Garden Railway & Santa Fe Garden Railroad

These items are the weak links (in my opinion) for G gauge. You can’t put highly detailed models built with wood outside and have them survive unless you only put them out when you have visitors. I do this to a limited degree. However, in the past few years, some really nice structures, kits and built up have appeared from Aristo, Piko, and a couple of other names that I don’t remember. But I have them on the railroad.

Bridges are limited because the models are limited by price or availability. Recently I have added a sixteen foot bridge to "nowhere" off one end of the railroad. The bridges are girder, steel, have great piers to hold them up. I believe the company is Garden Texture. This bridge stands about two feet off the ground and is used to put cars and diesel on or take them off the railroad for storage.

I have a few old wooden bridges, but they don’t stand up well to eastern Kansas weather and take a lot of work to maintain, and they eventually fall apart. I will use more steel as the old wooden bridges fail.

About six years ago, I added an enclosed shed along a high wood fence on one side of the railroad. This shed has several doors, and shelves for storage. Three tracks enter the building using a Llagas Creek Three way switch. The shed is long enough to hold three trains. This is a "staging yard" for one end. Next to the shed, just above ground level is another three track yard that comes off the other end of the railroad and serves as a makeup yard. It has sides and can be covered when not in use.

Both of these yards provide protected shelter for the rolling stock, but the diesels remain in the garage when not running. The sixteen foot steel bridge is pointed directly at a garage window, and I have been suggesting to my wife it would be nice to extend it into the garage. Cool reception to that idea so far!