Cool! If you haven’t done so before, you should check out the Pioneer Valley Steamers! They have an incredible layout they open to the public a couple of times each year! I’d love if we put a loop on our property, but I think the cost and upkeep might just be a little much, so we just go visit them.

My husband is really in to garden railroading in G scale. I’ve shared pictures before in a different train thread: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/anyone-have-g-scale-trains?tu=DaWezl

This week as we watch all the trashiest shows we can find, he’s been replacing the plastic wheels on all of his cars with more durable metal wheels.

The photos I’ve shared previously are from our old house. Now that we moved into a new place, he’s been doing the landscaping work for his new railroad.

Pond when we moved in:
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Some images of the waterfall/retaining wall/tunnel system he’s been building by hand:
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He couldn’t bear not to run trains while he’s working on this, so he added a temp track

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And finally, when he was building the mountain, he made a little tomb to hold the remains of a pet tarantula he used to have. He decided to make it an “Indiana Jones” scene in case anyone opened the mountain.
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This is the third layout he’s created (he made one for his dad as well), and he’s learned a lot about what works well. He puts in a lot of work up front so he avoids problems later on. It’s taken him 3 summers to get the new water feature and tunnels completed bc he was making sure it was all level and the right grading. This year he’s going to work on the tunnel facades. On his first layout, he worked faster, but when they ran the trains, there were a lot of derailed cars, etc, and they ended up having to tear out and reinstall track multiple times.

My husband spent Sunday detailing some of the figures for his layout. The fireman figure was originally a prospector holding a shovel.6C480628-E58F-407F-B98E-816E499CC259 (resized).jpegFD3856C2-77A9-4BE0-B8EA-C04CEA444760 (resized).jpegEA332A3C-1788-477B-9E86-09D703DAB790 (resized).jpeg

My husband was running the engine he just finished weathering today.
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My husband has been working on the tunnels going around the water feature this summer, and he did the final concrete work this past weekend. I think the end result is looking great!!
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I asked my husband—right now the old stuff is just on FB, so he’s going to check if it’s public or not. He’s been putting new stuff up on Instagram. (@dklennert)

He’s casting the other side tunnels this weekend but next weekend he’s making the entrance portals. He’ll also be landscaping over it.