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Garden Railroad Construction ArticlesGarden Railroading Primer Articles: All about getting a Garden Railroad up and running wellBest Choices for Beginning Garden Railroaders: a short list of things you're most likely to need when starting out
Large Scale Starter Sets: Begin with a train you'll be proud to runBachmann Garden Trains: Narrow Gauge models designed to run well in your Garden Railroad
Large Scale Track order FormFamily Garden Trains Archive Articles: Other miscellaneous articles about garden railroading
Large Scale Christmas Trains: Trains with a holiday theme for garden or professional display railroads.Free Large Scale Signs and Graphics: Bring your railroad to life with street signs, business signs, and railroad signs
Garden Railroading Books, Magazines, and Videos: Where to go to learn even more
Collectible Trains and Villages: On30 Trains and accessories designed by Thomas Kinkade and others

Written by Paul D. Race for Family Garden Trains(tm)
































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Garden Railroad Constuction Articles

There are about as many ways to build a garden railroad as there are garden railroaders, but you owe it to yourself to pick a method and outcome that suits your short-term and long-term expectations for your railroad. The following links should help you choose and use the combination of solutions that are optimum for you.
  • Introduction to Garden Railroad Construction - a brief introduction to the most popular methods, with some guidelines that might help you figure out which ones are probably better for you. Click to go to article.

  • 1-Day Railroad - A plan for building a ground-level garden railroad in one day (or maybe a weekend).

  • Click to go to article.Raising a Ground-Level Railroad One way to get from a simple, ground-level railroad to a raised railroad without having to shut down operations for the summer.

  • Click to go to article.Flextrack and Railbenders - How to get away from preformed curves into graceful right-of-ways. If you have room for a large railroad with smooth curves, "Flex-Track" is probably the way to go. And railbenders will help you get an attractive, reliable track system.

  • Click to go to article.Building a Simple Raised Railroad- The definitive article on the most widely used and robust method for building a raised, low maintenance garden railroad.

  • Click to go to article.HDPE Flexible Roadbed - Architect Bill Logan's more elegant construction method, suitable for very large, complex, or unusual railroads.

  • HPDE Lumber in the Shop - A follow-up article by Bob Zajicek, showing how to get large amounts of HDPE roadbed ready to install by working "smart" in the shop. - January, 2007

  • The Little Railroad That Grew - Describes how I used rock garden techniques and other methods to build my own railroad, and kept growing it.Click to see article.

  • How We Built Our Garden Railroads - January, 2004. (How several other folks did it their way, using different techniques.)

  • Refurbishing Garden Railroad Roadbed - a Click to go to article.description of my own "rework" to overcome limitations of my first installation - New, September, 2008

Other Articles of Interest

Related Articles from Other People

As I find useful articles on this topic from other folks, I will post them here.

  • Concrete Roadbed - Not as Hard as One Thinks" - Marty Cozads gives an overview of his method for pouring robust concrete roadbeds for his trains. MyLargeScale.com is planning on moving these articles to a new area, so if this link breaks, please notify me, then go to MyLargeScale.com and navigate to the new articles section. Thanks, Shad, and Marty for making this resource available.

As always, please contact us with questions, corrections, additions, suggestions, or for any other reason at all.

Best of luck, all,

Paul D. Race

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Note: Family Garden Trains™, Garden Train Store™, Big Christmas Trains™, BIG Indoor Trains™, and BIG Train Store™ are trademarks of Breakthrough Communications (www.btcomm.com). All information, data, text, and illustrations on this web site are Copyright (c) 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 by Paul D. Race. Reuse or republication without prior written permission is specifically forbidden.

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