How to build a pondless waterfall: In considering the infrastructure of garden railways, waterways come high on the list of those items that are best built early in the process. It’s hard to beat the sight and sound of moving water or the mirrored allure of a pond. However, I won’t deal with ponds in […]
The following project is an update of Gary D. Patterson’s “Simplified CTC signals” in the July 1988 issue of MR. Bringing the project up to date was a large endeavour. The block control project now incorporates “all” solid-state components controlled by an Arduino microcontroller. I refer to this updated article as “CTC Signals 2.0.” The […]
Last year we visited Las Vegas’ hot garden railways, which were set against a vast arid moonscape, or so it seemed to this New Englander (now gardening in northern California). As I looked closer, I saw beautiful gems of silver-blue, coral, and sage-green set in a sea of khaki. Diverse in color and texture, all […]
Whether you’re building on a hillside or on the flatlands, terracing your railway may scale down some problems while increasing interest. If you’re starting with either a boring, flat yard or an unstable slope that’s fit only for goats, we’ll look at some grading methods that allow better access to trains, ease of maintenance, conservation […]
Building a large-scale railroad outdoors requires varying amounts of earth shaping. Unless you are laying a pre-formed roadbed on a flat lawn, there’s going to be some digging and/or hauling of soil, at the bare minimum. The way you approach this may be as varied as there are individual ideas of what a garden railroad […]
Latin name: Bacopa ‘Snowstorm’ Common name: Snowstorm bacopa Plant type: Annual Flower color: White Plant size: 3″ tall by 18″ wide USDA Hardiness Zones: 9-10 Cultural needs: Moderately moist, part sun This easy to grow, annual flowering plant offers relatively small-scale features to garden railroaders around the country. Often used for hanging baskets and container […]
Common name: Creeping milkwort, chapparal pea, box-leaved milkwort Latin name: Polygala chamaebuxus var. grandiflora Plant type: Perennial USDA Hardiness Zones: 6-8 Plant size: 4″ (possibly mounding to 10″), spreading very slowly to 2′ wide Cultural needs: Well-drained, moist, acid soil; sun or bright shade; slow-release evergreen/acidic fertilizer If we didn’t wait so long to get […]
Pruning is a learned practice. No one starts out knowing how to best prune a woody shrub. All of us just have to take a stab at it and learn as we go. We make mistakes, try to forgive ourselves, then find that plants will forgive us and grow back as healthy as before. We […]
Q I noticed rust on the trucks of my Lionel No. 646 steam engine. When I tried to run the postwar locomotive, operation was sluggish. The engine needed an unusual amount of transformer voltage to go around the track. I removed the cab and discovered the aluminum crosshead guide, where the valve gear linkages are […]
Built by Others is an article series showcasing layouts constructed by modelers using plans and projects from the pages of Model Railroader and its associated products. The New York, New Haven & Hartford RR originally appeared in the pages of Model Railroader in August of 2004. Fred Ciocciola adjusted this trackplan to fit the space he had […]
You’re hosting an operating session with a group of friends. What kind of snacks do you serve? Trains.com staff members chime in with their favorite items. Trains Associate Editor Bob Lettenberger Good meat sticks from a local butcher shop. They are not too greasy and don’t make a mess when spilled. Honey BBQ is the […]
Modelers David Popp, Brian Schmidt, and Bryson Sleppy begin the scenery process on their T-TRAK modules by looking at photos of the Colorado plains. T-TRAK is a modular N scale railroading system that uses foot-wide boxes plugged together to build tabletop layouts. In this fifth installment, the three modelers explain how to build hills and […]
