This is a supplement to our article on Water Features for Garden Railroads. I came up with the content after we moved in November, 2016 and I began planning our new railroad for construction in spring and summer, 2017.

As a rule it's easier to build a railroad around and over a pond than it is to build a pond in and under an established garden railroad. So I started investigating ponds during the early stages of planning.

I am considering a larger pond than I had before. For one thing, a bigger pond is easier to stabilize than a small pond, which can actually reduce maintenance. In addition, I want to use 10'-diameter curves on the mainline eventually, and that creates a lot of real estate to weed, etc. Based on experience with my first garden railroad, a pond that takes up most of that area can actually be a labor-saving (and back-saving) device.

So the main choices facing me largely came down to using a flexible liner or investigating the larger molded liners such as those made by Maccourt and sold by big hardware store chains. I had very good luck with Maccourt ponds on our first railroad (the 100-gallon Jamaica and the 8-gallon connecting pond). Plus I've seen some of the other manufacturers' preformed pond liners, and they did not seem as sturdy. So I started with Maccourt.

I was using a graphic program to plan my railroad and other backyard features, so I contacted Maccourt to see if they had "birdseye" profiles of their ponds that people could use for landscape planning, etc. To my surprise, they did not.

So I downloaded photos of Maccort's largest ponds, reduced them to outlines, and reworked the photos until they approximated the shape of the pond as seen from above. Then I combined several of the shapes into a single graphic that I could use to try out different configurations by moving things around. The drawing to the right is meant to give you some idea of how the St. Croix, Lagoon, and Kodiak/St. Lawrence ponds would fare in or near loops of garden railroad track using 8'- and 10'-foot diameter curves. If you click on it you will get a PDF version that you can cut out like paper dolls to try things out yourself if you would like.

On the other hand, if you have a graphics program you use for designing your railroad, you might be able to import these shape using the SVG version of the graphic.

That said, the shapes of the ponds are only rough approximations, so don't plan everything down to the last inch using these drawings.

Additional comments on these as follows, in no particular order.

• All of the ponds shown, except for the connecting pool, are 18" deep, deep enough for goldfish to winter over in Ohio as long as there is good aeration, but not deep enough for koi north of, say, Atlanta. (You CAN winter koi over if you heat the pond but that gets expensive, and you run the risk of your heater giving out during a power failure.)

• The butterfly shape of the "lagoon" is made to accommodate cute little bridges in the garden, but for a garden railroaders, the ability to reach any part of the pond while on your knees could be a plus compared, say, to the St. Croix. Alternatively, you could put half of the pond inside a loop of track and half of the pond outside the loop, with a bridge running over the narrow "waist" part

• These ponds look huge in the store, and huge in your van or truck, and much smaller when you get them in the ground (unless your back yard is a postage stamp).

• The manufacturer insists that all the ponds be supported all the way around all the way up, which means some backfill is involved, no matter how you install them. (Never mind that when hardware stores display them, they just set them on concrete floors and fill them up. I assume that's only good as a temporary measure. Also, I used the 8-gallon connecting pond without supporting the sidewalls, and it lasted at least five years before we moved with no discernable problems, so the smaller ones might be fairly safe.)

• If the ground shifts during or after filling, and you notice that the pond is no longer level, you will probably have to mostly drain it and relevel it, which your fish will not enjoy, and which will cost you real money if you have city water.

• Unlike flexible liners, neighbor kids throwing rocks into your pond will probably not cause leaks. Concrete blocks, maybe. That said, raccoons used to knock 5- to 10-bound limestone boulders into mine, looking for snails, and they never caused a problem. (This is not a guarantee that your pond is safe from all such abuse, only relating my experience.)

• Most of the larger Maccourt ponds are special-order only at your hardware stores. Check their online sites - prices vary wildly. If you have to order it anyway, and you can save $50 or more, go for it.

• Maccourt pond liners are UV-resistant, not UV-invulnerable. Installing your pond so that the edge is hidden, say by carefully-arranged flat rocks, will not only improve the appearance, but might improve the lifespan. BTW, protecting the edges from UV is critical for flexible liners.

Maccourt Ponds Versus Flexible Liners

Installation - Because Maccourt ponds are pre-molded and sturdy, and level is important, you have to be very careful during installation. This could be seen as a disadvantage compared to flexible liners, which accommodate to almost any shape, as long as the "lip" of the pond is level.

Size - Even the biggest Maccourt pond is small compared to the size you can get with a similarly-priced flexible liner.

Depth - You can make a flexible-liner pond as deep as you want. So if you're in a cold climate or you want to winter koi over in your pond in Ohio, a flexible liner and a backhoe are the way to go.

Longevity - Unlike flexible liners, Maccourt ponds are very difficult to puncture, and they are somewhat more resistant to UV than flexible liners, although you should still protect the edges from constant, direct sunlight, just to be on the safe side.

Conclusion

On our old property, my little Jamaica pond was about fifteen feet from a low spot in the yard that was right on the property line. Whenever my neighbor saw water pooling there, he blamed my pond leaking. "No, the water level hasn't gone down; that's just a low spot in the yard and we had a lot of rain." "That's why the water level hasn't gone down - because we had a lot of rain." Fine. There was no point arguing with him. But ten years after that discussion, the pool was still holding water as well as it did new. And that was after many instances of raccoons knocking large rocks into the pond looking for snails, etc. I'm not sure a flexible liner would have held up quite as well to that abuse.

I'm still considering a flexible liner for the large pond I plan to build eventually, but current plans call for using the 8-gallon connecting pools to create "waterfalls," and I may use one of the smaller ponds for my preliminary setup (which will be something of a "proof of concept").

If Maccourt products are unavailable where you live, but you can find some similar product, most of what I wrote above still applies. Try to find what folks in your part of the world are using with success.

For more information:

If you haven't read our article Water Features for Garden Railroads, please give it a read before you dig holes or spend money.

One of the most practical books on the subject is:

Nash, Helen. Low-Maintenance Water Gardens. New York: Sterling Publishing Company, Inc., 1996.

A great web resource about fish health and related water issues is Koivet.Com.