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I talked to the guy when he came home from work, and he was able to turn off water to that portion of the sprinkler system, until he can get it repaired. So I can breathe a little easier now. The whole hillside was becoming extremely saturated and I don't know how long it could hold up that way.
That isn't a model! You took pictures around some old mines in California or Colorado and are trying to make me believe that it's G Scale! Just kidding, that's some unbelievable work.
Keith Baker
Ray, at least you don't have to worry about an imminent slide then. Is the hillside natural or manmade? From the looks of your railroad, you've got some pretty good size hills.
The hillside is natural, consisting of former seabed. Sandy and very hard, almost sandstone. I actually had to chisel parts of it when I dug out the hill to build the tunnels and such.
Then rocks were cemented in place to build up the mountains and cliffs.
Under normal circumstances it handles rain very well. The rocks slow and catch a lot of the runoff, allowing it to soak into the ground through gaps in the rocks. The sandy soil soaks it up good without turning to mush, and even exposed areas don't erode much. After a storm it dries out pretty quickly.
But continuous seepage over a period of days was over saturating it to the point where the soil was beginning to go mushy. If it kept up long enough there's a chance of not only damage to the layout but even the whole side of the hill coming down.
Because I've never had problems with runoff before, my first thought was that there might be a water source somewhere nearby that was leaking into the ground. But I discounted that because I didn't know of any pipes in that area and was unaware that the neighbor had put in the sprinklers there. I should have just looked over the fence first instead of making assumptions.
BTW, this morning I taped my new digital camera to the front of a diesel switcher, set the camera to video, and drove it around the layout. The results were pretty cool, although it would be better later in the year when there's more sun. This time of year, most of the layout is in shade.
Ray, sounds like the blocked tunnel may have saved you from bigger problems. If you have the type of soil I'm familiar with from geology class at Cal State Fullerton, it's Franciscan formation. It's very stable until it get saturated. The underlying strata acts like ball bearings when it's wet and is the cause of most of the big landslides we read about in southern California.
I never really thought about it but that's another advantage of large scale railroading - you can just strap a camera on an engine and go without tearing down everything in your path.
I'll be interested to see a "good" video when you can get one posted.
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