Progress on Sleepy Hollow Railroad

Ranger,

Congratulations on your grandchild. I have two, what a blessing.

Oh, as an American legion ball player in the 60s, love the field of dreams.

Just wait til the Grandbaby discovers Papas cave!  That's the best!

Nice work!

Peyer

Congratulations, grand kids are great! Basement leaks not so good. Hope you can get that fixed, but beware of sub-standard contractors. Layout looks very nice and I like the baseball field too. That's a nice feature for a layout that you don't see too often and I think the farm scene fits in well there too, well done. I hope the little one has good health and likes trains.  

Thanks RTR12, the basement leaks will have to wait for spring to be diagnosed and solved. And in the five days that I have become a grandfather, I already understand now what everyone had been telling me! It is great and grand! As for the layout, it was  a little tricky for the baseball and the farm area. It is pretty obvious that the baseball field and the corn field make up part of a drop down to be able to get to the scenery in that area. But, there happens to be a No-No in the mountain, as there is a switch (a nice reliable switch) inside. Knowing that if I did not provide access to it, there would be a derailment within and a nightmare to correct. So just behind the Menard's Barn is a portion of the mountain that pulls out to be able to get inside. Let's hope I never have to use it and that it was just a lot of wasted time figuring out how to conceal it!   

I also made the tough decision to step down as the head varsity baseball coach at my high school alma mater. My hip has just deteriorated to not be able to do the job properly. Hip replacement is on the near horizon. At 66, just too many batting practice pitches and fly balls and ground balls to do the body good. I was fortunate to play at Ohio U under Bob Wren. Mike Schmidt and Steve Swisher were teammates. To be the head coach 12 years at Dunwoody High school and 6 years as an assistant at Lassiter high school in north Atlanta. The Lassiter teams won two state tiles and one national title while there.

Anyway, I am including what every new grandfather does and share a couple of pictures of the new engineer on the block.  And special thanks to the forum member who sold me the K-Line Special Addition box car. It now has been put into the rolling stock! (The first picture is his first ride home from the hospital...my sister added the commentary {she has season tickets for the Bengals}).

Rick

Congrats on the grandkid, I am prob a lot of years away from that, if ever, but that is one cute kid....and so is the layout, I love the field of dreams, I can hear my favorite line in the movie "Ty Cobb wanted to play, but none of us could stand the SOB when he was alive so we told him to stick it" *lol*.

With the basement (having a basement in a high water table area), the first thing I would check is if all the downspouts are open and that you have the discharge going away from the foundations, that is a common one. Another thing is to see if there are any places where the dirt around the foundation is sloped into the foundation.  In my case, I live in a high water table area that causes water to seep in through the slab and the block walls, I have a french drain system to handle that, have for years. If this just happens in times of extra heavy rain, it is likely something relatively simple like water accumulating near the foundation (which can be fixed by bring in fill and sloping it away from the foundation) or in some cases an external drain in a low lying area to take the water away. 

BIGKID,

    I am looking for all of the advice I can. The basement had never been a sieve like this before and I have no idea why all of a sudden it has started. Three weekends ago we had several inches of rain all on a Saturday. Shortly after water started in not on just one wall, but three and in places a foot or so from the floor. It was like a hole in the dam with a steam of water coming in. This was happening in several places. Anyone stopping by can still see the chewed chewing gum stuck to several places in the walls that was used to block the flow.  I cleaned the gutters on the backside. It was blocked full of pine needles and gunk. I flushed all downspouts with boiling hot water to be sure that they were clean. I bought 40 bags of top soil and tried to fill areas that I deemed low and to create that slope away from the house and I bought downspout extenders that that take the water at least 4 more feet away from the house. It did not solve the problem as we had a rain this past weekend and water is still seeping in. It is not a drain problem as the seeping water goes down the drain sunk in the basement floor. I fear a very large expense to try to correct this as it is not good to stand on a moist, wet floor while running trains!!!  I truly do appreciate your suggestions. It has now snowed so any evidence is currently covered up.

Ranger Rick

Congratulations on your new grandchild Rick and considering all the life twist and turns you have been dealing with the layout looks great.   

Congratulations and bummer for your basement leaks. The wall has not been properly sealed and may mean a bit of digging down to expose the wall to fix. I hope you can find some way of keeping the water away from it. Sometimes somebody working hundreds of yards away can change the under ground flow.

Rick,

If I read your post correctly you indicated that this leaking on 3 walls just began with this latest rains.    Given that it is 3 walls vs just 1 wall, my guess would be that there is a fountain drain on the outside that has either clogged or possibly crushed in some place preventing the water from being carried away from the base of the foundation.   And the problem could be compounded if the foundation walls don't have good waterproofing on it.   Again that is just a guess.

I would also suggest doing 2 things that might help the troubleshooting.   

I would temporarily add a couple of lengths of black drain pipe onto each downspout to divert all the water an additional 10' or 20' away from the house. To see if that helps.

