Garden Railroading

This portion of my web site provides a description of my large scale railroading activities complete with photographs, diagrams and personal opinions! Feel free to visit. All comments, questions and input are always appreciated.

Site Index

ERA:  Exploratory  Coming of age  The first empire  The second empire

Construction  Laying Track

Structures  Truss Bridge  Trestles  Hancock Station

Rolling Stock  LGB 2-6-0 Mogul  DSP&P Boxcar  Tiffany Reefer  DSP&P Stock Car  Waycar

This model was built with Northeastern Scribed siding and strip wood, Shortline Foundry castings and Model Diecasting trucks. This photo shows the car nearly complete. The side doors actually open (they are hung with doll house hinges), Kadee No 1 scale #820 couplers were used and the car is now a straw yellow colour with lettering custom made by Track One for me. The extent of the right of way was 2 feet as shown here.

Here is the finished car with straw yellow sides and Track One custom dry transfer lettering.

After this little exercise, I was smitten by the Large Scale Bug and proceeded to acquire LGB track and their 2-6-0 mogul (blue boiler of course!). The first layout (there's always a succeeding layout) was comprised of a loop of track with a diagonal cross over. The curve radius was set at 5 feet - the maximum for LGB sectional track and the 1600 series turnouts were used. Thus the loop was about 10 wide and 20 feet long.

 The track work was laid on a 6 inch trench filled with stone dust. The track was not fastened to anything and allowed to 'float' on the stone dust. Through numerous Canadian winters, this strategy has worked very well requiring only minor adjustments in the spring. Now since the train was obtaining it's power via the track, it became necessary to solder a wire across each of the rail joints to ensure the electricity made it all the way around without any voltage loss. A 100 watt soldering iron was needed to heat the code 332 brass rail up sufficiently to solder the wires on. This was a long process, but worth the effort.

 We also discovered that cleaning the track top became a labourious back breaking task until a little light went on. If you take a standard drywall sander, mount a sheet of No 80 grit sandpaper and a pole handle, you are able to very quickly burnish the rail head without bending over. Over time, we found the track needed this treatment no more often than once a month to ensure reliable operations.
 
 

Here we are playing trains in the winter! I'm the lad on the right.

The mogul makes a run around the loop with a LGB CONOCO tank car and MDC caboose in tow. The railroad was shut down for the winter as the ice build up between the rails became too thick.

We ran the trains well into the winter as shown here. Of course, the track had to be shovelled off first! It's amazing, even with the engine weighing over 9 pounds, it was hard for it to cut through the snow and ice that builds up on the rails. Ice is a great insulator too! Now I understand why the real trains have problems with slippery rails. Usually by Christmas time there is enough ice and snow on the ground (and it gets frightfully cold) that we pack it in for the season. The track remains outside year round while the rolling stock is brought inside when not in use. This minimizes likelihood of theft etc.

 This layout worked well for about a year then due to pressures from my wife, Frances, and the kids, we moved the layout to a new location by the back of the house. A new kids play structure was installed in the former location while the new home became a rock garden with a railroad.

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Layout track plan.

 At one end of the garden railroad, rose a 12 inch high rock - large enough to hide the train as it circled around. A depression in the middle represented a dry pond with the track passing over on a simple through truss bridge. A station was fabricated out of plywood which stood beside the passing siding at the front of the layout. This layout remained approximently the same size as the first one - 12 ft by 25 ft.

  Through the exposure of designing layouts for other model railroaders, I have arrived at the conclusion that the simplest layout must have is a loop of track, a passing siding to support 'running around your train' and a cross over to support turning the train around. After that, a few sidings would be helpful. As you will note, this garden railroad adhered to this strategy.

  This layout existing for about 3 years and provided many hours of enjoyment. During this time I built a formal train station based on the DSP&P Hancock station.

Here is the new station on the dining room table prior to installation.

Follow this link to see how the station was built. The layout buildings are left out during the summer but are brought in during the winter so the winter ice doesn't tear them apart.

 The LGB mogul was converted to radio control during this time thus negating the need for track power. On the surface this may not appear to be a significant event, but it now permitted running it at other layouts and for future expansion using aluminium rail.

After 3 years, both Frances and I realized we had out grown the existing location. The rock garden was no longer big enough to support Frances gardening needs and I, well, needed more track and a more exiting terrain to run through - bridges and the whole bit.

  We surveyed the remaining portions of the yard and settled on a stretch of yard at the back of the property with a slight slope associated with it. Unfortunately, it sloped away from the house, thus giving our neighbours the better view, but alas, some hill is better than none.

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Overall view of the railroad.

Hancock station is sheltered from the after noon sun by a majestic spruce tree.

