This fall during a trip out west to visit family we had the opportunity to visit the Heber Valley Railroad in Utah’s Provo Valley. Originally completed in 1899 as a part of the Rio Grande Western the branch line was in service hauling freight until 1966.

The 1970’s and 80’s saw the railroad operating as a private heritage line however in 1990 the railroad would go into bankruptcy. In 1992 the Utah State Legislature voted to purchase the railroad and all of its assets and trains began running again in 1993.

During the 2002 Winter Olympics the railroad served as transportation, bringing visitors from the depot in Heber City to a station at Soldier Valley where passengers transferred to horse drawn sleighs and continued to the venues for the biathlon and cross country skiing.

The Soldier Valley station was built specifically for the Olympics and along the way there was also what was called the “Teak Barn” which had been fallen down but was reconstructed just so the Olympic visitors would have something to see on their ride.

The pride of the Heber Valley Railroad is the ex-Union Pacific 618, a class “C-57” 2-8-0 “Consolidation” type steam locomotive. The engine had been on static display at the Utah State Fairgrounds; it was transferred to the Promontory Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society, restored and placed back in service. In 2010 the boiler permit expired and the 618 was placed back on static display. In 2014 it was moved into the shops for overhaul and conversion from coal to oil burning.

Unfortunately during our visit the 618 was not running, it is currently awaiting a boiler inspection. Nor was the Great Western No. 75, another 2-8-0 which is in storage awaiting repairs.

We took a ride on the Lakeside Limited route in a restored 1920’s heavyweight passenger car with the four car train being pulled by a GP-9 diesel locomotive. Once we got out of Heber City the tracks wound through the countryside along the Provo River and Deer Creek reservoir.

Our visit was enjoyable, we liked the 90 minute ride and the box lunches available were very good. The railroad seems to own a lot of historic rail cars and engines, but very little of it is visible to visitors. There is a small 0-6-0 steam switcher on static display and a bit of rolling stock but other than the train we rode on that was about it. The Heber Valley Railroad spends a considerable amount of their available labor and funds on maintaining and improving their right-of-way. The trip we went on will be expanded and lengthened by 30 minutes next year (2023).

Accessibility for wheelchairs and electric mobility devices was not good. Due to the historic nature of the passenger cars neither can be brought aboard the trains.

Potager – A kitchen garden where vegetables, flowers, herbs and fruit intermingle. With trains.

A Garden train with a lot of plantings involved is a fair amount of work to keep up with. Any grass you have growing is always trying to take over the whole world, annuals have to be replanted – annually and there is just a lot of pruning, trimming and cleaning up to be done. So this year we decided that for all of our work our garden train needed to be rewarding us a little more than it had been.

This year we have four different varieties of peppers dispersed throughout the garden in containers and several different spots are being cleaned out for our fall/winter garden.

We had grapevines planted and while the plants themselves grew well it turned out that they were a variety that didn’t really care for hot and humid North Carolina summers, meaning that for all of their showiness we didn’t get to eat grapes. So the grape vines came out and early this year I planted snow peas. Critters ate ’em. I followed up with bush beans. Critters ate them – again. Next came pole beans. They survived the local wildlife, but the soil in that bed is not the best as grapes like to be tortured a bit with their growing conditions. So the beans are still there but they are not exactly thriving.

Shortly after we noticed something else coming up. It looked a lot like a squash plant, or possibly cucumber or a melon of some sort. Now we very rarely plant squash as the Engineer does not care for them. Neither of us are fond of cucumber, though we have on occasion put up some pickles. And it has been a long time since we planted melons. And none of those, or anything else edible, has ever been planted in the area where our trains are. Yet here it is.

Now we have a very productive cantaloupe patch growing in a very narrow area between a couple of parallel train tracks.

Summer vacation this year included a trip to the Tweetsie Railroad theme park near Blowing Rock, North Carolina. It was a return visit for the Conductor and a new experience for our Engineer. I would love to say that it was exactly as I remembered it, but as my first time there was 1958 or ’59 I really do not recall much of it. So call it new for both of us. The Blowing Rock/Boone region of NC is gorgeous and we spent quite a bit of time on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The Tweetsie Railroad opened in 1957 as a one-mile excursion train ride behind the East Tennessee and Western North Carolina Railroad (ET&WNC) #12 narrow gauge 4-6-0 coal-fired locomotive.

In 1958 the tracks were expanded into a three mile loop around the mountain. In 1961 a chair lift up the mountain and amusement park rides were added. #12 is well known to G-scale garden train enthusiasts as the prototype for Bachmann Train’s Big Hauler engine.

