Final Daze of the Jackson & Burke RR

[FJ and G]

This is garden stuff but there are some ideas in here that toy train enthusiasts can apply such as trestle construction, clay modeling and even the working water wheel using a bucket of water indoors to get the same effect.

I was privileged to visit Bruce Chandler's G-scale garden layout in Burke, Virginia on Saturday afternoon. He's gonna tear it down soon to make way for a newer and more operationally oriented garden layout. BTW, he's a beagle lover. His beagle is named Peanuts and she's as cute as a puppy at age 11. Sorry didn't get any photos of her.

Here are some of the final scenes from a soon-to-be abandoned route that has carried freight and passengers a goodly number of years.

The tracks are already becoming overgrown with vegetation…



The fireman's view from the tender look like we are traveling thru the jungle of a banana republic.



Here we pass by a real working mill and waterwheel which derives its energy from water pumped from a pond into a spillway leading to the waterfalls. The mill is scratchbuilt with rocks and concrete and styrene windows (when the work styrene is used, you know the modeler is a reformed HO guy). The waterwheel generates so much power that it provides 100% of the energy for the pump and is perpetual motion (just kidding).





The folks in town don't move around too much. They seem to be frozen in a twilight zone episode. The figures are made from clay by Bruce. I meant to get the recipe but forgot.



The fall foliage must be very lush judging from the large scale of the leaves. The engineer has had too much whiskey and has thrown safety to the wind. He will plow right thru the leaves…



The trestle is in need of repair, but the engineer doesn't seem to mind the risk and plows on ahead (successfully this time I might add).



This scratchbuilt house was wrapped in spiderwebs. Bruce removed them for this photo and luckily didn't get any spider bites.



I forgot to write down all the names of the vegetation but I think this might be creeping jenny



and finally, every story ends with the caboose over his scratchbuilt trestle built with some kind of brass pins and glue. Wish I'd written the stuff down!

[wrmcclellan]

Dave,

Nice photo essay! I believe the late great John Allen carved many of his figures for the Gorre & Daphetid from bees wax.