and general idea. The bed is 8x4ft and a good 1 foot high. I used pressure-treated fir instead of redwood, since it's made for soil contact, and will last longer than redwood. It also was much cheaper. All that's missing now is the planting dirt.

Here are some more pictures

Where do I get 32 cubic feet of bulk dirt in the South Bay? And how do I get all that dirt to my house?

Update:
Home Depot is selling bulk material (rocks, soil, etc.) delivered to your door step, ... errm backyard. Pricing for soil is about 20% of what you pay for packaged soil at the store. The catch? They charge $60 for delivery, so my 32 cubic feet come out to ~$96 delivered, vs. $76 if I get the cheapest soil they have in the store. Nice idea, but I don't need enough that this is worthwhile.

In the end I got only 18 cuft of garden soil, and Patricia picked up some awesome compost at one of the mushroom farms in Morgan Hill for free.

It's gone

The big layout of my childhood no longer exists. Here's how things went down...

Tuesday: 2h, most of catenary.

Wednesday: 2h, more catenary, the first sections of track on the upper level.

Thursday: 3h, bridge, most of the upper level, start with freight area.

Friday: 5h, ramps, main station, rest of freight area and remaining visible track.

Saturday: 3h, dismantle mountain to get to the tunnel tracks, remove tunnel tracks;
4h, box all material, and clean out parts from base plywood.

Sunday: 1h, removing cables from the underside of the layout

16 working hours to take this layout apart cleanly, and pack away salvageable pieces. The saying is true, it's much easier to destroy than to build...

Left to do is cleaning out some more of the electrical from the underside of the layout, as well as removing some control switch boxes for a temporary setup back home.

Decoders

In most of the forum posts and descriptions I read, people recommend converting Maerklin's "Allstrom" motors to a regular DC motor (e.g. using Maerklin's "Hochleistungsmotor" conversion kit), or replace the motor altogether, and then use a decoder for the Motorola format (such as Maerklins c90 or c91 decoders) to convert them for digital operation. The conversion kit comes with a decoder and seems to go for ~100 Euros.

While browsing Viessmann's catalog I found a decoder that's made specifically for Maerklin's "Allstrom" motors (Viessmann 5274). The decoder is actually made by Uhlenbrock with part number 72600, is functionally equivalent to Maerklin's c91 decoder, fully programmable using CVs, with speed regulation, and has 4 function outputs. The nice thing about this decoder is that apparently you don't need to do anything to the existing motor. Just replace the direction changer switch/solenoid with the decoder, re-solder a few wires and you're set, provided the loco runs fine mechanically. Sounds too easy to be true. The decoder runs on regular AC, and Maerklin Digital (Motorola format) tracks, and costs around 45 Euros.

I'll see if I can find that decoder around here and try it out with one of the Diesel or Electric locos we have.

And yes, this is a hobby that can get expensive very quickly ... sigh

Update:
Turns out eurorailhobbies.com is selling the 72600 decoder for $47.99. No point trying to get them in Germany. Their pricing on new Marklin K-track is also very competitive compared to German second hand retail, or online retailers in Germany, especially taking into account exchange rates. I see an order in the near future...

Starting to dismantle the old layout

It's strange to take apart something you spent months and years to build, and help to build, many, very many years ago. Last night I dismantled the catenary of the family layout. Next up are a few left-over catenary masts, and the semaphor-style signals. Then we'll move on to vacuuming the dust from the layout and brush off dirt from all tracks, followed by removing all the track. In parallel I'm surveying locos and will pick a few first victims to get a decoder.

In the ideal case this will all be done before I'm packing my suitcase again and I'll take enough material back home to start experimenting with running locos and trains using digital controls. I'm particularly interested in ways to control digital trains using analog signals, since I'm planning to only digitize operating trains, but leave controlling switches and signals manually. I might add computerized control later (particularly in my hidden staging area), but we'll see about that when it's time.

Sunday

It's nice to be in a European city again. There is a working public transit system that people actually use. In the evening there are regular people out on the streets, enjoying themselves while they are trying to decide which restaurant to go to. People walk to work (yes, I know, strange concept). But the thing that hit me the most:

The chime of church bells on Sunday morning. I don't know how to say this, but it makes me happy. The sound of the bells over the background noise of the city... it sounds right.

Layout Room Revisited

I guess it was hard to follow my explanation of what the layout room will look like. Tonight I spent some time with SketchUp to see if I could master the program at least to the level of getting an image of the layout room in our garage. After quite some swearing I produced this.



That came out quite nicely.

The image shows our garage with part of the side wall not modeled. The front of the garage is to the left. I marked the platform with the raised floor in green. The yellow beams are 2x4's that will keep the layout out of sight from the street. I'll mount regular drywall panels on both sides. The 2x4s don't connect to the surrounding walls at all. However, they do line up with the fairly massive beam supporting the upper story of the house. They are only screwed to the platform, so that I don't penetrate the garage firewall.
Just for fun I added washer and dryer, water heater, and the furnace on the left hand side of the garage, as well as my work-bench and various cabinets in the back of the garage.
The door to the inside of the house is between the platform and the large white cabinet.

The area marked in red is the space for the car.