On the day we visited the “Yukon Queen”, a 2-8-2 from Alaska’s White Pass and Yukon railroad was in operation. Built in 1943 she would have originally been known as a “MacArthur” 2-8-2 but more commonly now referred to as a Mikado.

The Tweetsie RR operates its own locomotive repair shop to maintain their two historic steam engines as well as performing overhauls and providing repair parts for other heritage trains at Walt Disney World, Dollywood and Busch Gardens. The shop is not normally open to visitors, however, during railroad heritage events in the fall tours are available.

Like many small heritage railroads Tweetsie adds in a “train robbery” and at one time had a (typical for the time) cowboy-and-indian show along the train ride that has become less insensitive to Native Americans and more of a generic good guys and bandits act.

Over the years they have added numerous shows, rides and amusements. The park is built on a mountain with the main western themed area at the base, amusement rides along the side and a petting zoo, live music show and more dining at the top.

We found Tweetsie to be very accessible with our mobility scooter. We were able to easily visit all of the shops, entertainment and dining facilities. Both wheelchairs and scooters can be brought onto the train passenger cars. Neither can be used on the chairlift, but there is a shuttle that runs from the lower level of the park to the upper. There is also a paved path that leads through the woods around the park that will take you to the upper level. This trail was navigable with our scooter without any issues, due to its steepness and length it would be very difficult for a wheelchair.

At last, the season of inactivity for us is over – time for another show at White’s Nursery and Garden Center. Our train club did two shows over the winter but we elected not to participate. We enjoy doing the shows at White’s as they are a little more “free-form” and we can do our own thing without having to fit into the overall scheme of a large club layout.

In a first for us we’ve decided to start doing our layouts on a table rather than on the floor. The first couple years we did a layout we were in a separate greenhouse and really had an unlimited area to set up in. However, just as in Nature, a train layout abhors a vacuum and the more space you have available the more “stuff” you need to fill it up. Eventually the management at the nursery decided to use the spot we were in for something else and we moved into the main area where the rest of the layouts were, though still on the floor. It was nice as we were setting up in a gravel area which meant we didn’t have to worry about an underlayment and it was still larger than one of the tables.

We used a 5′ X 10′ loop of track and borrowed the green carpet from other club members so we didn’t quite fill out the 6′ X 17″ space available. The next White’s show will be a winter theme and we have plenty of white sheets to use as underlayment for that and by the time the next spring show rolls around we’ll have our own green mat. Our knees and backs appreciated not having to do all the up and down a layout on the floor entailed and we’ll be setting up on one of the tables from now on.

In our continuing adventures with micro-layouts we debuted the Dismal Creek Recreational Area. We’re using a 33 inch circle of track that’s ballasted in place on the base with a changeable center diorama. We used a thick piece of foam for the inner portion to accommodate the water depth, in retrospect the diameter should have been smaller as there are very few engines that will fit.

White’s Nursery Spring Show, the East Coast Large Scale Train Show, Denbigh Train Days, Poquoson Trinity Show, Ashland Train Days, White’s Nursery Fall Show, TBTO Holiday Show. A lot of (garden train related) things that did not happen in 2020.

There is still not much happening yet in 2021, though things are starting to look up. We recently took a trip to the North Carolina Transportation Museum in Spencer, NC. The museum is at the location of Southern Railway’s largest steam locomotive maintenance facility and now displays things transportation related from bicycles to airplanes.

And trains. A LOT of trains – locomotives (both steam and diesel), rail cars and equipment. The largest remaining roundhouse in North America is located at the museum as well as a working turntable. The museum is still a working maintenance facility and the last restoration of the Norfolk & Western 611 J-Class 4-8-4 steam locomotive was performed there.

In 2020 the 611 was scheduled to be at the museum for routine maintenance. When the pandemic shutdown happened she stayed there and was occasionally on display. In May of 2021 she was scheduled to be at Strasburg, PA by May 21st for excursions, however the auger for its mechanical coal stoker broke, meaning when we took our trip there the 611 was still there. All repaired and almost ready to go we were able to watch it being loaded with coal and to see it steaming the next day.

And while being able to see the 611 up close was a surprise, and definitely the highlight of our visit, even if it had not been there a trip to the museum was well worth it. We went on a Friday to tour the museum and then back again Saturday for the Spencer Shops Model Train Show plus an excursion train ride pulled by a N&W EMD GP9 diesel engine. The schedule worked out really well as the museum was near empty Friday and Saturday it was packed as it was the weekend for the first train show in quite a while, it was museum member’s day plus the 611 was there and fired up.

And here is little of what all else makes the museum worth a (repeat) visit.

