Model Trains Make Tracks in Southland’s ‘Garden Railroads’

Russ Reinberg has railroad tracks running through his Westlake Village back yard.

The tracks curve through the flower beds, wind between trees and zip across prairies of Scotch moss. The train stops occasionally to pick up plastic passengers only a few inches tall.

Reinberg is the operator of a “garden railroad,” and part of a small but growing number of Southern California enthusiasts who are laying tracks among their flora.

Garden railroading started in England and Germany, and took root in the United States after adults discovered that the big German L.G.B. toy trains that children favor at Christmas are weatherproof, and what began as a circle of track under the Christmas tree has moved out into the yard.

An executive recruiter, Reinberg has always liked trains and has made models in the much smaller HO scale. He became intrigued with the big G-scale trains in 1983 when a friend got one for Christmas.

“I looked at it and realized that they were not toys,” he said. “I had never seen anything like them before, and I went right out and bought a starter set for a late present to myself.”

Last January, he built his railroad, which stretches from one side of the yard to the other, with 250 feet of track joining two loops.

Like most garden railroads in Southern California, Reinberg’s layout loosely copies one of real narrow-gauge railroads that wound through the Colorado Rockies--the Colorado & Southern, or the Denver & Rio Grande Western, or in Reinberg’s case, the Silverton Railroad--because the tracks were more tortured and the cars and locomotives much smaller than regular railroads.

This means that the garden railroader can have tight curves, steep grades, tunnels, precipitous cliffs and perilous trestles, much like the real railroad.

Reinberg has named his railroad the Dinkey Creek and Buttonwillow Railroad, after two real California towns.

To construct it, he cut away part of the back slope in his yard and built retaining walls with the rock he excavated. He has elevated the track, even though these trains are fairly big (a typical locomotive is about 6 inches tall by 18 inches long), because putting them at eye level makes watching the trains more enjoyable.

The track is laid on top of gravel and the road bed cut and leveled with a hoe and rake. Narrow strips of plastic were laid down to keep weeds from sprouting through the gravel and track.

“It’s designed to be impermanent,” Reinberg said. “If the next owner of the house hates it, I can take it out in a day or two.”

Or, the next owner may be enchanted by this little bit of Colorado in a California back yard, with real living plants.

The slope formerly was planted with junipers and ivy, which Reinberg removed. In their place went dwarf conifers, miniatures of the big Colorado spruce that the real railroads wind through. These are dwarf Alberta spruce ( Picea glauca ‘Conica’) that show up at nurseries around Christmas time.

These trees can grow to 7 feet, but Reinberg plants them in the ground still in their containers and plans to dig them up each year and prune the roots as if they were bonsai, so they don’t grow much. He also prunes the tops frequently.

The miniature ground covers around the trees and tracks are Irish and Scotch moss and Corsican mint. There are also colorful annuals to spice things up a bit, including alyssum and lobelia.

There are bridges, buildings and little people waiting patiently on the station platform. All of these stay outside, rain or shine (even when the sprinklers are on).

Most enthusiasts bring the locomotives and cars indoors or park under cover when not in use, though even these can take a good soaking.

California is rapidly becoming the center of garden railroading in this country because it can be a year-round hobby in our climate, though in other parts of the country snowplows are occasionally fitted to the locomotives to prolong the season.

There are a number of clubs in this area, and they are listed in the magazine Garden Railways, which can be found at most train stores. The 1990 Garden Railway Convention will be held in San Diego in June. (For information, call (619) 940-0927.)

When garden railroading first began in this country, most of the locomotives, cars and buildings were European in look and origin, but now there are a number of American manufacturers making American-style equipment, including Model Die Casting, which is located in Southern California.

The German L.G.B. company, which began the whole garden railroad hobby, now has offices in San Diego and offers American-looking locomotives, buildings and cars. They make a handsome and quite accurate American locomotive with realistic sound effects and clouds of smoke coming from the stack.

This kind of sophisticated equipment is not designed for children, but for serious adult hobbyists who consider them “model” trains, not toys.

Larry Webb, a fire captain with the Orange County Fire Department, was one of the garden railroad pioneers in San Diego, and he models a fictitious narrow-gauge line named the Little Vista Garden Railway (L.V.G.R.).

Dwarf Alberta spruce are also his mainstay, and he has planted a whole forest of them, purchased after the holidays when they are on sale at drastically reduced prices. His forest even includes a fire lookout on top of one of the small mountains.

Clipped Italian stone pines are another common Christmas tree used on the Webb garden railroad. Ground covers include woolly and creeping thyme and baby’s tears.

In both men’s gardens, the plants are watered (along with everything else) by sprinklers. There are many miniature plants that are perfect candidates for garden railroads and there is even a mail order nursery in Northern California that specializes in them. Miniature Plant Kingdom, 4125 Harrison Grade Road, Sebastapol, Calif., 95472 (phone (707) 874-2233), grows a number of plants for garden railroads.

Owner Don Herzog says he has heard good things from Southern Californians about the miniature juniper named Juniperus communis ‘Compressa’ that looks like a tiny Italian cypress, growing only to 3 feet tall, the very dwarf Chinese elms (the Hokkaido and Catlin varieties), which grow 2 feet tall with trunks 4 inches across, the dwarf Mugho pine and Cotoneaster microphyllus thymifolius , a compact shrub that can be trained to look like a little oak.

Herzog also stocks miniature dianthus and Iberis sayana plus creeping wire vine, all of which look like little shrubs. He also carries miniature sedges, rushes and grasses that would look right at home along the right-of-way.

Larry Webb’s garden railroad is also raised, but he built a huge triangle-shaped retaining wall and filled it with 20 cubic yards of topsoil. It’s about 30 inches tall and the shape allows it to be viewed from a variety of interesting angles.

Inside the bed, he fashioned small hills and mountains (even a tunnel) for the trains to run through. His track is also laid on a bed of gravel. The ballast (the fine gravel around the ties and tracks) is No. 10 chicken grit and a concrete adhesive holds it in place.

Webb said that “the track and track work are the most expensive part of garden railroading,” though the equipment doesn’t come cheap either.

A good locomotive costs from $400 to $600, though there are starter sets that can get you going for about $150. These include a locomotive, cars and some track.

Several of Webb’s locomotives are battery powered and radio controlled. Others run like regular model trains, off power coming from the tracks. For this Christmas season, Bachmann Industries is offering a radio-controlled American-style locomotive starter set for about $170.

Once you are off and running, you’ll find that there are endless accessories, other than plants, for garden railroads. Model train stores and hobby shops carry many, but Morgan’s Big Trains Emporium in Huntington Beach carries only the big-scale trains and accessories. Owner Vincent Morgan suggests starting with one of the L.G.B. Western sets.

“The L.G.B. engines run like Swiss clockwork,” he said. And he can provide you with all the accessories, in this case, Western buildings, including hotels, saloons and the sheriff’s office; plus the sheriff, Indians and other Western figures, tepees and livestock.

Even miniature buffalo for your range of Scotch moss.

WHERE TO FIND OUTDOOR TRAINS These are some of the retail stores specializing in large-scale outdoor trains:

Allied Model Trains, 4411 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Culver City, (213) 313-9353.

D.S. Models, 73981 Highway. 111, Palm Desert, (619) 346-2486.

Morgan’s Big Trains Emporium, 7368 Center Ave., Huntington Beach, (714) 892-3688.

The Roundhouse, 12804 Victory Blvd., North Hollywood, (818) 769-0403.

San-Val L.G.B., 7456 Valjean Ave., Van Nuys, (818) 786-8274.

The Original Whistle Stop, 2490 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, (818) 796-7791.