This is just a posting out loud, but I kind of like the idea of a outside layout. I have seen some garden layouts on U-Tube and was imnpressed, my yard is much bigger than the garage. Then K-10 trains (LHS) gave me some DVD’s to watch (Dream-Plan- Buid). There is a section about doing a Garden Rail Road and it has caught my intrest.
Pro and Con’s, I am guessing O is the way to go but I have a lot of HO stuff now.
Just find another headach again, Cuda Ken
Pro and Con’s, I am guessing O is the way to go but I have a lot of HO stuff now.<
From this statement I don’t know if you are aware that there is a scale for outdoors garden trains. G scale.LGB(I guess they are/have gone out of business), Aristocrat Bachmann and others make various G scale size trains.
There is a guy on here who did put his O scale trains outside. I guess you could put HO outside if you want, the biggest thing is that everything else will be ginormous compared to the trains and buildings.
Hop on over to the Garden Railways forum right here, and see who’s there, gather info. I plan on a garden railway as I have a pond set up and such to put one in, but I hope to be moving this year. I will only put up temporary, and have purchased a plastic G scale battery train. Many die-hard G scalers would gasp at that, but it was cheap, and gets me started without lots of investment before moving!!![;)]
First, a couple of definitions:
A garden railway can be ANY scale, but, usually, bigger is better.[8D]
An outdoor railway may or may not be a garden railway. If any encroaching plant life is either accidental (weeds) or nonexistent, it’s still an outdoor layout if exposed to the weather. The deciding factor will be weather resistance, in which, once again, the larger scales have an edge.[sigh]
There have been small scale outdoor/garden railways, including at least one (HO, European prototype, IIRC) at Disney World in Florida and several (OO) in the British Isles, a location not noted for model-friendly weather.[:)]
When I first moved to the dessicated desert I experimented with the idea of building my 1:80 scale empire in my foliage-free back yard. 115 degree temperatures, sunlight strong enough to melt an Athearn BB car, raindrops that impacted like bombs (not often, but definitely possible) and straight line winds that scaled out to orbital speed ran me back indoors in a hurry![#oops]
FWIW, would a modeler running live steam and real internal combustion in 1:4, 1:8 or 1:12 scale have an outdoor railroad, a garden railroad or just a miniature railroad? (Before you jump, remember that there is at least one commercially viable public railroad that runs 1:4 scale model locomotives.)[^]
For that matter, does a modeler who builds a shelf railroad in weatherproof display cases attached to his backyard fence have an indoor railway or an outdoor railway?[:-,]
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - ind
I have always been discouraged from trying this is HO. The first thing that I would think would be necessary would be to protect the track, actually the ties, from the sun. Here in AZ I see a lot of outdoor plastic pretty much disintegrate. But I think you could shade it well enough with a bit of effort. You would have to keep the track meticulously clean, both electrically and leaf, twig, sand, etc. wise. And you locos and rolling stock would have to live inside. Other than that, no problem. I am still sorely tempted…
Hi cudaken
HO has successfully been done out side.
But my thoughts are don’t do it the first rain Vs snail will tell you why YUCK!!!
I would suggest the smallest practical out door scale gauge combination is 32mm "O’ scale
regards John
Ken, last spring (2006 in case yesterdays 72 degrees confused you and made you think spring happened in St. Louis already!) I hauled out East on I70 and took the family to Amish country in Arcola, IL. Near Arcola there is a small park called Rockome Gardens. They have a moderate size garden RR. I fell into conversation with one of the old chaps that runs and maintains the outdoor layout and he explained how it takes them a couple of day or so in right-of-way clearing, track re-aligning and general maintenance to get the thing running again each season. This is a G scale layout as well. I have no experience with it, but I would imagine that HO track would suffer mightily in our cold winters and hot summers.
Yep Simon it seems spring is here in St Louis but I know it’s not here yet.
One of the reasons I was toying with the idea was to combine RR and Gardening. Last year I let the yard go to heck, just keept it cut. This year I hope to do some planting, maybe plant some rails as well.
Thanks for the help folks and may bug the people in the Garden section.
Cuda Ken
HO outdoors is a topic that seems to come up at least monthly on the Garden Railways forum, and sometimes here. Yes, it can be done, and many people in England seem to do it; however, there are some things that must be taken into consideration.
First, those who do it probably elevate their track above ground level. Imagine what a cricket or beetle on the track would do to an HO scale model that ran into it; or a leaf laying across the rails. They would probably be enough to cause a derailment.
And then there’s the weather and other environmental factors that must be taken into account. I have a G-scale layout in my back yard, and have heard people with G-scale outdoor railroads in the Phoenix, Arizona area say that the rail gets so hot that it can melt plastic wheels in the summertime, so I can just imagine what it would do to HO scale crossties or any plastic rolling stock.
Peco of England makes a UV resistant HO scale track for outdoor use, but Atlas and other brands of HO track in the U.S. have no ultraviolet inhibitors in them like the G-scale track designed to be used outdoors. I think the plastic crossties would quickly disintegrate in full sunlight, and I wouldn’t dare leave a piece of plastic rolling stock outdoors.
If you want to see if HO can survive outdoors, just put a piece of flextrack and a cheap boxcar outdoors for a couple of months and see what happens to them.
If you’re really looking for a challenge, why not HOn30 in a window box?
Even posts can be a problem. A friend of mine has a G garden RR with the track set on posts. This Maine winter, the frost got to the posts, pushed them out of the ground, and threw the track all out of alignment. He has a bunch of work before he can get running this spring.
HO might be good for a bonsai garden 
I like that idea, but woudn’t the plants look like giant and weird looking trees, just the plants on Honey, I shrunk the Kids? if you use HO it will look like that, I’d find a local hobby shop and ask if they’ve even done an O gauge layout, there is a local hobby shop in Huntsville that has an O gauge layout and they have a train room, were different people can bribe this place to let them set up their sets there, or they can pay to set them up here, but i would go to a place that has a “train room” or something like that and look there
P.S. that place in Huntsville is Southerland Station, southerlandstation.com