I’m new to garden railroading, but did just build a small figure 8 out back this summer that my daughter and I enjoy. I’ll try to post some pictures of it later.
As I think about expansion, and read articles on here, I see lots of good suggestions about raising the railroad. But here is the thing that I don’t get: don’t you need to raise the ground as well? I mean, the buildings and station and such will need to be on the same level as the track. So do you end up with a garden railroad in a giant flower box. I can sort of see this for a small railroad setup, but if you want more track and more large curves, this could be lots of work filling. Plus you would have to climb up into the garden bed to work on the middle of the layout, which would mean lots of bending over and all.
Yes, you do have to raise the level of at least your roadbed to the elavation that you’ve chosen. And any sidings, yards, industries, towns, etc also have to be at the same level. And yes it is difficult and very expensive. However, it is the best way to build a scale model railroad, in my humble opinion.
I had concluded that the only way I’d proceed with my outdoor layout was to elavate it to at least 3 feet. It’s a personal preference, but I am just turned off by the “helicopter view” you get with ground level layouts. I examined the cost and labor of using dirt/rock/retaining walls and also using pressure treated lumber “tables” to accomplish this. My conclusion? It’s way, way too expensive and difficult. Instead I’m building an On30 indoor layout at a 40" elavation. I’ll run this layout in the winter and when I want to run trains “realistically”. My LS “garden railroad” will be at ground level and designed to be smaller and much less detailed and ambitious than originally planned. The essence of operation will be to have scale trains running through the flowers with just a couple detailed stops to add interest.
I hope this new approach will satisfy all the aspects of what I want from model railroading.
Various parts of my layout are raised but most is not. I think it is a bit sweeping to say one is better than the other. My opinion has been for some time; after viewing many layouts, that raised is harder to do but easier to operate when it is finished especially if you are getting on in age as am i.
It is true if you raise your track you do have to raise your trackside stuff as well and in some cases this can be very hard to do.
What Walt says is right, you do have to use treated timber (lumber) and it can be expensive but it can be a lot easier to use year in and year out. I had not thought of what Walt has said about having a helicopter view, he is quite right of course but it has never affected me at all. ie i have not been adversly affected by this type of view.
It depends on what you are “tying” into for your overall theme. In my case, the GRR and Koi pond were built as a “matching set” (at the same time with considerations for each made by the other.) Since my plans called for the train to pass through a tunnel under the waterfall and later (now under construction) to climb to the top of the falls with a trolley car, it dictated that everything else be at ground level.
Having said that, I also considered doing the elevated thing as it is not so easy to get up off the hands and knees anymore.
I guess Walt’s concept of the “helicopter view” is also a good point. I got used to that view with waist high N scale layouts and never though about it until now. But, Walt does have a very valid point.
My layout is on a slope. To make a level spot for the town and the yard I built a retaining wall and back filled with dirt. This makes the front part of the layout at waist level and has given me lots of comparison to working at ground level and working on a raised trackbed.
For looks, you can’t beat the raised portion and I use it for the more detailed models and the things I want my visitors to have an up close and personal view.
For building the layout, there is no comparison to working on something that is raised over something you have to get on your belly to work on. Track work is three to four times faster on the raised portion.
A raised layout also gives you a greater variation on the topology. Rivers, streams and hills are more easily included.
For operations, do an experiment. Try putting a bunch of cars correctly on a track at work bench level and then try the same thing on the floor. I don’t bend or see as well now as I use to and find having the wheels where I can see them makes it far easier to make up a train. If you plan to run live steam, it is very difficult to service an engine laying prone on the ground.
For the downside, my layout consumed copious quantities of fill dirt. Moving the dirt has consumed more hours than laying the track.
If you do go with a layout built on fill, make sure the fill dirt has had plenty of time to settle before laying roadbed. I use a product from Mainline Enterprise (now owned by Spit Jaw) so I can get the roadbed in before the last of the dirt is backfilled to the track level.
