Every year our train club, the Tidewater Big Train Operators, has a large Christmas themed train show that runs for eight days. This was the first time in four years that we had an individual layout in the show. Setting up your own display for the show involves a big time commitment, not to mention expense, that was becoming hard for us to make. Especially after moving to North Carolina the event space is now an hour away from us. This year we thought we would try doing a layout in the center, common area. The trains running here are controlled by the “Trainmaster” so we would not necessarily need to be present every evening of the show.

A running conflict we have with the TBTO Holiday Show is that it overlaps with many other Christmas activities we cherish, and participating in the show can be stressful (for the Conductor – me), as well as costly to assemble everything for a display. On the other hand, our club has been hosting the show for 28 years, attracting a dedicated audience over the years. Many attendees who first joined as children are now bringing their own kids. We will continue to participate in some capacity while striving to balance it with the other happenings of the season.

Another Spring, another show at White’s Nursery in Chesapeake, VA.

Continuing our micro layouts we went with a farming scene this time. We do not have an actual farm train, so the Hello Kitty cars were asked to participate.

We went back to our old standbys this time – birdhouses. They are a good size for the smaller layouts used at White’s Nursery and we have quite a few of them. What we do NOT have is a lot of the smaller detail items needed to fill out dioramas with them, we’re working on that. Two of the houses we have are a feed and grain store and a barn so we added some Lego characters, a knock-off garden and chicken coop plus some smaller scale farm implements.

We are slowly filling in the empty spaces around our collection of birdhouses, but it really is a slow process. Thankfully at White’s there are plenty of plants that they are more than happy for us to use.

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.