It’s Our 38th Wedding Anniversary!
Getting Ready For Fall
Ann and I were chatting about the Barkyard this morning and all the things we want to do. All the things we still have left to do. Things like launching the website so that it’s more than just a landing page. Things like producing videos with trains, not just the pups. After all, it is the Barkyard Railroad!
Our “online presence” is still under construction, to borrow a now antiquated description from the web design museum vault. These blog posts should help fill out content, but the idea is to welcome folks to our Barkyard and to share our enjoyment. Share our experiences. Share the latest developments.
It’s almost September already, what most folks would consider the beginning of Fall. Ann is ready to start the transformation from Summer to Fall. Fall colors. Fall flowers. Fall decorations. You know, bales of hay, scarecrows, pumpkins. Those sorts of things.
Ann mentioned how the “Downtown Marketplace” is looking more like a ghost town these days, and she’s right. We had storefronts and windows and streets, but the constant pounding from the pups have reduced our buildings to empty shells. The streets trampled to rubble.
While it’s a bit disappointing, it just another “puppy proofing” opportunity. We hope to have the time to transform downtown into a true “ghost” town for Halloween, with more castings, lights, perhaps even sound. It’s an aggressive schedule and will take time to accomplish to be sure.
Our Plans
Here’s of photo of what we have to start with for the ghost town. Those three buildings on the left used to reside in the gap to the right. Ann moved them out by the switches to act as a block to keep the dogs from destroying the now unobtanium turnouts.
Where they stand now was supposed to be the site of the Grand Hotel, but we never really figured out how to make the castings work for anything more than a single concrete block. Well, not so much figuring it out as much as moving beyond the limitation of a single casting no larger than a concrete block, constrained by the size of the largest pattern sheets.
I’ve been designing some new 3D printed molds that can be joined together into a single, larger “all in one” mold. Our largest pattern sheets (15″ x 15″) are more than four times the size of the available print area (8.5″ x 8.5″). That work is on hold at the moment while we continue on the website. It won’t be long now though. To give an idea of how long it’s going to be, the photo is already more than a month old.
Maintenance is another big ticket item. We had just finished replacing more rotted wooden stringers. You can see a couple of new slats sitting on the sawhorses in the background. We found out the hard way that even though those stringers are not sitting in direct contact with the ground, the dirt splashed up by raindrops is just as hard on them. But we’ll cover that in another post.
Once we get past Halloween, we plan to “refurbish” Main Street. We used “Hardi-Backer” board as the “pavement”, cut to size, and surrounded by concrete block “caps” to simulate a raised curb and sidewalk. While the “Hardi-Backer” holds up to the elements and resists rot extremely well, it’s no match for the constant pounding.
The plan is to cast the streets in concrete, and the sidewalks and building pads for that matter. Perhaps even casting a brick veneer to simulate old time pavers. Brick streets were far more common than concrete roads a century ago. Some brick roads remain in the NE Ohio town where we grew up. Even here in Apopka FL!
What’s Next?
Our intent is to increase the amount of video footage we share. At this point, anything would be an improvement to the handful of short clips of the pups on Facebook. We don’t even have a trailer for our YouTube channel yet!
Feel free to leave us a comment.