By Kirke Fay

Author  Bio hen I became interested in building an outdoor railroad around an existing small pond and garden, I had already been through a number of years of scratch-building in both HO and O gauge.

When I became interested in building an outdoor railroad around an existing small pond and garden, I had already been through a number of years of scratch-building in both HO and O gauge. I found that building in a yet larger scale was even more interesting because of the lack of easily availible parts, doors, windows, roofing, trim and so on, and I turned to what is availible around the house and at yard sales as well as adapting parts from "O" gauge Plastiville buildings or in one case, a large scale two floor firehouse from an "O" scale Lionel enginehouse.

This bashing of course, has led to bashing large scale cars, shortening and replanking a Bachmann flatcar, bashing an Aristo Bobber as well as a "New Bright" .50 cent caboose into a two truck side door caboose, From here, using the methods discribed in this artical, I have made a box car, and a two bay coal hopper car (with a full load of West Virginia coal) and then to the first cattle car, which is seen in many of the pictures in the background to use a referance guide.

Scale on any of these "projects" can vary by the simple means of optical illusion, which in this case on the cattle car/stock car, is the number of ladder rungs. I used 6 rungs on the ladders to equal about 1/24 or slightly smaller scale. 4 rungs would be about right for 1/20 or narrow gauge.

As my railroad is based on a short line or a branch that was abandoned by a larger railroad somewhere in the eastern Appalachian mountains, tight curves and narrow clearences are the norm, hence the rolling stock and locomotives are all shorter in lenths and the buildings are not modern, being based on a late 30's or early 40's time span.

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