Garden railways - combining toy trains with landscape gardening design - includes examples of gardeners' designs

Flower & Garden Magazine, Dec-Jan, 1993 by Marc Horovitz

By floating the track in the ballast, you are allowing it some freedom of movement. The heat of the summer will cause the rails to expand and the cold of winter will make them contract. The spring thaw may bring frost heave. Floating track will move as it needs to, but will be very easy to realign when necessary (probably) just once or twice a year, if that). The more established the railway becomes, the less the track will shift.

POWERING THE TRAIN

Model trains generally run on 12 to 18 volts of direct current, which is quite safe, even in the rain. However, you'll need to keep your power pack dry and protected from the elements. Also, a ground-fault circuit interrupter is always a good thing to use between your power pack and the house current. Consult your local hardware store about them.

Perhaps the biggest problem in running electricity through the rails is maintaining continuity across the joints as the rails expand and contract. One way is to solder jumper wires across the joints. Clamp-on rail joiners aid in continuity, too. Electrically conductive grease - available at electronics supply stores - can also be used in the joints.

Trains run on the same voltage that some styles of garden lighting use. The two systems can be successfully integrated, creating wonderful nightscapes.

If you find running electricity through the rails to be a big hassle, there are other options. Battery-powered, radio-controlled trains are becoming very popular today, and several companies offer systems that will fit to existing track-powered trains.

Another popular alternatives is live steam - real steam locomotives to pull your trains. These burn either alcohol or butane gas, and are quite safe to operate in the garden.

THE GARDEN

Many beautiful garden railways have been created by people who claim not to be gardeners. The best examples are landscapes in miniature, providing a realistic setting for the train to travel through. With imagination, seedling trees become forest, stones turn into mountains and patches of moss appear to be grassy meadows. Rock garden plants, because of their diminutive size, go especially well with garden railways.

OUR READER'S RAILROADS

Richard's goal was elegant simplicity, so he chose a single car Brill Trolley for a charming Hometown, USA, look, laying the track in one long run, rather than a circle or oval. A bumper terminal at each end is hidden beneath the thick green darkness of a common boxwood shrub, and the trolley cleverly "senses" the bump at the end of the line and automatically reverses its direction.

While his plantings are not in scale with the trolley, Richard believes the elements complement each other just the same. He selected impatiens, forget-me-nots and hardy polkadot plants (Hypoestes) for an array of starting and beautiful underpasses. Shrubbery includes |Blue Girl' holly (Ilex x meserveae |Blue Girl'), inkberry (Ilex glabra), rhododendron |Wilsoni,' several dwarf mugo pines (Pinus mugo mugo), Hydrangea macrophylla and a dependable upright yew (Taxus x media). "These plants were selected for their ability to hold up gracefully in the ever-changing New England weather, which they've done well for quite some time," he says.