The first return loop is almost done. Looking north towards the barn, you can see the cut I made across a hump in the yard. At its deepest point, the cut is 5 inches in depth. I did my best to keep the bottom of the cut level. Even so, it still has a slight crown to it, perhaps an inch or less above the grade approaching it from the curved switch at the bottom center of the photo, and maybe 1.5 to 2 inches from the track in the corner of the barn.

To the right, you can see a curved switch that will lead under the eaves of the barn. I plan to have two tracks there for storage, in the hope that all my rolling stock will fit! The switch has a 100 foot radius on the left side, with 40 foot radius on the right. My Southern Railway caboose is peeking out under the corner of the barn. To help protect it from the weather, I had put up a couple of pieces of old tin roofing. Just to the other side of the caboose is what I call Hawkins Junction, where the two legs of the loop join.

As these photos (below) show, almost all the rail is in place around the loop, although I had only tightened the track screws on one rail. I still need to put the gauges on the rails and tighten the second rail. It also needs more ballast to fill in completely between the ties and on the sides of the cut up to ground level. I will have to run my riding lawn mower over the track here to store it in the barn. The white PVC pipe in the photo (right, below) is for drainage. I placed the two 1 inch pipes at the lowest point on the inside of the loop so water could drain to the ditch to the right. When I have the track adjusted, the grade to the hump will be very slight.

You can see the short gap in the rail in the foreground. I had added a piece of rail about 18" long to get the original track to stick out under the sliding door of the barn. I'll take that out, and add a new piece about 3 feet long to complete the loop. This whole curve is 40-foot radius. It's exciting to contemplate running all the way around.

The south return loop is now completed!

The curved switch leads to the mainline at Hawkins Junction to the left and to a pair of storage tracks to the right. This is the first switch with a 40-foot/100-foot radius curve. The points are three feet long: a foot longer than the points on all my other switches. I also installed a high-level switch stand from Gordon Briggs. The stand was complete with all the necessary links and was painted.

For the first time in two months, I was able to roll my caboose out from under the corner of the barn. All the rails are now properly gauged and screwed to every second tie (every one in some stretches). The caboose is sitting on the hump (right), the highest part of the railroad right now. Even though it is a hump, I cut out about five inches of dirt to minimize the grade. The grade you see comes up from Hawkins Junction and rises about four inches in 20 feet.

With the caboose on the south return loop main line at left, the diverging route heads towards the right-hand side of the barn. You can see the right-hand track switch panel that will lead to two storage tracks (above, right). Each will be about 18 feet long under the roof. The hump in the yard is lower here, but I will still have to cut about three inches of dirt from under the left side of the switch.

UPDATE: The two new storage tracks under the barn roof are now complete. My son drove the first short train into the “engine house” Saturday. The my daughter did the first switching moves when we picked up the riding car from Hawkins Junction Sunday. We picked up the car, rode around the south loop, dropped the car, then manually moved it past the loco. Then she coupled to the car and backed up, I threw the switch, and she placed the car on the right-hand storage track. She then backed up again, I threw the switch, and she put the loco and hopper on the left-hand storage track for the night. Pretty neat!

Just before Thanksgiving 2011, the LT&P work crew (father and daughter) extended the north end of the main line by constructing an abutment for a new trestle. It includes red concrete garden-style blocks and a piece of 6" PVC to serve as a culvert. The crew had to revise about fifteen feet of the existing railroad to begin the transition grade to the new trestle. It took several loads of new ballast for the grade. This was one of the first parts of the LT&P to be built and is about three years old. All the ties were in good shape, but since most of the LT&P is built with the rails screwed to every other tie, the crew put screws in every tie on the revised grade.

Since the LT&P is a small railroad with tight curves (at least for a riding railroad), it is not designed to carry two-ton locos. Two existing trestles carry trains by using four-foot spans of 2x4s. They are very solid. The new trestle will have a total of four 2x4s on each four-foot span.

The drawing shows the basic design, with a four-foot span of 2x4 stringers and an average rail height of just over two feet. The handrail on the LT&P trestle is intended to serve two purposes: first, it will help anyone on the trestle be safer in case of a problem during operation; second, it will keep the horses from trying to go over it!