Things I do for Trains: Chris the Brickie...

Just back from the first night of my 10 week evening class on bricklaying.   I want to have some (lift out) bridges on my layout and that involves probably at least one brick pillar even if I'm looking at decking etc for the main layout.  And the brick faced flowerbeds are falling apart and need some maintenance and I want to have my logging camp extension in one of them.

Bit surreal really to do something like bricklaying at evening class given that I've previously normally done computer based skill courses, or things that take place in a classroom.  The DIY course had all the girlies... :-(  (There is a girlie on the bricklaying day class and her work looked excellent - as Ann said she could be someone like a landscape gardener).  Also the course brought home how we haven't really moved that much forward from Roman times....  although one might argue that bricks didn't come back into use after the Romans left until circa 1500 AD...  Carpentry I can see as an extension of my modelling skills, but bricklaying is well off base... It would be interesting to hear all the stories of why people are on the course as we seem a fairly motley crew...

We build walls up, we take them down (the lime mortar we are using doesn't set in the timescale we are on).   By week 4 if we are good then we may get to leave our walls standing....

 I did about 4 foot by two bricks high tonight, with each attempt better than the last.  Learned alot already - I'm obviously not the first G scale train man he has had on a course... By the end of it then I think I will have got value for my £80 course fee.

Ann of course wants one of these...

Given that it is a tripartite build - base, column and bridge bit, then I had been thinking of a base and bridge for a bit of the Garden.

Working on the builders bottom, tattoos, and wolf whistles...

Chris