We laid out the garden hose to signify the mainline moving it back and forth and shoving it this way and that eventually we settled on a simple but larger track plan. This time it will have two passing sidings, a longer run, stub tracks and even a grade.

The track plan is a further evolution of the previous layout now providing two passing tracks and sidings.

Now began the hard work - dig, dig and dig some more. When you're done with that, move the rocks, some so large they can only be rolled. We in essence dug into the hill side, filled the low areas and moved all the rocks and dirt from the previous layout. Starting in early spring we were running trains again by mid summer and the garden didn't look half bad, since we transplanted the vegetation from the former location.

  The layout is now about 15 feet wide and 40 long. Quite a bit larger.

  Railroad ties were used to build up the lower edges of the garden while rocks and pieces of old wood fencing was used to build hills. valleys and trenches elsewhere. And as can be expected with anything to do with railroading, changes were made as we went along and started to see the garden materialize in the flesh er dirt. One change involved widening the centre portion thus requiring more dirt removal. My job!

  Follow this link to see how the track was laid.
This layout location provided the opportunity to incorporate some new points of interest:
- two timber trestles,
- one bridge, and
- a miniature pond.
Until the trestles were built, the track was held up with some simple stakes in the dirt.

Truss Bridge
There is a through truss bridge on the upper level where the track crosses a dry wash. This scratch built bridge is based on the D&RGW Hermosa Creek Bridge.

  For this bridge I ripped up cedar on my 4 inch table saw and glued the strip wood together with the Titebond II glue. The vertical tie rods were fabricated from model aircraft control rods. The rail was spiked in place with large scale spikes by MicroEngineering. The HOn3 version of this bridge is in the foreground of this picture.
After two years, this bridge has weathered to a nice silver colour. No wood preservatives have been used.

Here is the newly built Gn3 Hermosa Creek Bridge with an HOn3 version in the fore ground.

Curved Trestles
The year before last, we under took the building of the two curved wooden, each were 8 feet long. One was a single story high while the second had two. I decided to build each as a complete unit and install them into the garden as such.

Here is the single story trestle in place near the town of Hancock.

Follow this link to see how these trestles were built
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There are many different methods for laying garden railroad track.  The method we chose involves laying the track on a stone dust trench without any direct means of fastening the track to the ground.

• The circuit board in the locomotive was removed along with the track sliders. The smoke unit was disconnected.
• The Reeds throttle and the RF Receiver were then installed in the firebox/boiler and wired to the motor and headlight.
• The wire harness between the engine and tender was replaced with a more robust connector and wire.
• The two 7.4 volt battery packs were located inside the tender. An on/off switch was installed down through the tender floor to allow me to turn off the engine if desired.
• The coal bunker on the tender was cut open to facilitate installation and removal of the batteries during use. Two sets of batteries we purchased. While one set was in use the second were charging on the quick charger. During normal use, the spare batteries are fully charged before the operational set dies. Thus you have continuous operation.

Modifications to the 'standard' Bachman boxcar were straight forward.  A new taller brake shaft was installed along with Kadee 820 couplers. The sides were painted boxcar red with a reefer yellow letter board. A couple of rectangles were painted roof brown then CDS dry transfer lettering was applied.

I built the reefer from Northeastern siding & strip wood with numerous castings from Short Line Foundry and Grandt Line. The doors a hung with dall house hinges and actualy open. The car has complete under floor detailing. The car is brush painted with a custom mix of straw yellow and I had a custom set of dry transfers made for CDS.

As the Bachman stock car is based on a standard guage prototype, extensive modifications would be required in order to arrive at a scale reproduction of a DSP&P car. Therefore, we chose to make a few simple changes to 'imply' a DSP&P car. A new taller brake shaft was installed along with Kadee 820 couplers. Name boards were fabricated from styrene and glued to the car sides. The car was painted boxcar red and CDS dry transfer lettering was applied.

The DSP&P railroad had a series of Waycars as tail end cars for the freight trains. The Bachman Coal Creek caboose provided a great starting point. To start with, the end windows were blocked in by adding new scribe siding. The window mullions were removed and a new styrene cross member was added. The side handle railings were removed and the mounting holes plugged. Kadee 820 couplers were body mounted and the car was painted with engine black and straw yellow. Once again CDS came through with a custom set of dray transfers that contained the red shadowing on the letters.

To add a little animation to the Waycar, I added an interior light and another in the conductor's lantern! The figure started out as Bachman conductor whose arms were modified and a pair of wires run up through one leg and arm to the lantern. The lantern was then drilled out to accept a 1.5 v bulb. A C size battery is housed inside the car with an on/off switch protruding through the floor. I also added a jack to permit recharging of the battery while in the car.