davesspot - siletzbayrailway

Siletz Bay Railway

G-Scale Garden Layout in a Week

Page #1

When our kids were little (about 16 years ago), I stumbled upon trains for big boys....LGB. Having just left a restaurant in Tigard (Oregon), I noticed a train store (Rookies and Rails) in the same shopping complex. In the window, hung an LGB sign. Didn't know a thing about it, but was attracted to it as a moth is to light. Once inside, I met the owner...Brent Polanchek, a true LGB enthusiast. In order to enhance his collection, he became an LGB Dealer to make it easy for him to satisfy his insatiable hobby hunger. As a result, he undoubtedly now has one of the nicest LGB collections in the world.

With two small kids less than 2 years old, I had the perfect excuse for buying a train. Nice thing about LGB, is they encourage entrance into the hobby with their reasonably priced starter sets. Another advantage is their durability and easy of operation. Even for small kids, it is easy to get a small layout working on the floor in a short amount of time. And with those large chunks of track, even large layouts are easy to throw together that encompass several rooms. We had a house with a central wall, and could lay track through the kitchen, dining room, entryway and family room, completing a full circle back to the kitchen. G-scale was perfect for such layouts.

Then we moved to a house with a large bonus room. We dedicated it as the Train Room, and set up a nice layout of good size for a single room. We even had a segment of catenary lines for a couple engines we had that could accommodate that mode. Having two acres of gradually sloping ground available, I even had visions of building a true garden layout outside. But keeping the weeds under control was enough garden exercise for me at that time, and I never spent the effort to implement a G-scale outside, with all the other distractions occupying my time.

Unfortunately, the kids found many other activities to occupy their time, and the train tended to be neglected. After a few years of sitting unused for the most part, it was put back into boxes and the room used for games and other activities that the critters found more to their liking. Then there was school, T-ball, basketball, soccer and who knows what distractions. The train stuff was all but forgotten. Several houses later, they were just a bunch of boxes that took up a lot of space.

However......every Christmas, we managed to put a Christmas train around the tree. For a few years, we even set up two trees, each with an appropriate train or trolley. With lots of track available, we were able to have a Christmas train circumvent the entire room. Each year we continue the Christmas train tradition, though on a bit smaller scale now.

Fast forward to the summer of 2005. Having purchased a home on the Oregon coast a couple years earlier suitable for retirement, we invited some close friends (David & Joi) to join us. They purchased the home due south of ours, so we now share a common property line. Both our homes are on a spit of sand that separates Siletz Bay from the Pacific Ocean. In mid July, my wife (Jackie) was chatting with Joi about fun projects to do. Joi mentioned that she had always wanted to do something with a toy train. That's all it took.....

When Jackie mentioned it to me, I could immediately visualize the possible realization of one of my early dreams....a true garden railroad. The next day I showed David & Joi the track and rolling stock tucked away in the garage. Then we went out to our property line, and surveyed the area with the thought of using the existing terrain for the basis of our layout. What makes this interesting, is that there is a slight hill of about 4' high dividing our property. On the north side of the hill is a pond on our side, and on David & Joi's property is a small grove of rhododendron plants, huckleberries, salal berries and other flowering plants and evergreen trees. Somewhere between a lush forest and a jungle of salal, was a garden railway awaiting to be born.

Since we had a two week vacation coming up during the first half of August, it seemed like the perfect time to hack through the salal and lay track. When I mentioned our plans to others more familiar with garden layouts, they raised their eyebrows when I mentioned the proposed location right near the ocean. Both rightly suggested the lunacy of proceeding.....but that didn't stop us. We had track, we had rolling stock and we had time to play. That's a recipe for fun!

First item on the agenda: We needed rock (about a ton.....from quarter minus fine gravel, to football sized boulders), and sand (one dump truck = 10 yards) and enough 2x12" lumber to build 18' of tunnel. With the help of our teenage kids, Idaho relatives (the Swansons) of David & Joi, Grandma and a week of good weather, 7 days later we plugged in a power supply and YOWEE.....we had a real live G-scale garden layout! It is simply amazing what a small group of folks do to play with trains.....

