A little while ago we were running some of our battery powered 1:20.3 equipment on the new layout that we had installed for the 2010 National Garden Railway Convention. We had installed a tunnel, as I like tunnels and they are a great place to temporarily park a train when you have to run inside or take a break.

Well this time when I came back from a break something was wrong – very wrong. I had powered on the engine, but there was no movement and it did not come out of the tunnel. As I got closer my mind had a hard time comprehending what I was seeing. Was that dirt on the track? Maybe part of the hill had fallen down? Maybe it was….

Oh man. Visions of Caddy Shack raced through my head. It was varmints and this one had blocked my engine and cars INSIDE the tunnel. I cleared a path for the train to get out and she was covered with dirt. No damage everything was OK, but round one went to the varmint.

The war has just started.

I went down the street where the local farmer has been saving rocks at the end of his field. He gave me a strange look when I asked if I could have them and he said sure, after 40 years he was not real attached to them anymore.

So we attached the “little” trailer and went a rock hunting. We made a few trips and on one of the trips we had a interesting idea about take the moss that had grown over this pile and transplanting it back at the BIGD RR.

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We went to the local nursery and got some “first plants” for our railroad. One of the reasons we went is that all the plants were 40% off and they still had a good selection.

There is still enough time to plant some plants in North Idaho so off we went. We were looking for ground cover and found a good selection and the price was right too.

More details on what each kind of plant we purchased to follow:

See All the Pictures Here