Moss and Ground Cover in G-Scale Garden Train Land 05-29-14

Blog Entry by Bob

With our crazy blend of rain and hot sunny days, our
little plants are really starting to take off.  My Mom and Dad and Mary's Mom were cleaning out the undesirable plants from their lawns, we managed to score a bunch of moss to use as ground cover in the layout. With the short moss, I started making some front lawns for the houses and pulled out the old wooly thyme and scotch moss that was killed by our brutal winter.








I decided to line the edge of the tracks with long moss where it runs along the boardwalk/deck. We really like the look of this and hope that it will take hold in its new home.










With the extra long moss I was also able to fill in along the creek and rocks by the tunnels.








We also went to the nursery and bought more Elfen thyme which I filled in the back yards of the houses and the front yard of the farm house.




While I was running trains and taking moss pictures I found a toad.




I then got distracted by running trains and the next thing I knew the sun was setting and I could not take any more pictures.

New Switching Yard in G-Scale Land 05-10-14

Blog post by Bob

Last spring I started dreaming about expanding the layout. My first instinct was to shoot back along the hedge the whole depth of the backyard until I got to the back property line, turn around and come back. So all year I was looking forward to the fall to build-up the side garden and start laying some serious track. I bought the switches I needed and kept a track sketch beside my monitor at work to daydream about. I started moving dirt and booked a day off to get the job done. It was on that sunny day, with a shovel and my hand, knee deep in dirt and track pieces everywhere that I stopped and asked myself "What the heck an I doing?". I hate weeding. The layout is already I nice size and I have sections of track that I never run the train on. I decided to put down my shovel and go back to the drawing board to come up with a new plan to optimize my track space. The winter came fast and I never got the opportunity to get back outside until a couple of weeks ago. My new plan is a switching yard with a siding for the road engines to drop-off/pick-up lines of cars. The switching engines have their own dedicated tracks to assemble, sort, deliver rolling stock without interfering with the road engine's track loop. I asked for additional track for X-mas and my mother-in-law came through for me. I still have to build my industries for the new destinations, but that gives me new things to daydream about and plan for in the future.

Running Train in G-Scale Land - Part 2 05-03-14

We had so much fun running trains last time that we took more pictures.