I just had a fantastic idea for a post and lost the idea as I sat down in front of my keyboard. Has that ever happened to you? It is definitely related to age. In the last few months, I have found myself losing many things, ideas being one of them. Another thing I am losing is motivation. I seem too content watching videos endlessly. Writing is becoming a chore, and reading is also becoming a drag. However, reading may be eye-related. And the idea I lost in the first sentence just returned to me. Trains. I love watching videos of model trains running endlessly through some beautifully detailed man made scenery. The detail in some of these layouts is amazing. Another thing I am astonished by is the many new scales that are being adopted by the hobbiests. New models are getting smaller and smaller by the day. The challenge of course is to build train layouts with buildings and scenery to match the scale. It is not unknown to see modelers making layouts on a coffee table platform or smaller.
The model train hobby is growing. I had previously thought it was limited to old men who worked for railroads as careers. I have put building a model train diorama on my bucket list. The idea of making an utterly realistic layout on a desktop fascinates me. That, and the idea of spending my retirement nest egg on man toys, seems fun. About thirty years ago, I had a similar urge, which I acted upon and built a model railroad in my garden. The job was challenging but thoroughly satisfying. I selected G-gauge as the medium because the trains were rather large and very detailed. As with all of my brainstorms the project got out of hand because I over thought it. The larger the scale the closer to reality things have to be modeled. The first impasse I reached was that I needed a large space in order to navigate the grade changes in my yard. Trains don’t like to go uphill. When the wheels are steel and the rails are steel, the coefficient of friction is not very suitable and the tracks have to be very level to keep things running. Have you ever seen a train running up a hill? If you did, the hill was very gradual at about 1-2% grade.
I decided to change the paradigm to make a very long story shorter. Instead of making a yard that looked like a miniature city with a railroad running through it, I decided to make a garden with a railroad to add some drama to the plants. The effort paid off because I had enough of a project to keep me interested in gardening and model railroading. The garden involved my wife Barbara who chose all of the plant life, and me who laid the track, built a trestle bridge that crossed alive stream, a tunnel that ran under a waterfall, and a trestle to climb up the hill.
Barb and I belonged to a garden club that held a yearly garden walk to raise money. My train project deadline was debuting the PA&GRR (Prestwick Area and Garden Railroad). Of course, I finished in time, and the railroad was a hit. Many visitors told us others had told them to see this garden.
As a side story, on the morning of the Garden Walk, about an hour before the first visitors arrived, I was sprinkling water on select plants when I saw something that horrified me. A large garter snake was poking his head up vertically out of the ground cover next to the tracks. Oh my God! All I could think of was the hysteria that this critter would cause if he appeared to the many people visiting during the show. I went after him with a spade in hand ready for decapitation, but he disappeared and I never saw him again.
I cried when I sold that house, garden, and the railroad with it.
Filed under: Biography, Garden, Hobby | Tagged: G-Scale, Garden Railways., Model Railroad | 2 Comments »
