Darkavich's Daily Ramblings

This weekend was a nice one, but the stars aligned to conspire against me in the back yard. I did get a bunch done. I got up early and headed to lowes to pick up some more sprinkler connectors and amended topsoil.

I am glad I decided to purchase the soil in bags because I paid less money for all the soil than the delivery charge to have it delivered. I finished filling up the herb garden area with the soil and ran drip irrigation to the area. I then planted all of my seeds. The plants that I decided to grow are: Rosemary, Basil, Chives, and Oregano. We will see how well I did in about 10 days as the seeds germinate.

I hooked up the last two valves to my automation system. I am now out of ports, so when I hook up the grass, I am going to need to re-route the front yard to it’s own system so that I can free up two of the back ports. I wanted to finish hooking up the grass and trees, but I discovered that while I bought all the right parts for my risers I was now out of 90 degree elbows. I can’t seem to have all the parts I need when I need them sigh.

Sunday I decided it would be a nice day to roast a chicken so I cleaned up the grill and skewered a chicken. Nothing tastes as good as fresh roasted chicken. I put some left over mulbec wine in the drip pan. This made the entire area smell oh so yummy!!! I was salivating all day.

I laid out all the track for phase one and was only short one turn-out. Easy enough to remedy with ebay. I then broke out the rail clamps to start installing them. I did the first 10 clamps with no problems. The next set of clamps which look exactly the same, but are not didn’t fit. After careful inspection I found they are not the same. They may rail clamps and rail joiner clamps. The joiner clamps are slightly larger to go over the rail joiners. These are not the ones I need, as I have removed all the joiners from my rails. I have email the company I bought the clamps from to see about getting them exchanged. I have 150 of them big sigh. It just wasn’t my day for getting a lot done.

Next weekend we are going to The Big Train Show in Ontario. Hopefully, I will pick up some good additions for the railroad and exchange the rail clamps. The manufacture of the clamps will be at the show.

On a side note, I have been having problems trying to get my rail program to line up my track. 6 feet of track is off and I can’t figure out why. I emailed tech support. I am assuming when I get my track clamped it will line up and I will see where the extra play is.