February, 2020 Update from Family Garden Trains^TM

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Update for February, 2020

Welcome to 2020. This newsletter was supposed to go out in January, so I left that first sentence in. But I kept coming up with more information I wanted to include, plus we've had so many new signups it took me days to get them all into the system.

Some of our readers may be tired of me focusing so much on our current railroad project. Rest easy; most of the real work should be done in a few months, then we can get back to catching up on other topics. But in the meantime, I am trying very hard to make garden railroading more fun for more future hobbyists.

Part of that includes recommending materials and approaches that will enable you to keep running trains whenever weather permits as long as you plan to live in your house. And that can only benefit the hobby, as visitors and family see you having more fun more often, and for years longer than most traditionally-installed garden railroads frankly permit.

I DO plan to eventually get back to writing new articles about other topics (and updating old ones).

On another subject, we're getting some interesting discussions on our Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/Family-Garden-Trains-146646465358072/). If you want to keep up-to-date on little things, like who is closing out Bachmann Climaxes at a good price, or what products to avoid at your hardware store's "garden center," you might want to check that page out.

Here's a caveat - though we technically have hundreds of followers, the way Facebook's algorithms work, only about twenty of our followers see our posts every day. A couple of our readers who haven't even "followed" the page check back every day just to make certain they're not missing anything interesting. Not saying you need to do that - we don't even post there every day. But you might want to check every so often. And don't feel bad about chiming in, as long as you're polite to your fellow hobbyists.

Also, please feel free to use the contact page that we have links to on every page of our web site. Chances are if you have a question, there are twenty other readers with the same question. In fact, the first fifty or so articles I wrote for our site were inspired by reader questions.

Well, if I don't sign off now, it will be March before you see this, so let me wish you a fun, safe, and productive garden railroading season. And please keep in touch.

In This Issue

The following content is linked to or included in this newsletter:

• Building a Raised Platform Railroad - After three summers' experimentation with raised platform railroads, we've learned enough of the benefits and "gotchas" to feel confident presenting this as an approach every potential garden railroader who is planning in staying in his or her house for longer than three years should consider.

• Building the NEW New Boston and Donnels Creek (So Far) - A downloadable 4-page PDF that summarizes the steps we went through to build our new raised platform railroad.

• Expansion Planning, 2020 - Thinking ahead to the last major addition to the NEW New Boston and Donnels Creek - a platform expansion that will let us run longer trains and do operations.

• Train Storage Solutions, 2020 - Indoor railroaders don't realize that each garden train piece has 27 times the bulk of their HO trains. Where do you put them when they're not on the track, and how do you store them so that they're easy to retrieve when you do run trains? Fortunately we have a huge garage with room for shelving. This blog article might not entirely apply to you, but it might give you some ideas.

• "One-Day Railroad" Revisited - This is an update of a popular article that explains, not just a "quickie" approach to starting a garden railroad, but also the reasons to include the expected lifespan of your railroad in your planning process.

• Garden Railroading in March - Things you can do in late winter/early spring to prepare for a great season.

• NGRC at Nashville, 2020 - The National Garden Railway Convention is still coming.

Building a Raised Platform Railroad - If you've been following our posts for the last three years, you've seen us design, redesign, build, and expand our "ultimate" low-maintenance, rock-solid garden railroad. Now that I have a real-world example of what works (and what doesn't), I've put together an article describing how you, too, can have a raised backyard railroad that allows you to run trains whenever weather permits, with almost no maintenance. And, surprisingly, it will cost you less money than traditional raised railroad construction. This is not your father's garden railroad. :-)

Click on the link below to see an overview of what it takes to build a simple raised platform railroad in your back yard with tools you probably already own.

https://familygardentrains.com/primer/raised_platform/raised_platform_grr.htm

Building the NEW New Boston and Donnels Creek (So Far) - Though we have been blogging since early 2017 about how we planned to build the new railroad, how we built each section, and the lessons learned, lots of readers haven't had the time to comb through all of that to figure out what we're doing. So I've updated a PDF we first published in 2018 that summarized our efforts. (It's amazing how much shorter our new railroad's history gets if you leave out all the mistakes, false starts, and second-guessing bits.)

In a way this is a companion piece for the "Raised Railroad" article listed above. That article shows a very simplified version of the approach we have taken, and this paper shows how the same approach can be used to build a much more complex, low-maintenance, high-interest outdoor railroad. We're not done yet, but this should hopefully help you "put the pieces together" when it comes to figuring out what we've done and what we have left to do.

