My Garden Railroad
It had to happen eventually! I begged my wife for some precious real estate in our backyard until she finally gave in. I then had to decide on what I wanted to do with this space. I decided on a loop with 15' diameter curves because I wanted to run live steam and wanted the biggest curves I could fit so that my locomotives (and visiting locomotives) could run happily. I also wanted to put a patio in the middle so that I could be surrounded by my railroad and make it feel bigger than it actually is (and also have a nice place to sit and watch trains). The size of the layout area is only about 18' x 25'. I was amazed at how fast progress happened on my railroad. I started on August 15, 2007 and had trains running just over a month later. In fact it could have been much sooner but I didn't get the track until September 8. This has been the most fun I have ever had with model trains. Every project has been a great experience and still has not become boring - even track work.
This is the before picture. The layout will go from the house to the slide and from the walkway to the bushes
This is the first train to run in the garden. Notice that ballast has not been added yet. This was a test to see how much grading had to be done to get the track somewhere close to level. The dirt for the "mountain" came from the area where the patio is now.
This is the same location as the above picture but ballast has now been added. It really starts looking like a railroad with ballast added!
This is what the garden looks like at the end of September. At this point I still had not even sat on the patio because I was too busy working! Maybe next year...
This bridge was scratch built with a 1 x 4 and some scrap wood that I had laying around. It looks much better in these pictures that in real life, but it is just temporary.
I also added a pond for some visual interest. It was also a good excuse to have a bridge!
