Finally found a way you can mix your wife’s love of back yard sun bathing and your love of model locomotives, huh? As the young kids say these days, g gauge is definitely the bomb! You get to have fun in the sun while planning your own personal toy locomotive curiosity. Now it’s just a question of how to do it? Your backyard will have a major say in the type of design you go with.  That said, there are some simple considerations when you are planning your g gauge train setup.

Let your yard have some say over your g size track:  One of the best decisions you can make is to use the climate of your yard as one of the main factors in deciding the type of train and the design of your g gauge model railroad plans.  If you live in the Arizona desert and your backyard is a rock garden, consider choosing a type of train and track that was common in the American Southwest like the Sante Fe type locomotives that are easily purchased.  But if you live in the hills of Berkeley or San Francisco and your back yard is somewhat sloped  you will want to take this into consideration as well. Climate and terrain are just as important as spatial considerations for g gauge trains. Try to use climate and terrain to aid your train plans.

Use the natural features of your outdoor area and garden to increase the visual interest of your design:  One of the best ways of maximizing interest to our g gauge model railroad layouts is to use the hedges and plants of our back yards to enhance the visual enjoyment of our track design.

Play peek-a-boo with the spectator by snaking the train into the natural features of the yard.  Where it might be a lot of exertion to design a tunnel and mountain structure in our backyards for a g scale design, a shady bush can serve the exact same purpose with minimal effort on our part. Nothing compares to making your g gauge train appear and disappear, appear and disappear—peek-a-boo…peek-a-boo….

Work with the major landmarks of your yard:  If you have a completely empty yard then this is not a consideration, but since most of us have things other than trains and grass in your back yards, your best bet is to take these backyard landmarks and work with them.  Waterworks can really add a contemplative element to your garden railroad. Little stone dwarves around a pool featuring a transom with your locomotive tracks can really make for a enchanting experience. Use it.

Add artificial accessories to your backyard plan:  Finally, to really enhance the full reality of our g scale model railroad layouts we are well served by creating features like whistle stops and round houses to make our model train worlds as realistic and intricate as possible.  The designing, constructing and detailing and weathering of these little landmarks and features can be one of the most enjoyable and fulfilling aspects of a model railroad.  It is much more rewarding to spend in rainy Sunday afternoon detailing and coloring a model train whistle stop than watching reruns of I Love Lucy.

G scale toy trains are so in demand right now, you shouldn’t be surprised if you acquaintances are willing to shell out cold hard cash to come over and see your setup. Go ahead, make people pay at the door before they can set their eyes on your totally cool g train setup!

Here is more information on G Scale Model Trains. Here is a website with a free mini-course dedicated to Model Trains.

Technorati Tags: g scale, g scale model railroad layouts, g scale model trains, garden train layouts, garden trains, toy trains