The building superintendent gave me a dirt pile just for getting it out of his way. It's wheelbarrow and shovel time.

Lumber, plastic, beaded foam and track.


There will be a stream.



I covered the plastic stream with river pebbles.

A little cutie brings her daddy to play with trains now and then.


Disaster strikes. I dropped a bucket of dirt on the stream and the water was running out, right onto...

...the power supplies

After reparing the stream, I got the rest of that wheelbarrow load in place.


I've done 3 more loads today.

Since this is inside and lighting is limited, I'll need plants for deep shade, and likely a few "grow lights." Since the trains are 1:29, I'll probably want mostly low growing plants.

I have a packet of seeds for "Shady Place" flowers. Let's see, it contains:

Balsam Camellia
Coleus Rainbo
Pansy Swiss Giant

The package says they grow 8 to 30 inches, so I'll try to use these for backdrop.

What do you think?

Got some more soil in place before the 100 degree heat hit. Here a freight crosses an open field:

That train Setup is AWESOMES!! Want are you going to plant in that field? Anything? I wonder if you can even grow grass there?? What is that steamer, a 4-6-4. I think a few bonsai tree's would be awesome around there also, But I have no idea if they can grow in your particular conditions.

Good Luck!!

Ninni

That loco is a 2-8-8-2 Mallet: Heavy freight engine built during WW1 to help get freight over the Appalachin's to ship to Europe.

Being indoors, it's "deep shade." I expect I'll need some grow lights. Right now it's 103 outside and about 93 inside.

I'm not sure what to do with that expanse yet. Since it's a train shop ( http://www.gardentrack.com ) the layout is for displaying products. Maybe a town of prebuilt houses. I'm looking at some low growing groundcovers for deep shade.

Awsome set-up. It's going to look great when its done.

I think you will need some grow lights, if you have it in the depths of a building.

Hi Torby,

The "shade" plants that you listed are plants for outdoor shade which is at least ten times brighter than your indoor light.

Indoors in low light, even low light supplemented by fluorescent light (incandescent light won't help), your options are quite limited and probably will not have "the look" that you would like because they are all tropical in origin.

You could try Chinese evergreen , Pothos, ZZ plant, peace lily, and Dracaena marginata.

Good luck. Your trains look great!

Thanks for the suggestions.

I'm clueless in the dark.

I'm clueless in the dark.

I suspect your husband knows otherwise!

Um... I was the husband. "Torby" is masculine

Whoops! I am totally red-faced. My apologies, Torby.

I suspect your wife knows otherwise! LOL!

Hi Torby I am a fellow train enthusist. I think I love them as much as flowers. I just though I would let ya know that you can make great evergreen trees out of old fake christmas tree branches. Ya just cut them and shape them. They really look good if you give them the time they need for shapeing and such.

I haven't posted for a while. Busy with a garden railroad convention last week and trying to stay in business this week...

I had a big ol' wreck!



Karrie, I've seen lots of cool ways to make fake trees. For pine trees, you carve down a stick to make the trunk, cut rings out of a furnace filter (new one), stick them on the stick, rough up and paint to taste.

Will, don't worry about it. I get called "mam'" on the phone all the time. Some people think I'm a lady named "Ruby Thomas."

Now if I could find a way to make a living... Interested in putting a train in your garden?

An Experiment:

Since the impatients are doing so well in the window box,



and I keep the overhead door open during the day, at least in the summetime, and I had some scraggly looking sets left over, I put some in the layout:

Wow Coleus are tiny seeds!

A Layout Tour

A freight pauses at the water tank.


While a young bather scrambles to escape attention


A signal bridge protects Malfunction Junction where the Asylum Valley N&D joins the Pennsylvania.


The freight pulls past Coleus Hill.


The express crosses Coleus Creek.

The army just has to wait for the express

Billy enjoys the cool breeze up on the coaling tower while he watches trains. Hope his mother doesn't find out where he is

The Asylum Valley Local crosses the bridge over the Asylum River.


