Jigstones cast wall

For the garden railway, I need a wall. Quite a lot of wall. It's job will be to stop the gravel covering the garden from encroaching on the gravel that acts as ballast for the track.

Plan A involved some very nice scale bricks. If I indulged in a lot of scale bricklaying then I could have a really rather special wall. But I'd go mad in the process.

Plan B involved a cast dry stone wall from Jigstones.

What you get for your £9.00 is a mould for two halves of a wall. The builder (me) has to cast lots and lots of sections using quick drying cement, stick them together with more cement, and voila, 3 inches of wall.

A big tub of Blue Hawk cement is on the garage workbench and every so often I go out there and mix a small amount up. The bowl in use once contained a rather nice possett I had as desert at York exhibition. Seeing it was to be thrown away I decided that for this pot, landfill could wait as I was sure I had a better use for it. Many castings later, it's now gone pretty solid and has been replaced with a washed out Heinz Beans tub from a microwavable portion.

The mix needs, as far as I can tell, to be porridge consistency to pour and work into the mould properly. Too runny and the shrinkage as it dries is great, too stiff and it won't go in the mould.

Drying takes about 2 hours so this isn't a quick job but the results look good and hopefully, if it ever stops raining, I'll plant them on the line side.

Jigstones at Back 2 Bay 6