My new garden line under construction

Here are some progress pictures of my new garden railway. I havent managed to come up with a name with the initials LGB like Paul, the Stainzmaster, Holt has. Maybe he will chime in with some name ides that have an Austrian ring to them. Anyhow, the first pic is of the south end of the layout where it loops near our pond and thru a rock cut. Second pic is where I will put a proper village building or two, right now there are 3 ceramic buildings I painted but they are more suited to O scale than G. Third picture is of my two bridges over a dry wash that still needs its rock bed done. Both bridges are made of wood and supported on common old red brick that I had that has moss starting to grow on them. You can also see the grist mill in this pic along with the morning passenger run. In the last picture you can see where the line is going to be run, all the way down to the far end around that evergreen at the far end, both tracks will pass behind the wood swing. Since this is in our front yard, buildings will be kept to a minimum right now. We live in a very quiet neighborhood on a long cul de sac, so I am not to worried about theft ect. I would like to put a small engine house and service facilities down at the far end. I need to work up the embankment going up to the bridges from the area I am still building. I have some ideas for that part, just need to clean up my workshop first. Cheers Mike

Looks like a great start of a beatiful railway Mike! This is always a great stadium: all those ideas and planning come to real. Looking forward to see how it develops!

The smaller scale buildings could be placed in the background. It will give the idea that they are more in a distance and it will look better.

I came up with a name, Linz Gmunden Bahn. I fixed the double pic, to the one of the bridges like it was supposed to post the first time. Just out of view to the right in the bridge picture is a Pola switch tower, this controls the junction of the future line, that will go thru the chain link fence to our back yard and the village of Gmunden. Using those smaller buildings in the background, probably in Gumnden when I build it, is exactly what I was thinking. I can take traffic at Linz from Paul's Line and take it to Gmunden. Hopefully in a year or so my line will be as photogenic as his line is now. Once the track is all down and the kinks worked out, I will ballest the line. Mike and Michele T

Great to see new layouts taking shape in different parts of the world.

Do you have a track plan Mike and how big is your garden?

I have a track plan drawn out using my LGB planning template, dont have a good way to get it into the computer to post though. The layout is roughly 6 foot deep from edging to the house or to the fence depending on which side your looking at, length wise is 20 foot on one side of the "L" and other is 24 foot. The layout is basicly an upside down "L" Eventualy the line will have a branch that goes thru the chain link fence, down the north side of our house, then passing under our raised deck for our swimming pool. Under there will be hidden staging for trains. Simulating the town of Gmunden, Austria. Our back yard is sun soaked all day long and not pleasent to be out in during the long hot humid summers in Indana. But our front yard is shaded by 2 huge silver maple trees and 2 large arborvita bushes. The curves are LGB R1, most all straight is LGB but for a few REA 3 foot straight sections. Hope to make some more progress on it later this week. Mike

That's a nice picturesque spot you've chosen for your railway. Reading all these posts about folk building their railways is going to have a bad influence on me. I'm supposed to make a start on putting in my vege garden very soon and if I don't watch out I could end up planting a railway instead

Here is the lines new "BIG" engine. She is an old LGB 2073 from the yellow box era. Had a few cosmetic issues, missing steam chest cover and broke slide valve rod, loose engineer, loose coal box and burnt out headlight. I lighted the upper lantern with a 18vt grain of wheat lamp that I yellowed with special glass paint. Cheers Mike