By John B. Pedersen

Author  Bio Questions crop up immediately, where, how much room, indoors, outdoors, etc. How do I plan my railroad?

You are sitting on your backyard deck, with a freshly brewed cup of coffee in hand, overlooking 1.5 acres of land, with a gently rolling landscape. There is nothing over 2% grade in 24 feet. A valley develops where the curved trestle will cross, and then return to level grade once again. The landscape is lush green, with patches of Sedum and low growing Thyme.

Over to one side is an area of a sandy-gravel mix which is level, and perfectly suited for the main yard and industry of various types. You go into the storage shed and get several hundred feet of wide radius track, turnouts, and straight track, and start to put down a railroad of unparalleled proportions. You start putting in the main terminal-Beep,Beeep, Beeeep. You are rudely awakened from your dream and your dream railroad before you can even get a good start!

OK, now back to the real world, now I know not a single one of you has ever had that dream, right. So as they say, Let's Build a Railroad!

Questions crop up immediately, where, how much room, indoors, outdoors, etc. How do I plan my railroad? Some of these questions only you can answer, as only you know, or have an idea in your head, as to what you would like to build.

Where, is usually accompanied by space. This is determined by the area you have, or where you would like to have it for easy viewing. Do you have a deck or gazebo that you would like to sit on and watch the railroad in operation? What obstacles are in the way, gardens, ponds, etc., as these all determine Where. In my case where turned out to be around a small preformed pond, and a simple tri-oval of track. The dog (actually a small horse) tore up the yard so bad that grass would no longer grow, so ponds and rock gardens seemed like the answer to mud. So in my case where, started around one small pond and grew as the ponds grew, keeping in mind that the dog needed space and so did the better half for flowers and things.

So a space compromise was made, and at the present time my railroad is amongst the flowers, and varied plants. Where at that time, was an area that could give all parties a fair section of ground to use for themselves, or together with the trains.

Space, how much space is there for your railroad empire is usually determined by what you plan to run or model. A short line early 19th century consist will be fine on short curves, as will a logging operation. Running the XXth Century Limited with long passenger cars will not run or look good on 5' curves, so space will be what you are running. I run all sorts of consists, but due to limited space I am using 5' curves, so I keep to short cars and smaller engines.

When I dug the third pond, I extended the railroad to run around the large pond and over a large bridge back to the original trackage. This increased the area to approximately 18' x 24'. The amount of space you will use or need should be determined by your operation and available area.

Where to start. Do you have a garden, pond, is the ground level? I started after the pond was in place, and after my wife planted several rose bushes around the pond. Now I won't say that starting after is all bad, but those rose bushes and I had a few small battles. I still don't know who won those battles, but I won the war.

I put in a raised road bed of treated lumber, with the tracks about 12" off the ground. This was a compromise for my being able to see the train, and her being able to leave taller plants and bushes. I did not plan out the first part of the railroad, I just used trial and error, and it turned out OK. At that time I was not planning any additional expansion, silly me, but I did plan additions after that experience.

I would recommend that you do plan your layout first though, as it does make it a lot easier. Using graph paper and some inexpensive drawing aids are easy to use, or there are many commercial products available, check through the magazines. Another method that isn't all bad, and has been written about in a couple of magazines, is to simply take a bunch of track outside and put it down in the area you want to use and have fun with it.

Is there a garden you wish to run through or around? Take a careful look at what is growing there, see if the plants will spread and overrun the railroad, or can you keep them trimmed and not have running problems with vines, etc.

Will the existing plants tower over the running stock, or will you be able to enjoy watching the run through the garden? If you are not going to move the "giant Sequoia" plants, you may want to run an elevated section of track to run through the garden so you can still see it, and stay in harmony with the surroundings.

As I mentioned earlier, I elevated my line for that reason (and to keep my wife happy), but another advantage to elevated lines for us in the snowy part of the country, is that we can run more hours by simply plowing the snow off the track. I can run with up to 18 inches of snow on the ground. This leads to another question, is the ground Level?

Level. This is important to you for several reasons. Will you have to bring in fill and level the ground, or is the ground gently sloping . Will you need some trestles or bridges, or can you use the sloping ground as is because the grade slope is 3 Percent or less. Not all railroads leveled the ground they ran or run on.

