By Joel M. Lerner
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Did you ever want to run a railroad? Your very own railroad, designed and built by you and maybe your family, running in your own backyard? A surprising number of gardeners seem to have just that desire, installing miniature train layouts in their gardens. Some are simple, just tracks and trains, while some are elaborate, with buildings, bridges, tunnels, trestles and even miniature people.
"It can be taken as seriously as you want or as whimsically as you want," says Paul Busse, the Kentucky-based designer of private and public garden railways. Busse designed and installed the Christmas railway at the U.S. Botanic Garden last year, using all-natural materials to create such D.C. landmarks as the Capitol and the White House.
Garden railways are a family-friendly hobby that has something for everyone, Busse says. A lot of garden railway enthusiasts are parents or grandparents, or retired couples who want to do something together -- and amaze the grandkids while they're at it.
Most garden railway equipment is G scale, developed in 1968 by the German firm LGB (it stands for Lehmann Gross Bahn, or Lehmann Big Trains). They wanted to create model trains that could run outdoors. The scale is about four times the size of standard HO-scale models. Today, engines come in electric, steam and remote-controlled, rechargeable-battery models. Early G-scale trains were models of historical European ones, but by the 1980s, versions of modern American trains had been introduced to the market.
Busse, who is a landscape architect, says G-scale trains are simply miniature versions of real railroads. The track is laid just like that of a real railroad, he says. "You're just a giant working on it."
Model trains, although mechanical, add the same elements to a garden that wildlife does -- motion, color and sound. They also provide a focal point. You can start small, utilizing a small flowerbed or water feature, and run the railroad around it. Later you can branch out into multiple loops, multiple tracks, multiple train, and more complex landscape features -- until the railway becomes the garden.
Be warned: Running model trains, any kind of model train, can be habit-forming. Eric Nelson, proprietor of Collector Trains and Toy World in Baltimore for 45 years, has a customer who's been coming in once a week every week for 33 years. "He always buys something, sometimes something small, sometimes something big," Nelson says.
It's possible to spend thousands of dollars on trains and accessories, but most people start out smaller. For example, a G-scale Lionel kit of "The Polar Express" that includes an engine, a tender and three passenger cars, plus a 40-foot-by-60-foot oval track and four action figures sells for about $275.
The real magic of garden railways, according to Busse, is creating an environment that fits them. With appropriate plants and appropriate terrain, you can create an entire miniature world.
The design is limited mostly by your imagination, though some of the same constraints apply to tiny trains as to big ones, such as how tight the curves can sweep and how steep a slope can be. "Trains can't suddenly climb hills just because they're small," Busse says.
A simple loop track for a G-scale train can fit into as little as 51 inches, and if you're not running a long train, you can create an elevation change using a gradient of 2 percent (a two-foot rise or fall per 100 feet of track). Start with some elevation, so you can take maximum advantage of rises and dips.
Choosing plants is an important part of creating the illusion. Busse tends to use slower-growing plants with finer textures. A tiny Japanese maple that might be used in a container in a garden or on a patio, when planted next to a miniature train station, suddenly looks like a giant maple spreading its branches over the building.
Busse trims dwarf Alberta spruces so they look like a fir forest. There are a lot of miniature and dwarf conifers that grow only 1 to 6 inches a year, including false cypresses ( Chamaecyparis ), junipers and pines. Also, boxwoods come in miniature varieties that are extremely slow-growing. Plants that lose their leaves in winter can be trimmed to create a deciduous forest.
Rock-garden plants such as mountain madwort ( Alyssum montanum ), sea thrift ( Armeria maritima ), dwarf coreopsis ( Coreopsis auriculata 'Nana') and John Creech stonecrop ( Sedum X 'John Creech') can add color and texture to a railway garden.
The point is not to try to create something that's exactly to scale, but to establish what Busse calls a "scale illusion." Normal-size objects tend to disappear into the background, just the way a mountain range might simply appear as part of the landscape in the distance from a real train.
Like their real-life counterparts, garden trains tend to be relatively impervious to the elements. "If you can tolerate it, the trains generally will," Busse says.
Because the trains are relatively heavy for their size, small obstacles such as leaves tend to get knocked off the track. But there are some environmental hazards. Busse recalls that once when he was running trains, a locomotive started across a bridge and abruptly stopped. He thought it was broken, but when he walked to it he could hear it was still running. When he looked more closely, he found it had run over an acorn, and the nut was just large enough to keep the wheels from touching the track.
Wildlife can also be a problem, though maybe not as big a one as you might think. One of the funniest things Busse ever saw was when he and his crew were working on an installation that had an island. While working on the island, they startled a squirrel, which ran down the track and started across a bridge. However, there was a train coming in the opposite direction.
He thought the squirrel might panic and jump off the bridge, or turn around and run back -- or worse, that the train might hit it. Instead, the squirrel hopped onto the engine and scampered back along the top of the train, hopping off at the last car and running away.
Another caveat Busse offers about wildlife is that sometimes cats or raccoons think tunnels are "ready-made homes" for them. They generally discover their error fairly quickly.
Even a light snowfall is no problem. Some engines can be fitted with little snowplows that work just like the ones on big trains. A lot of snow would be a serious problem, though, and Nelson says that in areas where there is a lot of snow, most people just take the trains in for the winter.
Busse, owner of Applied Imagination of Alexandria, Ky., has created garden railways all over the country for individuals and organizations. The biggest display he ever installed was at the New York Botanical Garden with 1,000 feet of track and 13 trains.
The largest private railway garden he has designed included a quarter-mile of track. That layout was so big the trains actually disappeared into the landscape -- an important part of a railway garden, in Busse's evaluation. "When you don't see the train is just as important as when you see it," he says. When that train disappears around a bend, your imagination takes over.
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