Okay, this is sort of what I was thinking, that raising a large railroad area would be difficult and expensive. Plus, if saving knees and back are the goals, all the railroad must be near the edge of the raised land. Maybe that is not a problem, but it certainly puts some limitations on the scenery.
I agree with Walt that the eye-level view, or close, is superior to the helicopter view. This is the reason that I am investigating raising some or all of the railroad. But right now, I feel that much of my time might be saved and my $$ might be better spend on a few nice outdoor chairs to bring the eyes down closer to the railroad, rather than bringing the railroad up to the eyes. I think I will still have some elevation in the railroad, to go up a mountain or something, but that is to add variation and because we like mountain railways.
As I mentioned, here is a link to some pictures and description of our simple garden railway. We chose to start slow, to make sure our daughter was interested. Of course, my interest in growing rapidly, and now I want to model some of the large Southern mainline trains I used to see growning up
in Alabama. Photos
From my point of view you have hit the nail on the head it is hard work and costly to have a raised layout but whether it is worth it or not is an individual decision.
As with all things in this hobby, it’s a personal thing. Do you want a garden with a RR in it or a RR with a garden here and there? I like mine at ground level and helicopter or no helicopter I can watch the train snake its way around the garden and blend in with it in places. If others don’t like that then they construct their’s in whatever fashion they wish. It’s your RR, build it how you want.
Like Kim I prefer ground level. OK it is harder on the knees but has the advantage of interest as the line wanders around the garden and appears behind plants, small bushes etc. My newly constructed layout is on a slight slope and therefore parts are raised by 12 to 18 inches and other parts are at ground level.
As the garden, and that is where the railroad is (not the other way around), is a shared area my wife has taken a great interest and has planted more suitable plants and made one or two stone/earthwork features to complement the right of way. I suppose if there is a large area an elevated structure may not look out of place but in a small area elevated structures can be ugly. I must admit an elevated structure is easier to work upon.
Anyway each to his own as they say, and it does make life more interesting.
Hi Mark. SRS4501 here. I too could not get your photos to open. The link took me to the location OK and could read all your reports but, no pictures…would really like to see them.
Thanks for all the input on the queston of raised railroad beds. I agree that it is an individual preference and I appreciate hearing all of your opinions since it will help me decide, as a newcomer, which way to try next.
As for those that cannot see my photos…That drives me crazy. Could someone tell me what kind of error they get? Does the icon of pictures with broken links show up? Can you view this image, the first one on the website?
I cheated a little on my raised roadbed. I used left over bricks from the rebuild of my house and PVC pylons with 3/4" treated ply. The PVC/Ply is now covered with a viaduct. Very cheap and easy to do.
That looks good Jack; I am doing something a bit similar in my area 1, the idea of using bricks similar to what you have done actually came from this fiorum. I hadn’t thought of it myself.
I am rendering my bricks with some stuff that they wrote up in GR back in 1997 i think it is called Glocpata or similar and it has really good potential, Rene got me the article some time ago.
I have a fairly large raised layout which incoporates a big pond. The outer retaining wall is 28" high so that if a train were on the track I could sit on a stool to work on it. To fill it to the top of the wall excluding the pond area required 30 12 wheeler truckloads of fill. I added another 9 truckloads on top to make mountains.
My error was in making the whole thing a raised island. I should have made a series of connecting peninsulas so as to access the interior portions as I am now climbing a ladder to get up onto the layout, then having to crawl around to work on things in the middle!
Raised is better as we are all getting older, our eyes weaker, our bodies less flexible, and our minds less willing to make our bodies contort!
No matter what we do, there are things we would do differently the next time around; therefore, the thing is to just get on with it!
Thanks for sharing your experience. I certainly want to avoid getting all that topsoil delivered. Plus, I can’t get a truck around to my backyard, wheelbarrows only, so that would be impossible in my lifetime. I was searching for some kind of happy medium, in which the railroad is raised, but massive backfilling, and climbing up on it to work on it, are avoided. I think your idea about connected peninsulas is a good one. I’m going to have to think about that one some.
