That reminds me, my brother in law used to work at a plating shop, and he had I think it’s 5 date nails from 23-29 with a missing number in the set, well he had the shop gold plate them. He gave them to me to put on a train car, I purchased online the missing one , but the cost to plate one now that he is retired is probably cost prohibitive.
nah. Go for it Pete 
Sure it’s only $$$ and we cannot take it with us!!!
Ooff - I’m getting to old for this working on the ground stuff! I tackled the most difficult section today, the last 20 feet on the property-line side of Deep Cut. A little excitement when I grabbed a bunch of weeds to pull and as I am pulling found out one was wild rose. Left a lot of blood in the garden! Then at some point I got a back spasm which is still bugging me, but I pushed through and got it done.
It looks really good, better than it has in many years. It was getting too dark when I finished to take pics. I’ll grab some tomorrow if the rain holds off.
I laid in a 500# supply of ballast stone on Friday, so the RR will get a nice dressing with fresh ballast too.
As promised, here is a shot of yesterday’s clean-up. Most everything in this shot was full of broad leaf weeds, tall grass and my particular nemesis - a tall woody weed with serious roots! I also cut down several volunteer Hemlocks that had gotten too tall to trim back. There is one that has been trimmed at the left of the shot.
It was raining by the time I got home from work, but I managed to grab a few shots between storms. Looking South toward my lot-line with Deep Cut in the foreground…
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Ground work just gets harder, doesn’t it Jon. Nice job, it’s a big effort you putting in and it really shows.
I really like that stand of trees in the background, do you know what they are? I zoomed in and they don’t seem to be Dwarf Alberta Spruce, so I got wondering.
Cheers
Neil
Those are Emerald Green Arborvitae, about 10 years in the ground, kept trimmed both top and bottom. Originally intended as a view block for pictures in the tunnel area.
And today - All of the main-line and sidings East of Indian Hill Bridge, or ‘The East End’ was ballasted after correcting a few joints that had lifted. Three full Homer buckets of stone sand and some larger random natural gravel (not crushed stone) were used. Over the years the East End has probably consumed well over a ton of stone sand. No idea where it goes 
The railroad has not looked this good in a very long time - maybe 5 years or more. Of course, now that everything is weeded and ballasted, we are going away for three weeks. I’ll need to start over when we get back!
The weather is supposed to be good on my next full day off; Friday. I’ll run a Photographer’s Special and take some shots to post.
The weather is supposed to improve