Embers of Spring

I always lament that I don't maintain the Hillendale Railway better during the wintertime, because then spring rolls around, and I have much work to do before the railway is fit for use.

Early spring is one of my favorite times of year. In the Catskills, it means budding red maples and fast-flowing cold creeks, winter wrens singing in the bare woods and fox sparrows and rusty blackbirds scratching in the ditches. In New Jersey, it means the snowy blooms of the serviceberry, and wild violets bursting all over our unkempt lawn, yet to receive its first mowing for the year. It's an uncharacteristically wild time for our suburban plot - a short time when nature bursts forth with a riot of life, yet to be touched for the first time by pruning shears and lawnmowers.

Handcar at Coldbrook.

Today I was accompanied by a white-throated sparrow prancing in the grass as I picked up sticks and generally got the Hillendale Railway in order.

For the Hillendale Railway it means spring cleaning. Picking up sticks that have fallen from our Norway spruce over the winter. Trimming the English ivy, which was allowed to grow too much the previous year. This takes a day of my time.

Then comes the re-lining of the track which has been heaved by the frost into ups and downs and side-to-sides where there shouldn't be any. The Ulster & Delaware was nicknamed the "Up & Down" but we want to avoid that on the Hillendale Railway.

This section of the railway near Yew Corners runs under dense bushes and has to be cleaned almost weekly because of fallen twigs from the yew bushes. I had neglected it since last August, so out came the garden scissors to get eight months of English ivy off of the tracks. I am happy with the result.

The violets - New Jersey's state flower - are a beautiful pop of color around the tracks at Hillendale Station, and I wish they would bloom all year. It certainly makes early spring a special time.

If you're wondering about the triangular crossing sign, that's the style that was used in the Catskills at the turn of the century. The Hillendale Railway is based on the railroads of the Catskills, so my crossing signs follow suit.

The low creeping groundcovers in the raised bed I planted last spring have taken nicely and even continued to grow over the winter. The coral carpet stonecrop and Irish moss have been slow, but a two-week vacation this April led me to come back and find the golden stonecrop covering the tracks! I have since trimmed it. I am cultivating the raised bed to resemble the Lanesville area on the Ulster & Delaware, with fields and farmland amid a rocky valley.

In a week or so I think I will get started on the Elsewhere extension of the Hillendale Railway. This will route the tracks from Yew Corners across the edge of our lawn, and to a reversing loop which will be the final terminus of the Hillendale Railway. I struggled with a name and so decided to name the town "Elsewhere." It will be modeled on the private artist's colonies of the Catskills, like Twilight Park and Onteora Park, and will have its own community called Elsewhere Park.

At some point the first train will run - it always does - and thus will commence the seventeenth operating season for the Hillendale Railway.