More about roadbed

Number one reason I chose to do my road bed the way I did, I am cheap and the more money I can save on other things the more money I can have to buy trains. You will notice in the photos that the main part of my road bed is 4 inch corrugated non perforated outdoor drainage hose, it costs around $25.00 for 50 feet and just about any home improvement center carries it. The nice thing about this hose is it already made for outdoor use and the corrugated part holds the wire in place that I use to pin the hose down to the ground.

You can dig a shallow trench to set the hose in, then pin it in place with the wire or you can let it just float on top of the ground then use the wire to hold it into place every 3 to 4 feet or however many it takes to get it to go in the direction you want. A nice thing about this hose is that it’s flexible, you can set any radius curve you want.

The wire is pushed into the ground on each side until it locks into the corrugated part of the hose, I try to push the wire into the ground on both sides at least 2 feet or 0.61 meters. After this I put in lawn edging to help hold the roadbed in place and to make lawn work easier next to the roadbed, of course you need a lawn to worry about, maybe someday.

   

I then pack a layer of lava rock on both sides of the hose it helps lock in the layer of crusher fines or dust that covers the pipe, I then use the flat side of my shovel to tamp down, smooth out and create the slope with the crusher fines and after that I slide a 2x4 across the top to further level it out and as I do this I take my long leveler to check how level the top is.

By the time this picture was taken bad weather was getting ready to set in so I quickly and sloppily I might add, threw down some ballast with cement to see how it was going to survive the Winter, I will clean it up this spring. So far it has done very well. 


Next time I will continue my blog on the roadbed and maybe some other stuff as well.