1992: The GC&E is Born

My addiction to garden railroading began the same way as many others; my wife got me a Bachmann big hauler for Christmas in 1989.  This basic set was restricted to the Christmas tree as we lived in an apartment at the time.  A few years later we purchased a house and I had planned on building a pond in the back yard of our new house with a simple loop of track going around it.  My father had gotten into garden railroading a few years before so I was familiar with it but I had a long history with HO scale model railroading and that was the focus of my interest. During the summer of 1992 I attended the national garden railroad convention in Washington, DC with my father and the large scale bug bit me -- hard.

Upon our return home from the convention I promptly began digging a hole for my pond (in 90+ degree heat) so I could start my garden railway.  My original plan was for a simple loop around the pond with a branch going to a logging camp.  I had decided I wanted a logging themed railway as I had selected the Greenbriar, Cheat & Elk branch of the Western Maryland Railway as the basis for the garden railroad.  Mainly because it was Western Maryland (my favorite railway) and because it was formerly owned by the Mower Lumber Company (my namesake).  By fall I had a basic loop with five foot diameter curves and a spur to a future logging camp.

1993: A Railroad Empire Emerges

After a winter of figuring and planning I had determined a way to bring  the branch line around and reconnect it thereby making two complete loops.  I also added a pair of crossovers to allow the train to switch from the inner loop to the outer loop. I also added a couple of buildings a station and a General store I built a trestle out of hardwood garden stakes, and added a tunnel which had a plywood roof and a town was built on top of the tunnel.

The house roof gave a good vantage point to take a picture of the overall layout in 1993.

At left is a shot looking towards the newly constructed tunnel and return loop.