The picturesque San Gabriel & Moonshine Creek Railroad is built up from recycled railroad ties and hand-laid rock walls. A dry river of pea gravel “flows” alongside part of the mainline, diverting underneath the track through a short trestle that spans San Gabriel Canyon and then finally empties beside a 20-foot wide seating/observation deck complete with fire pit for those “cold” winter days in Florida. A unique feature of the railroad is the shay locomotive pilot beam incorporated into a bench complete with a link and pin coupler.
Although the track is nearly perfectly level, the sloping contour of the property drops almost 7 feet, whereby the lowest point on the railroad is approximately 10 inches above ground and the highest is nearly 6 feet. It turns out Florida is not all that flat!
Breaking ground…
This was the first of several deliveries of grade-2 recycled railroad ties. I purchased enough (74 total) from a local lumber company that they gave me a good deal, especially once they found out what the ties were going to be used for. It pays off to have videos of your trains on a smart phone 🙂
Using a cheap electric chainsaw and no less than 17 chains I cut the railroad ties up and carried them into place around the yard. I built up raised garden beds that were filled with soil excavated from other parts of the yard. Later on I got smart and through the use of beer and BBQ I enticed some good friends over for a couple of “digging parties”… without them I could not have achieved so much in so little time.
The actual surface of the earth was altered, one shovelful at a time. Here are some views of the future steam-up bay taking shape. Thankfully, the soil in central Florida is very sandy and is easily moved. No pick axes were harmed in the making of this railroad 😉
Patio Pavers
Gary Stone and his crew at StoneCraft Pavers did a remarkable job installing the brick patio. I’m sure it’s not often that they go into a backyard that has a railroad in it, but they kindly obliged when I asked that the new patio follow the contour of the mainline. It required lots of precision brick cutting but it really turned out fantastic!
Rock Walls
Because many full-scale railroads often followed rivers and streams I wanted the mainline appear to be running alongside a dry river bed of pea gravel. I decided to go with the look of a natural rock face and mortared stone veneer to concrete backing board screwed to the roadbed structure.
The steam-up bay has a larger rock wall face that houses a custom made San Gabriel & Moonshine Creek Railroad plaque. The sign is a unique resin material and is painted to look like rusted iron. Amazingly, it is outdoor rated and should hold up to the extremes of Florida Weather. Not to take any chances, I decided to make the plaque removable and inserted rare earth magnets that attach to a steel frame permanently mounted on the wall. Once I determined the right location for the frame I began to lay up the stone veneer around it. The final look is exactly what I was striving for: something that appears to have been there for many years.
Raised Plant Beds
In the area that was to become San Gabriel, the ground needed to be raised to meet the track level. One level of railroad ties did the trick at the high end of the slope next to the patio. Dirt excavated from other areas of the railroad was used to fill in the box. Irregularly sized railroad ties were stacked on end to create an interesting wall effect on one side of San Gabriel Canyon, where gold was first discovered in the area.