You may have already done the 2nd thing which would be to go outside when it is raining and check all the leaders and gutters to be sure they are all draining properly and not leaking.   I don't  know the elevations of your property but it would be work looking at the ground during a good rain just to see if you are getting some newly diverted water running alongside odd or into the foundation.

I know what a pain basement leaks can as I have had a couple leak over the years. But they are all fixable.

But the big news is the grandchild.  Congrats -  I am very happy for you.  If you thought trains were expensive wait until you get into full grandpa mode.     We had our 1 and only grandson 4 years ago.  They live in Essex, MA but were here for Christmas.  I had the greatest fun running the trains wth my son and grandson.  I was magically transported back to 1954 at Christmas time.

Good luck,

Ed

Ed, thank you also for your input. Since this happened with no previous warning and it is so pervasive, something had to go wrong and has not corrected itself. We have single digit temperatures and the water is still seeping in from the weekend. It is clean ground water and there is a lot of it. It looks like a lot more rain in the forecast in the next 15 days. I have given up right now. I had put carpet remnants under the table on the concrete floor to cushion my knees, but I almost pulled my back out getting the drenched carpets out of the basement and onto the carport. I did add the extensions and the added dirt to try to allow a better sloping but I was disappointed in the result. The ship is sinking!

But, I have been blessed with that grandson, so all is good.

Rick

Congratulations to you!!!

Rick,

I am not a foundation expert by any means but is sure sounds like a clogged drain pipe preventing the water from flowing away from the house.

One thing you said that gave me pause for thought. You said there was "a lot of water" leaking in. You may want to go outside and with all sinks and washing machines turned off check to see if the meter is still moving. They all usually have a leak indicator. Every meter I have seen had a leak indicator. Makes me wonder if you don't have have a leak in the water line in close proximity to where it enters the house and it is backing up water against the foundation.

Just something to consider.

Ed

Ed, our minds think alike. I have kept a close eye on the meter and it does not move unless I run water from inside. The other bit of evidence is that after awhile, the flow diminishes and actually practically stopped before the last rains. That indicates that it would not be a leak to the pipes either on my side of the meter or on the city's side. It is an enigma. 

Rick

Love the detail to your layout!

That sure is a fine looking grandson you have. He's really cute! Enjoy them while they are young.

The switch in the mountain will probably be the only one that ever has a problem. But it may recognize all the effort put into it's access and never cause a problem, you never know.

It's hard to give up things you like, but I would listen to your hip. It's about time to start running trains full time anyway and you will soon have that new engineer to educate in train operation. I have a knee, shoulder and back that put me into early retirement a few years ago. I enjoy it, but it's different and takes some getting used to. I still sometimes feel like I should be working, but then I think about my failing joints (they remind me themselves quite frequently) and the thought passes pretty quickly.

As for the basement, I think some of the others here have offered good advice. We moved from our home of 35 years in 2013 to a new, low maintenance house. Our old home had a stone foundation that was always leaking somewhere. We spent quite a bit of money getting the foundation repaired, the patio removed and replaced and the back yard graded, but the leaks came back a couple of years later. I think that had more to do with the amount of rain we had than the work we had done. 

The new house has a concrete foundation, the lot is very well graded away from the house and we have a sump pump (first time for one of those). One more thing it has is down spouts that go into the ground to a pipe that goes about 10' or so from the foundation into a basin looking thing with gravel under it and a floor drain like cover on the top (another new to us item). Basement problems can be a real pain and I hope you are able to get the leaks corrected.

I think Grayson will like that boxcar when he is old enough to know what it is. Our grand kids used to like looking at pictures of themselves when they were younger. The boxcar will be a special thing just for him and I bet he will really like it. Good luck and enjoy the little one, he will be in high school before you know it. Maybe he will need some help playing baseball on the way and it sounds like he will have a good coach.

Another small addition to bring the layout alive...two youngsters flying a kite. If one looks closely, there is another kite stuck upside down in a tree. Sorry that the pictures are poor and the lighting bad. I did not want to crawl in the water on the floor to get a better angle through one of the drop downs. 

RTR12, I appreciate all of the wisdom. This home was built in 1960. I grew up in it through high school, went away to school to OU, lived in Key West, then Atlanta for most of my life. Mom and Dad did not have the problems that I am now having. They may have had a little leakage now and then but nothing with the problems now. I moved back 7 years ago to take care of Mom who had COPD quite bad. Dad had already passed. Mom passed away 5 years ago and I have stayed in my little home town of Wilmington Ohio. I will get this fixed using some of the advice that many here have suggested. The hip and the shoulder pain is limiting the physical part that I can do right now. There are some good people here that will help me with solving it too. The weather has to be right!

I would certainly agree it sounds like something has recently changed causing the water problems. Also, I understand you wanting to stay in the house and it's good that you have good people around that can help you solve the problem. We have had a couple of contractors over the years that have caused more problems than they fixed.

Congratulations on the Grandchild, that's wonderful.  The layout really looks great!