O Gauge for Garden Railroads

Garden Railroading
1

We have a large backyard area in the Colorado Rockies that we are planning to develop into a seies of stone patios and xerrascape gardens this spring and summer. We are planning on incorperating garden railways, but are considering the use of o-scale instead of G.

Would appreciate anyone’s comments and experiance on this before we do something we might later regret. I see most all garden railways in G scale and initially it strikes me O would work just as well.

Would appreciate input THANKS !

2

In a nutshell, O gauge will work very well. The Brits have been doing it for years and years. You’ll want to make sure the track is UV stable, though. I believe Atlas’ latest track is, and there may be others. This has been discussed here in the past, so I encourage you to do a search for O-gauge or O-scale and see what comes up.

BTW, if you’re thinking of doing3-rail O scale, don’t even consider the tinplate track. Fortunately, there are now plenty of alternatives.

You may also check mylargescale.com, as this topic has surfaced over there as well.

Good luck.

Later,

K

3

Slotracer,

GR has run two cover stories on O gauge outdoors: August 2000 (owner used post-war Lionel and converted them [:0]) and August 2002 (O scale).

Rene

4

I posted a question like yours about a year ago, you can use Atlas or Gargrave’s track for outdoor use. I would also like to run my o scale outside but it’s up in the air until we deside on a new house or not. The pittsburgh garden railroad society web site has a o scale layout built on elevated roadbed ( what type of roadbed are you looking at building) The soil here in western Pa is clay with more clay followed by sandstone then coal ( poor drainage) so when I start construction I think I am going with the elevated route with fill underneath. Good luck in your O scale adventure

5

I really don’t know why you want to would do it, “G” scale is designed for outdoor use and I understand that where you live things can get pretty rugged as far as weather is concerned. I would keep this in mind and not try and re invent the wheel.

Rgds Ian