My first stop on this day was to Don Sauer's. His garden layout consists of three different tracks. The outside track is for live steamers. The track inside of that is for electrics but Don let me run my Ruby on this track. The center track is also set up for electrics and had a set of trolleys running on it. This was the first time I had the chance to run my engine outside and also on a real layout. It was great to watch my engine stretch her legs a little. There were two other engines running while I was there. A shay and a foreign 0-6-0. There was another ruby getting steamed up and another shay was getting prepped as I left.
My next stop was to Tom Bowdler's Shade Gap Railroad. He has a beautiful garden layout that has a single track mainline and a logging banch. Tom has many live steam engines. He ran a 2-8-0 and a shay while I was there, but he aslo had three other steamers on display. I ran my Ruby here too and Tom put it to the test. My engine had never pulled a train before so he started putting mining cars on behind the engine and boy was I proud of my engine! She took eight mine cars and a caboose and still had strength to pull several more. Who says Rubys can't pull anything!?!?!