In this area the tracks seem to go up and down like a roller coaster, the rise and fall is only around 10 feet most of the time, but they are not level. Most all the tracks here are freight, the passenger tracks in this area are laid out to be level. I am not going into grades and such in this article, as others have written on that subject to a far greater depth.

One more time we see why some sort of a plan is important to your empire.

Ponds. Do you think you will want a pond somewhere in the scheme of things, trains running over a body of water on a majestic structure of some kind? Take this from experience, plan ahead, putting a pond in later is 5 times the work over installing it first. If you put a pond in no where is it written you must bridge it, you can run along the side, maybe a small bridge or trestle to forge a small stream.

Do you build your own structures, or do you buy ready made, or kits. What is commercially available has quite a large variety to chose from, and this may determine pond size, shape, how the water will flow, etc. If you build your own some of these factors don't really matter, as you will build to suit yourself. When I built my 10 foot long truss bridge, there was nothing on the market for that size, nor were plans available.

I highly recommend some sort of water feature for the railroad, it just seems to add something that can't be explained, only experienced. Beware. Ponds can be addictive, ask those who have them.

Security. Security is not meant to be the last thing to think about, even though I didn't address it earlier. This is very important, and I cannot stress this enough. Now that we are going to build our railroading empire in the backyard, we will want to keep out the normal pests, what are the "normal pests"? First is people, We have now built or are going to build an "Attractive Nuisance" in our yard, and there are in some cases local rules and regulations regarding this very item.

An Attractive Nuisance is usually associated with a swimming pool, pond or anything that will bring people (kids ), to your yard and can pose a danger (drowning ). You should check with your local authority about what is considered an attractive nuisance, and what the local codes require for a swimming pool.

I recommend that no mention be made of a model railroad being built in your yard. So far as I know there are no rules regarding this, so let's not give the members of government any ideas of more ways to make money, by making permits mandatory for model railroads. This is my personal opinion, but I know it is shared by many out there, just look back in the LSOL archives. If my memory is any good there was a discussion last spring on the subject.

Fencing is a must, whether you fence the entire yard, or just your model empire. The gates must latch securely, and should be locked with good padlocks. Most fencing requirements are a 4 foot high fence, with lockable gates and child resistant safety latches.

Another good thing to install are a couple of infra red motion detector lights, not the standard motion detector kind. The infra red units will allow you to set the system to turn on the lights depending on the size of your visitor. Motion detector units can drive you nuts, with birds setting them off, or other small animals, I know my neighbor has one and it is on and off constantly.

My personal favorite, along with the fence, barbed wire and electrification of the fence (only kidding on the barbed wire and electrification ) is a big dog, or any dog that will make noise if someone wants in the yard.` I have a 120 pound Malamute-Shepherd mix that is an excellent watchdog. When we are around he is the friendliest thing on 4 feet, but when we are not home nobody gets in the yard. I had some neighborhood kids try once, sure wish I was there to have seen it.

If you have ponds with fish, or for that matter no fish, other critters will visit for a drink, or to "go fishing". Raccoons are the fisherman, and there are several ways to help this situation, which I think will be addressed in building ponds.

Other small critters will come and go usually with no problems to the railroad. If you have a dog in the yard it helps to deter these little critters, with the exception of possum's. The score at home is Possums-0, dog 15-20, they just don't seem to get it.

Let's Build a RR; Great Tips

John, You've mentioned just about every item I've tried to conceive about outdoor RR'ing. I have a room in our basement that is 15 x 22 where my former ng On3 layout was and where my Fn3 layout will be and it has an easy access out the basement window to get into the backyard which is 75'x 100' with a high hedge on two sides and my wife's large flower garden garden in another corner. I'm in Kansas so level is normal around here. My major concern and priority is the RR roadbed. I want it on the ground or close to it. I've been reading everything I can get my hands on about ballasting on the ground, several inches above ground on a manmade ballasted roadbed, and others. I would prefer to keep the roadbed either on the ground or very near to it. Any suggestions will be of great help. Thanks, Ron Proffitt

Ron Proffitt - 10/16/2011 - 10:05

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