And past a cairn.

That is such an neat thing you have going
there..
Love the pictures...enjoyed them ALOT!!
So'd the kids.. they thought it was real!!

OOOOOOOOOH! I LOVE IT! Where are you Torby? I'm in S. IL, and I wanna come and play! Is that O gague? I love the water tower - I hope you can get stuff growing - that's an awesome idea, and I don't know why I never thought of it back in my trainset building days. Man I wish I had space!

This is G gauge. About 1 1/2 times the size of O. There's always enough space for a railroad! Check out http://gold.mylargescale.com/torby/

I'm in central Illinois. Look at a map, between Peoria and Springfield, the go west. You'll find Macomb.

The boys much enjoyed visiting the shop:

Ethan liked the Army train.


Though Caleb was more interested in something else.


I think, since I keep the overhead door open whenever it's nice, that shade plants should do ok.

Something's coming up! I wonder if it's what I planted :rolleyes:



Hmm. I didn't plant these

Looks like grass and mushrooms...

LOVE That! Now you need Thomas and Gordon!

Strangely, Thomas and crew aren't commonly available in G gauge. One manufacturer makes a few every few years.

The last pictures:

"Johnnie, quit chuckin' them rocks in the water."



"You can't tell me what to do!"

"If I don't catch something, all you'll have for supper is these here grubworms."

"Na Uh, Luke. You ain't makin' me eat no grubworms!"

"Iffen you don't let me catch something, none of us is eatin' fish!"

Here's all the plants that grew.





The trackless waste:







First, 2/3 of my financing was withdrawn. Then the credit card companies put me to default rate. There were no train sales in June, July and August. My software business went all summer with no work. The creditors are on the phone all the time. No money to pay rent on the shop. Time to retreat back to the Asylum.

I managed to take care of the customers that ordered in September, and I don't owe any suppliers anything.

Well, I'll be! One of my flowers has bloomed!



(It's an impatient.)

Excellant!!

Any more buds kinda showin' their heads?

This is awesome!! I only wish I had the creativity and energy to take on a project like this!

What about baby's tears for a low growing ground cover type thing? It's good in low light and spreads. At least that's the experience I have with it.

The train garden is no more. Energy and ideas I had, but money and business ran out.

The impatient that bloomed had a bunch of blooms.

I potted some of the coleus to take home. It seemed sad to just throw the other plants out, and there were some people across the way, so I took one and said, "Would you like a flower? Actually, it's a coleus, so it won't make much flower but it has pretty leaves."

They were delighted to be given a coleus, especially the little boy, who was ready to follow me anywhere for more. His grandma came with him, and I gave them this impatient too.

So sorry to hear about this...
Where will all that stuff go now??

Thats' sad..
Hope you'll be able to take it home
or something and put it in a basement.

Another part of this hobby I like is making figures, and here's a few I hadn't posted before:

Mary Ellen


She eventually joined the boys at the stream on the other side.

Teddy finds a new friend.


Unfortunately, nobody introduced him to Mother!


Miss Smith the school marm tries to ignore him while Jefferson Smith, a bit of local color, explains Child Psychology.



The homework in our figure class once was to draw a figure according to somebody else's description of their railroad. The description was the assignment for the week before. Since I can't draw, I sculpted:



I sent his one to the guy whos railroad inspired the figure.

All the people are carefully wrapped in tissue and tucked into a little box.

Those are so cute...

*I know someone who used to carve people like that
and make bendie~people too with wires...*

What will happen to all of those people?

They're all carefully wrapped in tissue and tucked into a little box.

In my scale, a 6 ft figure is 2 1/2 inches high, so they're really small, especially the kids. The man who caught the boy is in a larger scale to match my friend's railroad, so he is about 3 1/2 inches high.

Since I model summertime durring the depression, the kids are out of school and visible everywhere. Most of the parents are busy. I figured on building some shops and industry where the adults would congregate.