GRR School of Hard Knocks

Garden Railroading
1

Some of the things that I have learned the hard way since 2005:

Before buying big engines make sure they will negotiate your curves. Thats the reason I added the side yard railroad with 8 foot diameter curves.

Do a lot of research before building and buying.

Don’t work on the layouts when you have had a few too many.

Before building a tunnel make sure your highest engine and cars will go through it.

Don’t walk away from a running train that has Bachmann knuckle couplers.

Don’t expand the railroad into the wife’s garden without prior negotiations.

Be careful of who you buy from on Ebay.

Keep up on maintenance and repair of your equipment.

Accept the fact that the knuckle couplers on MTH engines like to mate with Aristocraft couplers a lot more than Bachmann couplers.

Don’t run the trains during high wind conditions.

Don’t soak the cleaning pads on your Trackman 2000 track cleaning car with metal polish.

Don’t go into a bidding frenzy on Ebay when you have had a few too many.

2

For health and longivity, item #7 is the most important. Don’t ask me how I know.

JimC.

3

Hi Rudy Good points most inportant is not to drive track though the parners flower garden I let mine do the garden design she is very good at it and I dig the flower beds and plant for her them she will tend them all summer

4

A couple of items that I forgot to add are:

Don’t let the wife near the layout when she has the waterhose in her hand with the nozzle set on high pressure [:(] Allways do the watering yourself.

Don’t leave a train running when you wander off and leave two chihuahua dogs in the vicinity at the same time.

5

OK Guys: The idea is to get her involved with the GRR. Once she has taken some level of pride of ownership, easements into unexplored areas of the garden are easier to obtain. In my case certain long-term expansions have been “directed” to traverse selected flowerbeds and tree beds. When she says things like “I want to be able to send the train away and not have it come back for a while”, I respond with “well, if it went down the rose bed it could.” She says, “why haven’t you started doing it yet?”

Yep! She’s a keeper!

6

Make sure the Pappillons (4 1/2 pounds of fur and bark) are not asleep in the tunnel!

7

Don’t rush in and use 6 ft long flex track for a Garden railroad with a lot of curves. Spent much time figuring out how to solder the joints together (I am too cheap to buy the rail clamps) - used a plywood table on saw horse to solder three pieces together at once and then carried them to the roadbed and bent them to fit with the assistance of my supportive wife. Since they are more “flexible” than sectional track spend much time keeping these flexible track sections level on the roadbed and at some locations in gauge. I used the 1 inch (or 3/4 inch) plastic conduit pipe roadbed design with stakes to hold this pipe in place. You then screw the track to this pipe (reference a great series in Garden Railways on how to build a railroad).

Next time I will use the flexible track for mostly straight runs and use sectional for the curves unless I mount the track on a exterior grade plywood rather than on the plastic conduit pipe.

8

Never start on a garden (railway) project without showing the project to the Vice President. After a couple of hours at the emergency room and seven stitches to her knee, I was removing rocks for a stone wall that had spilled onto a garden pathway.

D#@!, Rob

9

I must agree with what you had to about a FEW TOO MANY after running a 9 car + 3 F3 passenger train, the engins separated from the rest of the train. It TICKED ME OFF, so I shut down my power pack after the engins crossed over the second bridge ( closest spot near me ) to check the coupler. Then I returned to my second too many. realy could have been bad move to turn the power pack back on I was in the mood to see bad train wreck…

10

I will never understand why they (manufactures) will not get together and have a standard knuckle coupler… They all put out the same hook and loop.