Our Garden Railroad Started Here
Our new Home
We moved to our new home Sept. 2017. At the back of the house was an enclosed Patio. Train Room!
The Train room
This will be our RR workshop. We need storage, a place for the 3D printers, shelving, a Bookcase for the RR Library and a workbench. This will also be where the Roundhouse will be located.
The Roundhouse and Turntable location.
This area had to be created first because a 30" turntable is needed. Also, the roundhouse must fit and be in accessible working order. This ended up to be its final location after much adjusting.
The Workbench
With the turntable located, now we can add the workbench and the 3d printers.
The Portal to our Garden Railroad
We created a temporary wall with a tunnel portal, so we could get out to our railroad. We used acrylic to create sliding door covers for both sides of the wall. This should keep out weather and or unwanted visitors.
Shops
The locomotives are turned, serviced and readied for their next duty. Air Wire is installed in each loco, and they require batteries, and decorders for the radio control and sound. The battery charging will happen here as needed.
Turntable installed
Roundhouse installed
Service
Moccasin Gap
This is the main yard location. Trains are created and returned here. The Locos are pulled from Shops for duty. They are returned to Shops once their run is complete. The Shops entrance is through the tunnel portal, on the right side of the table photos below.
The first table
Table support system
First rain
It took a few days to create the first table. Because the ground is so far away, our new Raised railroad was going to be at the height of 39 inches. The major challenge was how to support the table. The ground was too hard for us to dig, so we put the table support posts in buckets and addded fencepost cement. This method turned out to be a great solution, and it is not perminate. It turned out to be a very strong support system. As soon as the first table was put up it rained for a couple of days.
The West end
The East end
Moccasin Gap Station
We had to add umbrellas to the train table. With 100+ deg days here the rails would get so hot, we can get a painful burn. The hot rails also caused problems with some of the rolling stock that did not have metal wheels yet. All the layout switches are powered by LGB switch machines and controlled by a panel located on the front of each table throughout the railroad. Next click on Los Gatos below to continue your tour.