Vaction Station and Little River Rail Road

Spring means a start to the RR season. First up, half barrels are now available at Lowes. (And these are the real deal, an actual used wine barrel. You can still smell the wine.) That means I be setting up the Barrel layout in the kennel office. Don't know what a Barrel Layout is? head over to USA Trains http://www.usatrains.com/

Lowes also has the artificial landscape timbers I want for building a the retaining wall for my full sized layout.

Next up some new rolling stock. I have a new engine a an inspection car.

Scott

So it' officially Christmas. The tree is up and the train is running around that green mountain that is the tree skirt. Two dog sculptures ride in the gondola cars as passengers.



On the Vacation Station and Little River RR Christmas list is............

Some G-gauge buildings (1:24 is a good compromise scale for the rolling stock I have.)

Likewise some 1:24 people and 1:24 cars (1930 to 1940 vintage)

The AristoCraft 2-8-2 Makado Engine (unmarked so I can paint it like the DollyWood train)

And last the Bachmann 3 truck "Little River RR and Lumber Co" Shay engine.

Of course those last two are a pipe dream (sigh!)

Scott

"It's Beginning to look  a lot like Christmas, everywhere you look...."

The wreath is on the door and there is a train on the floor.

I cleaned out the corner in the Living room that will receive the tree and put down a circle of track, waiting for said tree. It's just not Christmas with out a train :)

The track circle is 4' in diameter. If we get a bigger tree, well then I'll move some furniture and put down a 5' circle. The train on it now has a two gondola cars to haul two puppy sculptures around the tree.



Scott

While driving on Alcoa Hwy, I saw a train running parallel for the highway for a short distance. The engine was a General Motors GP30 Diesel Electric made in the early 1960's. A number of these 2nd generation diesel, engines are still running with smaller railroads.  Much like the one marked with the CSX line logo I saw.

USA Trains makes an award winning model of this locomotive. Recently Large Scale On-Line (lsol.com) offered a half price deal on them. One marked with the CSX logo. So in my effort to model the trains here in the Smokey Mountains, I ordered one. Let me tell you, I am impressed. You have t add some small parts that come in the box. But once yo do, you have one seriously detailed model.



Scott

And of all places it's at Dollywood. This is a Baldwin 2-8-2 Mikado Engine. It used to run on the White Pass line in Alaska during the 30's and 40's. It was also pressed into to service as a troop train during WWII.

Today it runs at Dollywood pulling guests on a loop through the Smoky Mountains. The guests ride on actual freight cars and a caboose modified to be open passenger cars. And unlike Disneyland and Knots Berry Farm, it is still running on coal and all her original mechanics.



Aristo Craft makes a 2-8-2 Mikado model in G gauge. It will require a repaint of course. But it is doable. Just one more item for the wish list.

My second Crest "Train Engineer" receiver arrived today. The Train Engineer system is a walk around controller for track power. It is not a DCC system. But with multiple receivers I can have independent control of multiple sections of track. It also has pulse control and a scale acceleration control. I'll be setting up the inside and outside loops on separate circuits, so that I can have two trains running at different speeds or even different direction on the two loops. Two receivers, two trains, one walk around controller.

Part of the Garden Rail Road's theme will center around the Little River Rail Road and Lumber Company Museum here in Townsend. We discovered the Little River Rail  Road after we had already decided to use the G-Gauge equipment I inherited from my father to have a tie in to the Vacation Station kennel name for our home business.

The presence of the Little River Rail Road Museum in town was just an added bonus tie in. However that will have a lot to do with my little rail road. I have already added skeletal log cars to my collection of rolling stock along with a 4 wheel lumber caboose.

But at the museum they have an steam engine am jazzed about. And Bachmann is in the process of releasing a model of it.  The engine is a three truck narrow gauge Shay engine. And it sits right out front visible from the main road in town. Here are some poor quality photos from my phone of the prototype Bachmann is using.



The Shay type engine is special. The pistons are on the right hand side and mounted vertically. They tie into a drive drive shaft which runs to gear driven wheels in each set of trucks. This generates a whole bunch of power that lets a shay engine handle heavier loads and steeper grades then a standard engine with the pistons driving the wheels directly. It won't set any speed records but boy can it haul!

Needless to say, when Bachmann does finally release it's model of this engine, I'll be wanting it :)

Yes this rail road has a plan! Based on LGB Sectional Track (more on that in another post), this is the layout of the ......layout.


This plan is required to layout the raised planter type thing the rail road will go into. Raising the layout will make for better viewing and be easier on my back for both set-up and maintenance.  That is also the reason for the "L" shape. The narrow(ish) legs will allow me easy access to all track areas from the side lines. A couple of well placed large rocks will give a place to work from for the harder to reach areas (like the inside corner loop and sidings.

These are not the final dimensions, because once I have a site picked out I will see about using the extra track to lengthen one of both legs of this layout. I have already ruled out one yard area closer to the house. The other area I will need to measure out the trees and such to see how this will fit in place.

Scott

Welcome to a new Live Journal about our Garden Rail Road. What's this you say? (Especially if you just came here from my forge journal.)

Well this journal is about the creation and operation of a G-Gauge model train layout in the great outdoors of the Smokey Mountains (IE: my front yard). It will document the things we do (right and wrong), the models we get, make or modify, and hopefully some day the operations of the VS&LR RR.

As with my other journals, this one has a few rules. Please keep comments on a hobby topic of this journal. Comments will be screened, because i will not allow hate speech, foul language, or adult content to see the light of day. This will be a family friendly journal.

Other then those simple rules, welcome and lets have some playing with trains in the garden!

Scott