Holiday Express : Miniature Railroads Are Chugging Into Southern California Gardens

TRAINS THAT appear under the tree on Christmas morning are showing up in the garden a few weeks later, running through the flowers. “Garden railroading,” as the phenomenon is known in England and Europe, is now finding a following in Southern California.

The large, G-scale trains are weatherproof (as is the track) and so can run outdoors. The best known of these is the German-made L.G.B. line, but several other companies manufacture G-scale (about 1/2-inch scale) trains, including Los Angeles-based Model Die Casting.

In setting up a garden railroad, the idea is to build the track off the ground so you can better see the equipment. In Peter Dwan’s coastal Los Angeles garden, most of his “Schweizerisch Namenlos Eklektisch Eisenbahn” (or S.N.E.E.--the Swiss Nameless Eclectic Railroad) is up on a neat raised bed that harmonizes with the rest of the landscape. Large imitation-stone viaducts carry trains out into the rest of the garden, where they travel its length on timber trestles.

At night, most garden railroaders put their trains in the house or garage. The trains on this railroad are run into a “station,” an English-style garden building, where they are stored and serviced on yard tracks. This building also houses all the controls.

Train fantasies that are difficult to play out on a traditional indoor 4x8-foot sheet of plywood are much easier to bring to life in the garden. For instance, indoors, trees must be made out of bits of dowel and some material that passes for foliage; outdoors, you plant the real thing. The dwarf conifer Juniperus chinensis procumbens ‘Nana’ (often used in bonzai) makes proportioned tall timber for an alpine railroad or logging short line. Indoors, to make water, you must pour smelly resins into plaster stream beds; outdoors, real water can cascade through real rock canyons with real miniature horsetails growing on the river’s banks.

Although this railroad is made up of mostly European equipment, including electric locomotives that run beneath a complicated catenary system, American-made equipment is becoming available, most of which imitates the romantic narrow gauge railroads of the Colorado Rockies. Stores such as Allied Model Trains on Pico Boulevard in West Los Angeles offer just about any kind of locomotive, from modern diesels to huge steam engines, many carrying an equally hefty price tag. But perhaps one could justify the expense by having the locomotives and cars haul loads of fertilizer and the flat-cars transport small plants to some distant garden bed. There are even nurseries that cater to the new outdoor-train crowd. Miniature Plant Kingdom (4125 Harrison Grade Road, Sebastapol, Calif. 95472) is a source for small horsetails and dwarf trees.

Learn more about garden railroading by contacting one of the Southern California clubs that sponsor how-to clinics and tours of members’ garden railways: Gold Coast Garden Railway Society, Ventura County, Bob Cage (805) 649-1769; Los Angeles Garden Railway Society, Gerald Reynolds (213) 862-5290; Del Oro Pacific Large Scale Railroad Assn., Orange County, Ted Foltz (714) 960-1888; San Diego Garden Railway Society, Larry Webb (619) 940-0927.