Holiday Show 2017

The annual Tidewater Big Train Operators (TBTO) Holiday train show is the largest and longest lasting display that our club sets up. We take over an entire gymnasium and the show runs for eight days.

2017 was our second year with our own layout in the show and our first year setting up along the outside area. The elevated tables are 8 feet deep by 24 feet long. We are starting to collect more “stuff” to have on our layouts, but this year we also used some of the buildings the club has in its collection. Many items are donated to the club over the years and it is nice to see them come out for display every once in a while.

We used a bit of gimmickry in our layout this year. Both tracks ran out of sight behind a backdrop for a bit, but the train on the inner loop changed the load on its flat-cars while it was back there. Or at least that’s what we hoped the illusion was. We ran two identical trains with one having crates of presents as the load and the other a stuffed character Nativity scene. An electronic controller from RR Concepts stopped the train for a bit until the other reached a particular spot on the track, then one would exit from behind the backdrop as the other entered.

The building fronts in the background were an idea borrowed from Paul Race at Family Garden Trains. They are simply pictures of interesting looking buildings glued on to foam board and cut out. As a backdrop they worked great.

White’s Nursery Fall 2017

This was our first show at White’s Nursery where we did not set up in the glass house. The shows our train club does here are a bit different in that each member has a different area to set up in, whereas at the larger shows members may do a layout within the confines of the larger display area. We always enjoyed using the floor in the glass house as it gave more flexibility in our layouts as opposed to using the display tables in the main garden center that limit you to a basic oval. This year the glass house was not available but the ever accommodating staff at White’s cleared out this area for us.

The decoration for this layout used our ever expanding Candyland geegaws and the jelly bean laden railtruck leaves the mine on a circular track controlled by a shuttle system. Once it reaches the unloading dock it stops, pauses and reverses course back to the mine.

We also brought along our “World’s Smallest Model Train” layout. I don’t know if it really is the smallest, but it sounds good. The train is run by a linear induction drive and it is about 1:1000 scale.

Golden Spike

In September of 2017 we had the “Golden Spike” ceremony for our layout in conjunction with the club’s annual picnic. A Last Spike is the one driven at the completion of a railroad construction project and when the Central Pacific and Union Pacific rail lines were joined at Promontory Point, Utah in 1869 they used a 17 karat gold spike. *The Tidewater Big Train Operators similarly celebrate the “completion” of member layouts. Since we had the club picnic as well it was catered by Captain Bob’s of Hertford, NC.

The weather was gorgeous, we had a good crowd and the food was amazing. And best of all…the trains ran great and we had fun.

  • *A garden train layout is never “complete”. Things grow that need to be cut back and pruned. Things grow that you don’t want and need to be removed. Ballast shifts, connections loosen and so on and so forth.

SCARM

Simple Computer Aided Railway Modeler

All of our layouts have been designed with a piece of software known as SCARM, or Simple Computer Aided Railway Modeler. There is other software available and this is not the one that our club uses, but when we first started SCARM was free (it was still in beta) and we got used to it. It has since been released as a paid version, which we upgraded to, and the author keeps it up to date and adds new features.

The software has libraries of track in different scales/sizes and from most of the manufacturers, running from T Gauge (1/450) to G (1/22.5). Oddly, in G it still does not have USA Trains brand of track (which we have a lot of) but it does have Aristocraft which measures out the same so we do not have any problems.

When you are trying to design something other than a simple circle or oval the modeling software is invaluable (to us anyway).

White’s Nursery Spring 2017

Birdhouses and Bubble Boy

The decorative wooden birdhouses you can find ‘most anywhere work great on a garden train layout, though the scale is just the tiniest bit too small. They work well on an indoor layout that is, they do not hold up at all outside. Do not ask how we know. We have quite a few of them and they are fun to add things to and make small vignettes.

This was the first time we added some sort of water feature to one of our layouts. For shows like this the layouts are generally fairly small and it is hard to have the trains do anything more than run around in a circle. In other words it gets boring quick. You can either try to add a lot of detail or in our case a bit of animation. The moving water helps provide that.

