The SCRR

The Spring Creek Railroad
G Scale Model Railway
Conductor Jerry Barnes
Engineer Jerry Barnes

The track expansion project


First step in the rail road expansion is the grass removal-LOTS of work! Decorative concrete landscape blocks, laid two high will follow the circle around and the track will lay on top of it. Down the west(left) side will be the covered bridge and some wood trestles. Jerry got some good input from his wife, Sylvia, on where to place items in relationship to her landscape plans-she's CHIEF landscaper. :-)	The Trex 'ladder' is laid in place to check what plants need to be removed before installation. Note removed track.

2700 pounds of landscape bricks for the expansion. Track will run on top of them in some areas, other areas will be trestles or the covered bridge.	Here the Trex has been screwed to plastic pipe that was pounded down into the ground, note the one pipe that needs to be cut off, Jerry could not drive it any deeper.

The first blocks were laid in with care to get them level.	The tools used in the block laying. Black arrow shows the string level. Red, the rubber hammer to tap it down at the very last step, and the torpedo level to check it with. Green arrow is for Jerry's homemade tamper.

A 4' piece of wood trestle will go in the space to break up the line of bricks. The covered bridge will do the same on around the curve. Variety!	Jerry has added the second layer of blocks. The gap will have some trestle installed-once it's made! He's hoping there is enough topsoil to fill in the hills and valleys behind the blocks.

Jerry did a trial fit of the covered bridge (minus it's roof).	Nice play of the light on the covered bridge.

View of the bridge from the North side	He had to curve the track around the willow tree.

Jerry used the Trex ladder system again on the north end to tie into the landscape blocks. It ended up needing 3 blocks high. A new trestle will run from it to the blocks down the west side.	In this view of the north end you can see where the new trestle will go in to tie the two areas together.

The south end had it's dirt pile moved around to back fill to the blocks and provide the drainage from the gray bridge. The large opening is for the covered bridge. More dirt will be added for a hill and some rocks.	You can see the Trex has been filled around/in with gravel. The track will sit on top of it.

It took Jerry 2 more pickup loads of topsoil to fill in behind the blocks.	The North end is filled in around the Trex and making a nice slope for future plants in the spring.

The north end has large lava rocks, due to eruptions in the past. Easy to carry! The station will be repositioned between the two tracks. New track will be on top of the landscape blocks.	Two dwarf Alberta Spruces are planted, along with some Wintergreen boxwoods trimmed to appear as trees.

Flagstones were broken and stacked horizontally to mimic a sedimentary cliff. Assembled artfully by Sylvia, broken by Jerry.	Looking from the north end you can see the green limestone by the curving blocks.

The limestones are kept in one area, no mixing of rock types. A mine will be made for this someday.	A few rocks were placed to control erosion. Gravel was used between the blocks and a small area behind them.

The bridge is all done and mounted to the blocks. This gives you an overall feeling of how it fits in the railroad.	An overall view of the track laid so far. About 30' left, but it got too cold to continue!

A view from the N end, showing the curve around the tree.	Jerry could not resist running a train on the expansion, even though it wasn't done. Here the Bachman Shay he rebuilt is backing out of the covered Bridge

Here is the first run through the covered bridge, makes neat sounds, rumbles nice!	The shay going thru the S curve to the tunnel. Makes a pretty picture!

Jerry didn't get the Shay stopped in time and it ran off the track into the dirt-no damage though	The McKeen car makes the first full circuit of the finished expansion

McKeen Cars negotiates the two switches with no problem. The first one goes to the town, but is not yet hooked up, the other goes over to the gray bridge on the old loop.

Jerry's New Trestle


First Jerry laid a piece of Trex down to make the curve, then followed it with the redwood. It had to be pieced in, was too tight of a curve to be in one long piece.	Everything had to be kept level, the curve does have a slight bank to it though.


The trestle is all assembled, awaiting the track, but first stain!

Making 'Sylvia's Stream'


The railroad had a dry stream bed for years, Sylvia decided it was time for a real stream, so she dug it out some.	Some leftover roofing liner from the big pond was used for the stream base and for the small pond at the bottom, it will have a pump in it.

The rubber was in pieces, so a special splice piece was bought. It had adhesive on the back to put it in place.	The bottom of the stream had a flat rock to form a nice waterfall into the rubber lined pond. ALL the small rocks had to be glued in by Sylvia, one at a time with rubber cement, all the way up the stream!

Here is a finished shot of the stream, remember, all the rocks were glued in, due to the slope.	Here you can see the bridge the stream runs under.

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Some of Jerry's Favorite Web Sites

	Jerry's Jukebox
	Jerry's Paintings that he did of things he saw while serving his tour of duty in Vietnam
	Pictures that Jerry took during his tour of duty in Vietnam
	Jerry's Model Ships
	My Large Scale dot Com This site is probably the best G scale site there is
	Steam in the Garden Magazine Lots of good steam info and people who know steam
	Aristo Craft Trains This is a a good web site with forums and is split into steam, electric and a few other categories
Live Steam 1/29	A site that Don McKay started up devoted solely to the Aristo Craft Live Steam Mikad o
	Large Scale Tech Tips This site was started by George Schreyer years ago. Lots of good info there
	Colorado Model Structures Very reasonable priced buildings a building parts for your railroad.
	Union Pacific Railroads This web site has information on their two live steamers they still run and where they are going to on excursions. You can follow them on line.
	Vietnam Transportation Association Good web site if you are interested in transportation in the Vietnam war
	A web site devoted solely to the Gun Trucks used in Vietnam and now in Iraq. Many good pictures.
	Modeling Vietnam Gun Trucks This site will show you how Jerry has donehis Gun Truck Models.
	Heartland Military Museum Museum at Lexington, NE on I-80. Devoted to vehicles used by the military.
	Always Jukin' Magazine Site devoted to jukeboxes, many ads and stories
	Fast Hits Music If you are looking for that certain 45 for your jukebox, this is the place to go to
	Kitabee Books Lexington, NE At Kitabee Books, we sell new and used books, book accessories & magnetic poetry kits.
If you have any questions or comments please use this link to e mail me

	John's Old Car and Truck Pictures
	The Covered Bridges of New Brunswick Canada
	The Covered Bridges of Nova Scotia Canada
	The Old Railway Stations of Canada
	Visit Lonnie Hedgepeth's of Rocky Mount, North Carolina site. He has used the plans provided on my web page and is building a Covered Bridge for his Live Steam train.
	The building trades class at Darlington HS in Darlington, Wisconsin built this covered bridge for a local business man
	Julie and her father Gary built a model bridge using the plans on my Covered Bridge site for a school project
	A tribute to the Steam Locomotives of the CNR
	A tribute to the Steam Locomotives of the CPR
	Ed's Marble Etchings

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