What made our effort interesting is that Jackie did not want our yard to look like a train yard. She preferred to maintain the natural look that is so common here at the beach. To accommodate her wishes, we scavenged drift wood from the beach for both the water crossings and the tunnel portals. We moved as few natural (pre-existing) rocks and plants as possible, transplanting them nearby so as to maintain the same vegetative balance. We had to move two huckleberry plants, which worried me....as they sure make for tasty pies, and we didn't want to jeopardize that!

By adding some steps over one of the short tunnels, we were able to access a service path (for the pond) on top of the mound. Then by judiciously removing a few evergreen limbs, pinning back others and hacking away at the all too present salal....we were able to build a hidden nature trail that traversed the length of the layout. Virtually anybody taking a quick glance at it would hardly notice the track, let alone the nature trail....they are that well placed. Yet when the trains are running, they offer a nice contrast to natural beauty of the "garden".

Subsequently, Joi constructed some buildings to G-scale specs (22.5 x 1) that both told a story (the 3 Little Pigs) and a replica of their log home in the mountains. The first iteration of our layout includes:

124' of brass track
3 tunnels, one of 10' length
2 water crossings on driftwood logs
1 trestle crossing a dry gulch
1 nature trail of approximately 40'
The Three Pigs Village
David & Joi's Mountain Home

Future plans are to replace the brass track with stainless to eliminate the tarnishing nature of brass. And, we hope to add another 80' segment. Joi will continue expanding her building program, and with her talented artistic nature, it will be interesting to see what she dreams up next!

Now, let me explain why we've named the railroad the SILETZ BAY RAILWAY....The railroad is built on the southern edge of Siletz Bay on the Central Oregon coastline, just south of Lincoln City, Oregon.

The train has a commanding view of the Bay just prior to entering the 3 Little Pigs Village, as can be seen in our first film of the layout. <8mb video download> It is named after an Indian tribe that inhabited this area before the settlers, and who now have a reservation in the town just east of here bearing their name.

After building the basic layout in August of 2005, we took it down a few months later in preparation for winter weather. This summer, we have purchased stainless steel track to alleviate the corrosion factor that caused others to wince at the thought of a garden railway near the ocean.

Having now installed the new track, we included a couple switches to enable another section of track to be installed, which will increase the size of our layout dramatically. David is our master vegetation hacking specialist. Our method is pretty simple. Little advance planning is considered, other than a general direction in which we want to lay track, and then we try to accommodate the lay of the land and the plants that we have to navigate around. We have to consider the grade, not wanting to exceed about 5%. One concern is that we try to make the layout blend into the yard.

Updated July 9, 2006: The new loop we are adding to the layout this year includes a cross over point, which is a new venture for us. We had to cut through some very thick ground cover, which was simply a massive tangle of roots once the leaves were penetrated. Once through that, we had to deal with a small mountain of sand moderately covered with beach grass. The sand makes it very easy to remove the beach grass, and it is easy to cut into to build the roadbed. While it certainly does not have the foundational strength to support a full scale engine, for a garden railway it seems ideal. Best of all, there is no muddy mess to stick to your shoes and get tracked into the house!

Over the long 4th of July weekend, the neighbor kids started putting things on the engine as it went around the track. In a short time, it became quite a game, as the kids the other side kept trying to think of fun things to send back in return. So....Tootsie Rolls, agates, food, questions, jokes and whatnot were passed back and forth over the period of better than an hour. Each pass took several minutes, and the kids on both sides of the mountain were delighted with their newfound game.

After we complete the new section of track, we'll then level up the roadbed and make running the engine with a few cars behind a reality. As it is now, the track has too many uneven places, which causes the cars to disconnect and sometimes derail. But that's a few weeks away, as we have more important things to do first.

