Finally came across a way you can meld your wife’s love of back yard sun bathing and your love of model locomotives, huh? As the young kids say these days, g scale is definitely the bomb! You get to have fun in the sun while working on your own personal model locomotive curiosity. But how to begin? G scale model railroad layouts are all fairly unique because every one has to alter their track designs to fit the individual idiosyncrasies of the yards they are setup in. Here are some bits of advice.

Use the topography of your yard to help you make the decisions you make in terms of train choice:  Weather and terrain should play into the choices you make about your g scale track design.  If you live in the Arizona desert and your backyard is a stone garden, consider choosing a kind of train and track that was typical of the American Southwest like the Sante Fe type locomotives that are widely available.  But if you live in the hills of Berkeley or San Francisco and your back yard is somewhat inclined  you will want to take this into consideration as well.  The topographical features of your out door train space are the main limit to your g scale model railroad layouts.  These topographical features, however, can also greatly help the realism and the complexity of our railroad plans.

Play peek-a-boo with your track plan:  One of the best ways of [adding|maximizing|increasing] interest to our g [scale|gauge] model railroad [layouts|designs|setups] is to use the [flora|bushes and trees|hedges and plants] of our back yards to enhance the visual [interest|excitement|enjoyment] of our track [plan|design|layout].

Play peek-a-boo with the spectator by curling the train into the natural features of the yard. The lazy way is to run your track through a bush, but if you’re really ambitious you might build a desert pass or rough  gorge right in your back yard. Nothing compares to seeing your g gauge train appear and disappear, appear and disappear—peek-a-boo…peek-a-boo….

Work with the major landmarks of your yard:  If you have a completely empty yard then this is not a consideration, but since most of us have things other than trains and grass in your back yards, your best bet is to take these backyard landmarks and work with them. Got statues, let them take a role in your plan. A train track placed around a trickling stone fountain or past a spitting stone cherub can make for a particularly eye catching feature.

Don’t forget landscape accessories; they’re not just for the little trains anymore:  Add scaled trees, little cities, train stations, peaks and streams and all the same sorts of details and features both mimicking nature and culture, just as you would to any other train scale.  The designing, constructing and detailing and weathering of these little landmarks and features can be one of the most fun and fulfilling aspects of a model railroad.  It is much more rewarding to spend in rainy Sunday afternoon detailing and coloring a model train whistle stop than watching reruns of I Love Lucy.

When you are designing your g gauge railroad you will be participating in one of the fastest growing hobbies around. Go ahead, make people pay at the door before they can take a gander at your totally cool g train setup!

Here is more information on G Scale Model Trains. Here is a website with a free mini-course dedicated to Model Trains.