Since 2012 we have had an open house every year on Halloween and Christmas Eve. More properly an “Open Yard”, we decorate the train garden for the appropriate holiday, run trains and hang out with anyone who happens to stop by. On Halloween we hand out candy to the kids and chat with the grown-ups. And on Christmas Eve we have a table with hot chocolate, mulled cider and home-made cookies.

We have never had a year when no one showed up, nor have we ever had a really large crowd, it is just something we do every year, rain or shine. Which is really a bit of a misstatement as both occur in the evening so there is no “Shine” and we have never had it rain on either holiday either. Light drizzle has been the worst of it and we have a pop-up canopy that takes care of that. The trains do not actually mind a bit of rain but the human operators do.

In this year of the pandemic we debated if we would do our open yards for the holidays. With so many other of our traditions going by the wayside this year we decided that we would carry-on as ever. Everything is done outside, we have a large yard with no need for people to congregate closely and we will be taking all the precautions we can think of. Halloween candy will be pre-bagged and on a table. As of right now we will be doing something for Christmas Eve but have not made any decisions on the cider, cocoa and cookies.

We ran our trains for a display at the county fair this week and had a wonderful time. Just kidding. We do not have a county fair. We do have a regional County Fair in Chowan County that encompasses the entire area. But, like everything else this year (2020), it was cancelled. As was the North Carolina State Fair. We do not go to the State Fair often, but we have been to the regional County Fair every year we have lived in NC and not being able to go was one of our major disappointments during this crazy year. So, we decided to have our own county fair.

We are not really the 4-H types, so no livestock displays. (Sophie would like to have some goats and chickens. Archie does not want goats and chickens. Emphatically does not. We do not have goats and chickens.) And it is a bit late in the season to be entering much from our garden for the horticulture competition. But there is a bright spot, a silver lining behind the 2020 cloud. Being the only participants, Archie took first place for his pecan entry and Sophie won for best mixed pepper display. Herbie was terribly upset when he found out that hamsters are not a livestock category.

Like fairy garden, birdhouses and gingerbread houses, carnival midway items are something we have quite a few of. Just a portion of them fill up our little three-foot circle of track quite nicely.

Herbie is a little battery powered hamster that merrily spins his little exercise wheel while riding around the track on a Hartland Mack chassis. The short wheelbase runs well on this ridiculously small radius track.

When we started construction on our layout back in 2016 Archie wanted it to include a water feature with a portion of it inspired by the Dismal Swamp Canal. So we ended up with a straight ditch with a small pond at one end and a larger one at the far end. The main pump was in the large pond with PVC piping under the pond liner leading to a spill way at the other. The problem with canals is that (in Sophie’s mind anyway) is that they are inherently not really remarkably interesting.

They are straight. They do not flow. And pipes with joints and fittings can leak. Which they did. So in 2019 we decided to fill half of the canal in and move the spillway to the far side of the bridge, closer to the big pond, and redesign it to be more creek-like. But that is a different story. This is the story about a trolley and a ton of rocks.

That broad expanse of dirt was even less interesting than the canal was so Corporate decided that what we really needed was a trolley line. One with a lot of curves. Tight curves. Because anyone who has ever seen one of Sophie’s show layouts knows that she likes her four-foot curves. Plus, we have a lot of them hanging around and a trolley would like them just fine. And just like that – poof – a higgity jiggity trolley line was born.

Slightly more interesting that the canal and infinitely better than the dirt. But not the easiest spot to take care of. So in 2020, enter stage left: a ton of rocks (2350 pounds actually).

We took up all the trolley track and shoveled out all its ballast to create a depression. The ballast on the main lines was scraped back to the track and weed block cloth laid between the two tracks. (We have been using a good quality weed block that has a fifteen-year warranty. Don’t know about all that, but it has been in place in some areas of our layout for four years now and is still holding up.) Ballast went back in for the trolley line and the track put back in place. And then we used about 1500 pounds of our rock to cover the rest of the area. And voila… Still a bit of clean-up to do and add some details but all-in-all much neater looking and easier to take care of.