As we laid out the track on the newly cut road yesterday, we came out short 5 feet. So...one more trek to visit Len at Tammie's Hobbies in Beaverton. They keep a good supply of stainless track in stock, and have been very good to work with. They are most helpful, and cheerful to boot...always helping me carry an armload of track to the car.

Update July 17, 2006: We spent a little time this past weekend raising the clearance where the tracks pass over each other. Without a bit more clearance than seems necessary at first glance, it would have been a problem attaching a camera to the top of the engine for videos like the one above. We also shored up the roadbed with rocks on the sloping terrain, and then sand and gravel for the ballast. We also did quite a bit of hacking at the vegetation, and smoothing the gradients. Lacking one foot of straight stainless track, it will be at least another week before we can finish off this section of track enough to run an engine on it. Once completed, a camera attached to the engine should have a good view of the bay.

Update July 30, 2006: Finally, the last of the stainless track has been acquired and laid in its place. We ran out of rock, so made one more (last) trip to Devils Lake Sand and Gravel to purchase 1/4 inch minus for the roadbed, and moderate size river rock for the bank support and fill beneath some of the bridging. Now sporting over 200 lineal feet of track in a continuous layout, time will heal the bare spots lacking foliage, and beach grass will begin firming up the loose sand banks. There are still a few rough spots that need smoothed out, a grade that exceeds the 5% we prefer, and some leveling of the track in many sections, including the original loop.

One major problem was discovered a few days ago though. Having an unusually dry summer prompted me to get the lawn sprinklers working for the first time in a couple years. They are set up to come on in the middle of the night. The next day, I was about to run the White Pass engine around the track to clear any needles, leaves and other debris from the track, and much to my surprise....a section of the track was elevated several inches. My first thought was that my neighbor had placed a rock beneath the track to give clearance for his plant trimming session. But that didn't quite seem like something David would do...leave a rock beneath the track when done with his work.

Upon closer inspection, much to my surprise I discovered a hidden (buried) sprinkler head had popped up through the ballasted roadbed in its attempt to water the shrubbery. Yikes....That presented a huge problem! Since it was in an area of heavy foilage, and just preceding a major water crossing, rerouting the track was not a likely option without major work that would leave the plants in tatters.

My second thought was to try to bridge it in some way to give it clearance to work properly. Digging a hole and setting the pluming down lower did not seem likely to be easy, and certainly would be an involved and messy operation at best. The alternative would be to raise the track level to clear the head in an extended position, which normally would be rather easy to do. However, with the new section of track and switch just preceding the problem, and a major bridge crossing an expanse of water on the other side of the problem, elevating the track at that specific point was not a practical option. What could have been easy, would most certainly be the most difficult of the choices I had explored to that point. Whenever such problems arise that have a variety of solutions, I've found the best plan of attack is to take a nap and contemplate the situation as I drift in and out of sleep.

So....after sleeping on the problem, the next day the solution came to me as clear as sunshine on a bright day. As long as the sprinkler was hitting the ties where I thought I had seen it, then simply cutting a tie or two out would allow the sprinkler to pop up between the rails. I took a pair of side cutters out and within just a few minutes had cut the needed clearance from the molded plastic ties, which then allowed the track to drop down into its original position. The track vs sprinkler head alignment was nearly close to being perfect. As long as we don't run the train while the sprinklers are functioning, the problem appears to be solved!

In Conclusion: Besides enjoying the actual construction of the garden railway, it seems to be enjoyed most by the kids, who love to climb wherever they can, particularly on the rocks. Though adults often times are transported back to their younger years when they first see all that track!

We do hope you've enjoyed your ride on the Siletz Bay Railway. As we continue to add to our layout, this website will be edited to show future developments. Come back again......ALL ABOARD!

August 2007: We have added about another 160 feet of track in our 3rd phase of building the Siletz Bay Railway. You can see the progress on the construction by CLICKING HERE.

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Last edited 8-12-07

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