The North Carolina Transportation Museum is fully accessible to persons with disabilities. Handicap parking is available, but we didn’t find it to be well marked and it is NOT within the main parking area.

What 2020 has brought us to. Every year that we have been together we have run trains on Christmas Eve. We would invite anyone who chose to come by and watch the trains run and gather together for a little pre-Christmas cheer. The train garden would be decorated as well as the trains. We have several dedicated holiday trains that only get run once a year, plus we have ornaments for the ore cars and Christmas lights ’round passenger cars.

We are probably anomalies, but Archie and I actually like fruitcake. So we have some out for us and anyone else who cares for some, plus homemade cookies, cocoa and mulled apple cider. There’s a gas heater running so no one gets too terribly cold and the weather has never stopped the trains. We had one year that was a little drizzly, but it did not bother the trains any and the 1:1 people around the garden had a pop-up canopy to stay under.

And then…2020 came around. Both of us have been taking the restrictions seriously. We are not inviting a bunch of people to come and hang out with us and we are not baking a bunch of cookies for just the two of us. And if COVID issues were not enough, let us throw in some damaging winds, large hail and possibly a tornado. In reality, the social isolation made it easier to not try and force it, just to maintain our “record” of Christmas Eve celebrations. There will be more to come in the future, this year we will just sit back and relax.

We are still running trains though, this one happens to be T-gauge on my desk rather than our usual G Scale in the train garden. And we do have our cider and a properly aged fruitcake. Stay safe y’all and have a Merry Christmas!

Our train club, the Tidewater Big Train Operators, has long put on a large Holiday show that runs for eight days and every year that Archie and I have been members we have participated in it. Like everything else in this crazy year the show was cancelled. Sigh. We were not actually planning on having our own layout in the show this year, but still would have enjoyed the comradery and participating. So the Providence Township division of the TBTO decided we’d have our own little display just so the tradition would continue. Sort of.

Staying with the “pizza box” style of all the little displays we have done this year the base has been upgraded to a circle of 2″ insulating foam. The base we used for several years was made of half inch plywood that had a tendency to warp, so we had a local fabrication shop weld together a frame to go on the bottom that added the needed rigidity. It also added a LOT of weight. We are going to try these foam circles and see how well they hold up. This is the smallest of these layouts we have done, previously we used a 32″ (422mm) circle of track from a small German dealer, this is 30″ diameter that Aristocraft used to sell for their barrel layout.

The Milk and Cookies train has not been in a “show” for a couple of years and it seemed appropriate for a layout like this. We were on the lookout for something unusual to depict a train engineer or conductor and ran across this Russ Troll doll dressed as an engineer and knew it would be a perfect fit for one of our novelty trains. Except it did not actually fit anything we had. So an LGB Porter underwent a chop job, got a paint job in purple Testors lacquer and the Trolly loco was born. LGB has always advertised that all of their trains will run on the smallest radius track they make, which is a 48″ circle, but this considerably smaller than that so only an engine with a very short wheelbase will run on it. Their model of a Baldwin Porter is also physically one of the smallest locomotives they make so visually it fits in well with our tiny layouts.

Before they closed up shop Hartland Locomotive Works used to make a line of mini train cars that we frequently use as the basis for something off the wall. The milk tanker car is actually stock and we used one of the flat cars to create a table for Santa’s milk and cookies. I have no recollection of where the tableware came from, it is a child’s playset that we saw some place and thought that it could be useful and the “cookies” are 1″ scale dollhouse items. G Scale is actually closest to half inch scale, but we have found that the 1:12 things are much easier to find at our local hobby store and often time they look just fine. Running on a circle of track this small creates a lot of drag from the wheels on a train so we used ball bearing wheelsets.

Our Open Yard Halloween this year was as much for our benefit as it was for those who stopped by. We have run our trains on Halloween for the last nine years so this provided a small bit of normality in an otherwise weird year. We had all three tracks cleaned up and running trains, in fact the squiggly inner track was running two trains. They almost stayed synchronized. Plus, there was another, one-off pizza box layout just for the day.

The Albemarle Express got in a nice long run with its newly assigned locomotive – an Aristocraft C-16 Consolidated engine and tender. We also broke out a few of our kerosene lanterns for extra light and fired up the antique Standard heater for the first time. The extra heat was welcome.

Visitor wise it was a quiet evening, but at least there were some. A new neighbor who has not seen one of our open houses yet came by with his son and watched for quite a while. It is always enjoyable when folks drop by to just chat and watch the trains runs and we do not need a crowd. We did have a few kids come by to get candy. We would love to have had more but given the current situation it was probably best as it was.