Click on the link below to see a summary of what we've spent the last three summers building in our back yard.

https://familygardentrains.com/fact_sheets/Building%20the%20NEW%20New%20Boston%20and%20Donnels%20Creek.pdf

Expansion Planning, 2020 - Three years after starting a garden railroad in our new home, we are trying to figure out the best way to finish the last loop of our raised platform railroad. How to make room for 10'-diameter curves and more towns and industries, but still keeping things manageable requires some thinking and rethinking.

Click on the link below to see the options we are reviewing for the next and last expansion.

https://familygardentrains.com/newbost/20_1_1_planning/20_1_1_planning.htm

Train Storage Solutions, 2020 - Using periods of cold weather to get things sorted in the garage, including shelf building and tips for schlepping trains from storage to the tracks. I've included a short list of things other folks do to get their trains on the track in a hurry, too.

Click on the following link to see our status as of late January, 2020.

https://familygardentrains.com/newbost/20_1_19_shelves/shelves.htm

"One-Day Railroad" Revisited - This month, I'm republishing an article I wrote over 15 years ago which needed updates based on things I've learned since. I'm especially having to revoke some recommended methods and materials that work in low-rainfall states but which do not hold up long-term east of the Mississippi.

Admittedly, the original "One Day Railroad" concept was overstated, since it required a great deal of preparation before you started actual construction. But the concept caught on, if the amount of copycat articles and outright plagiarism that appeared on other sites in the following months were any indication.

In light of the errors in the early version of the article, I could have just taken it down and avoided further embarrassment, but I have no way of knowing how many of the copycat articles are still out there leading folks in the wrong directions. So I've updated my original article with my "lessons learned" and am making the new version available.

I have a few other articles to update for similar reasons. Most of the "Git 'er done" approaches in the hobby have proven inadequate over the long term, often leading to disappointment. There's no sense burdening new folks with obsolete ideas and approaches.

If you want to see the revised article, you can click on the following link.

https://familygardentrains.com/primer/1_day_grr/1_day_grr.htm

Garden Railroading in March - If you have seasons where you live, here's some things you can do in late winter/early spring to prepare for a great season.

• Clean the leaves and bigger pieces of debris from your railroad and give it a visual inspection to see if you've had any washouts or other critical damage. If you have a chance, you could push a car around it and see if there seem to be any places where the track is obviously uneven.

• Trim any dwarf conifers that didn't get their fall trim and still need it. They'll look better all summer if you do it before their early spring growth gets going. The article at the link below will give you some suggestions.
  http://familygardentrains.com/primer/plants/conifers/conifers.htm

• If you have a rainy weekend, clean the wheels on your trains (especially on your locomotives), wipe your buildings clean, and so on. Or finish your winter projects, like I usually try to do. (If we have a wet, rainy spring that keeps me inside, I might get a chance to finish my winter projects from 2006.)

• If you get a warm day or two, clean out your pond. Even if I get a net on it in the fall, bits of leaves and stuff fall through and make it worse. (This past winter, I didn't get a net on the new pond, and leaves blew into it from hundreds of feet away. It will be a challenge to remove the rotting leaves without removing any of the fish. Lesson learned. Ponds are like flypaper for leaves, you know.)

• Plan an open railroad (where you invite people to come over and see your trains running). Don't be afraid - if you start planning now, it can be a huge success. Don't feel bad if you're not really ready in early spring, though.

NGRC at Nashville in 2020 - Another reminder: The National Garden Railway Convention will be in Nashville this year, May 31 through June 6. As of this writing, I'm signed up to deliver two clinics, and I plan to allot plenty of time for questions. So plan to drop by.

Several folks who are experts in their fields are signed for others, including my friend Nancy Norris, horticulture editor for Garden Railways.

There are some fantastic railroads in the area, too, so the tours alone will be worth the price of admission. To see the convention's home page, click on the following link. (Hint: most of the information you need is behind the "menu" icon.)

https://ngrc2020.com/

Keep in Touch

Finally, please let us know about your ongoing projects. Ask questions, send corrections, suggest article ideas, send photos, whatever you think will help you or your fellow railroaders. In the meantime, enjoy your trains, and especially enjoy any time you have with your family in the coming weeks,

Paul Race

FamilyGardenTrains.com

To view the newsletter for December, 2019, click on the following link:

https://familygardentrains.com/fgt_newsletter/19_12_newsletter_gr.htm

To read more, or to look at recommended Garden Railroading and Big Indoor Train products, please click on the index pages below.