During Sun’s summer break last week, we spent quite a bit of time getting
the area around the caboose ready for the installation. We are stalled on
our permit development for the city of San Jose, thanks to the laptop getting
damaged. We had a family trip to Wisconsin last month and John’s laptop
was in his checked luggage. John’s bag was inspected twice in transit by the
TSA (which left little preprinted notes
behind). The laptop worked fine when we left Wisconsin but had a bad
motherboard by the time we got home to San Jose, California. We now have
to pull the data out and start again on a new computer. Sigh.
Last week, we dug trenches to add 4 new garden water spigots so that we
can water the yard without dragging hoses around the rail line. John is
also running gas and electric lines in the trenches to light and heat the
caboose. We are distributing the piles of sand and dirt left by our
contractor. The sand goes under the brick pathways (reusing the
bricks we took up before filling in the swimming pool) and the dirt will
go into a new planting bed between the brick paths and the deck. The base
of the deck will be the extra rail ties. Between the caboose and the back
fence will be a gravel walkway with plantings of nandina, dracena, and
maybe gazanias for a ground cover.
We also raised the reflective Rail Road Crossing crossbuck sign we bought
with the caboose. We had to cut off the bottom three feet of the
sign post so that the sign is below the level of the lower ash tree
branches. It looks great! (I will post a photo once we get the
software off of our now-dead laptop).
We plan to move the caboose trucks and wheels with a heavy fork lift
next weekend. This will reduce the time and number of trips it will take
to move the caboose. Getting the wheels moved will also allow us to
secure them to the satisfaction of the San Jose inspector. He is
concerned that they may roll in an earthquake.
KatysBlog 