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Kittatinny Mountain Railroad

About The New Railroad

Railroad Construction

We moved into the new house at the end of October. It did not give me much time to start on the new layout. The first step was to decide on a spot. This ended up being easy. The new house had an old flower garden behind the garage and on the side of the deck. It was a perfect spot. The deck is about 2 feet off the ground. It will provide a perfect spot for viewing the trains. Having the garage on the other side gives me easy access to the trains and a storage area. Another plus was the area did not have a grade (or so I thought).

Construction started November 5 2014. The area has to be cleared and brought up on one side in order to have a level area. The new layout will be similar to the last layout with a few exceptions:

Minimum of 8ft diameter curves.
Built with live steam in mind (no grades)
Use the least amount of switches on the main line.
Have a steam up area for prepping trains.
Set up for roundy round.
no more then 150ft of track on the main line
one siding for a logging camp.
Reverse loop somewhere.
Hand laid track.

Track Plan

The first step was to remove all the old plants and shrubs in the area. One area was filled with Vinka Vine and a tall shrub. The other area had an assortment of flowers. A walkway divided the two areas. My original plan was to keep the walkway but after getting area cleared I found that it would look un-natural. After the area was cleared I started with leveling the layout. One end had to be brought up about a foot. This was perfect since I wanted to have part of the layout elevated. This will make prepping the live steam trains easier. I started with rock found on the property to build the wall and about a yard of topsoil to fill in the low area. Because I had to add more soil to the area I decided that I would not lay track down until spring. I wanted everything to settle over the winter. Since I had a little time before the snow starts falling, I was able to loosely lay and bend the track down on the layout. By third week of November the snow started to fall. All work was suspended.

11/10/14

The area is almost leveled and most of the wall is complete. The top of the wall will get capped with some flat stone once the area is leveled. (I just have to fine tune the leveling)

11/25/14

I beat the snowstorm predicted for tomorrow. I was able to get all the track down. I had to tweak the above plan by bringing the inner part of the reverse loops closer together. I did this by taking out the curve and adding straights. I felt that the layout would appear smaller when running longer trains. The caboose and engine could potentially be side by side. My plan is to build either a single and double tunnel where the track come close. The winter will be spent re-securing the screws to the bottom of the tracks. Tomorrows snowstorm might put an end to work on the layout for the season.

Construction is Suspended

11/26/14

Construction is suspended for the season. 14 inches of snow has fallen.

Spring 2015

After a long, cold snowy winter I was able to resume work on the railroad. Work started the first week of April. The area was re-leveled and a ravine was dug out for a future waterfall. I also made a larger ravine around the well head. I had to keep that area clear in case I ever need to get work done to the well.

Once I was happy with everything I started to build the pond-less waterfall. Over the winter I had seen an article in Handyman about building a simple, maintenance free pond-less waterfall. It used a 40 gallon animal trough, water pump, chicken wire over top the trough and stone. Eventually a covered bridge will span over the gap.

Once I was happy with the track placement I dug a 4-6 inch trench and added stone dust. The stone dust was tamped down and then the track was placed on top. A final coat of stone dust was added over top the tracks. The tracks were leveled and ballast was brushed off. This is one of the many ways a person can lay track. I had good luck with this method. The stone dust acts like cement but if you need to pull the track up, a tug will loosen the track. Frost heave is not a problem because once the ground freezes in these parts, its frozen for most of the winter. Folks in the southern states might get frost heave with this process because they get more of a freeze thaw cycle.

The first test train. My son insisted we use his diesel. The outer loop of the layout is track powered. The reverse loops are not hooked up t track power. Only live steam and battery power engines will be able to utilize the reverse loops.

Trestle

After having a successful run it was time to start building the trestle around the well head. I had to make this section removable in case I ever need to access the well head. I built a simple jig to build all 14 of the trestle bents. This made the process easier and more accurate. All the bents were made to the same height. I found it is easier to dig out the area and fill with stone to get the correct level. I also decided to hand lay the track along the trestle section. After seeing it hand spiked I had made up my mind that the entire layout would be hand laid.

Hand Laying Track

For the longest time I have been debating on hand laying my track. The plastic ties always bothered me. I felt they did not look realistic and I was never 100% satisfied with my previous layout because of this. I decided that my new layout would be hand laid at some point. It wasn't until I built my trestle that I decided my main priority would be to hand lay the track before summers end.

I found the best way to hand lay track was to use the existing plastic ties. The first thing was to lay the track using the plastic ties and ballasting everything. Doing it this way allowed me to run trains at anytime. When I wanted to hand lay track I just pull a section of track up at a time. I started spiking the track from the middle of the section. Then I would slid the plastic ties down. This helped keep the gauge. For ties I used cedar cut on my table saw. They were cut at 1/2 inch by 1/2 inch by 4 inches long soaked in Linseed oil. The reason why I used Cedar and not Redwood or pressure treated wood was because with Cedar you can just push the spikes into the ties. Any other wood would require drilling pilot holes first. I used 3/8 inch rail spikes from Micro Engineering to hold the rails to the ties. Every fifth tie I put a number 1 screw. This will help keep the gauge in case the spikes ever loosen. The screws can also be used rather then the spikes.

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