And then there is Herbie the Hamster and Bubble Boy. Herbie actually runs and spins his exercise wheel and the whale blows bubbles. This layout in particular gave us a good lesson in how quickly a four year old’s hand can reach out to grab something. For the larger layouts our club does we have a rope barrier that keeps (most) people from getting too close to the trains and layouts. That is not the case at White’s Nursery. Our layout is right on the floor.

Holiday Show 2016

The annual Tidewater Big Train Operators (TBTO) Holiday train show is the largest and longest lasting display that our club sets up. We take over an entire gymnasium and the show runs for eight days.

This year was the third year for us as members of the club and the first year that we had our own layout within it – Candyland. Being new to the hobby we don’t have nearly as many of the little details that add depth to a layout, but it is ours and we have fun. It just goes to show that you don’t need a lot of “stuff” to participate, you just need to be willing to get out there and do something.

White’s Nursery Fall 2016

Our second holiday themed show at White’s Nursery in Chesapeake, Virginia.

This was the debut of our Dinosaur Train. Kids in general love trains so one goal of our train club, the Tidewater Big Train Operators, is to keep them interested in the hopes that they’ll grow into big kids who love trains. Kind of like us. At every show our club does one of the layouts features Thomas the Tank Engine or one of his friends (James, Emily, etc.). However, Archie has a particularly strong dislike of Thomas therefore we do not have one on our layouts. Or even own one. We wanted to have something for the younger wannabe engineers so we came up with our rendition of the Dinosaur Train, a popular PBS children’s show. The train isn’t available in a G scale version so we had to get creative and put together our own.

This layout was also done in the glass house at White’s and we used a layout known as a folded dogbone using five foot curves. You are not going to get a very big engine running around a design like this, but you can squeeze a fair amount of track into a small space.

Construction Aug 2016

The Trench

A neighbor with a mini-excavator was hired to dig the canal and the larger pond. We did NOT care to dig all of that by hand.

But there signs at the far end of the layout that completion may actually exist. The small pond is starting to fill in.

The inner loop of track is usable and the village of Fowlerville has been established.

We are using a higher grade of birdhouses for the outdoor layout than what we have for our shows, they seem well made and may actually hold up outdoors.

Oh…and another ton of rocks. Rip rap this time.

Construction July 2016

The roto-tiller abuse continues. Obviously we’re taking a break from running trains at this point, but many loads of dirt taken out and many of gravel put in and parts of our layout at least are starting to take shape. The gazebo is mostly finished as is one end of our water feature. We had 13 tons of gravel brought in for the track ballast. It is not exactly to scale, but it will stay in place much better. Rain drops are always 1:1 scale and will knock around ballast that is actually the correct size.

We are also putting in the wiring during this phase. There will be a 110 VAC circuit along with 12 volt landscape lighting. Each loop of track gets two feeder connections and all of it goes back to the pumphouse which we’ve designated as the Train House. Our two Bridgewerks train controllers will live in there as well as the landscape light controller and electrical distribution box for the 110.

Construction June 2016

This is about the time that the neighbors begin to wonder just what we are up to.

We got all three tracks in place. We ran trains. We contemplated and navel gazed for a bit. We decided we were really going to do this. And then……we got to work. The large blob of deadness in the fore ground will be a water feature and where our mini-Great Dismal Swamp Canal starts.

Our buddy, the roto-tiller. It is a bit of a Herculean task for what is actually an attachment for our weed eater, but it is performing admirably. Following the “dead zone” of our track layout, we are first going along and tearing through the grass layer followed by tilling down through the dirt to get a trench that is approximately one foot wide and a half foot deep. Our topsoil layer is surprisingly thin, digging very much past six inches and we are into clay.

We also ran into a lot of subterranean surprises… …the roots maybe not so much unexpected. Our water line going to the house that was not where the “Call Before You Dig” folks indicated was a definite surprise. Fortunately it was PVC pipe so a quick trip to the hardware store for pieces parts and it was repaired.