The conduit is 30' long. Work continued outside, including several trips to the landscape materials yard for sand, stones, and the "red breeze" clay/gravel mixture. By Sunday morning, November 7th much progress had been made on the paths. On Saturday I hauled 1.4 tons of red breeze and 1.4 tons of sand, and moved all of that via many, many wheelbarrow loads. This picture shows the red breeze in place:
This next picture shows the sand in place in what will someday be the patio in front of the main porch. You can also see that the stone steps are set and almost ready (I will be adding mortar to them, probably next spring, to add stability:
I'm still not sure exactly what type of masonry I'll use for that patio. Meanwhile, I've started placing the "Colorado rose" flagstones in place on the patio by the pond.
Between the stone steps and the porch will be a short foot bridge that will go over part of the train line. This area has been dug out extensively this past summer to reduce the grade needed for the train line, but now I need to finish the stone steps and design the footbridge so that it is easily removable -- as occasionally I'll need to perform maintenance on the tracks underneath. This picture shows that area as it is now:
Stones on the left, a mini-deck on the right, and some landscape timbers and spikes in the middle where the tracks will ultimately be located. I'm going to use the landscape timbers to frame the short line segment where the tracks will go (this section will be double tracked as it will include a siding) and those timbers will also serve as the base for the bridge. I've bought the materials and cut the landscape timbers to size -- if the weather cooperates I might be able to get them all in place before it gets too cold.
Finally, on Sunday I spent the day prepping for winter, performing numerous necessary pre-winter tasks, which are - alas - a prerequisite of this area. Winterization work has been going on for a few weeks now -- I moved the pond goldfish to an inside tank about 2 weeks ago. Today I did one other winter thing, this time related to the garden railway. In a few spots the planned rail line markings have worn thin, or they were marked by metal tent stakes that were falling over. I replaced all track markings with wooden stakes that will survive the winter, so that I won't need to remeasure their locations in the spring.
At this point the best I can hope for is to complete the footbridge footings before winter gets too intense. From this point forward I expect most work will be focused on the N scale layout.