Which do you reccomend European or American

[Anonymous]

Hello All,


Poppins Here. I am at a loss at what to model. I like European and American, but I am not sure what to model. So it would be greatly appriciated if you could vote.

Which ever is the most populr I will model, but if the polls are close, I will do all, and only have the essetial rauilroad buildings such as stations, water pumps, coal towers, sheds, and bridges.

Poppins

[grandpopswalt]

Hi Guys,

This isn’t meant as a criticism but of a friendly comment. You shouldn’t give a fig for what any of us think and do regarding garden railroading. This is going to be YOUR railroad in YOUR Garden. You need to develop your own sense of purpose and style.

Do you really love gardening? Then maybe you should consider running cute, whimsical trains through it. Do you love prototype narrow gauge steam trains? Then you should probably try to replicate the prototype in miniature in your backyard and make the flora complement the trains. Or maybe you really get turned on by those massive, diesels with their long strings of cars. Then that will dictate an entirely different philosophy toward garden railroading.

You should probably carefully study examples of each kind of GR mentioned above to get ideas of what others have done and then decide what appeals to YOU. Get back issues of Garden Railways magazine. Each issue features several layouts and there is an attempt to showcase the best of each type of layout. You’ll get many good ideas there. After you’ve armed yourself with all this information you’ll be ready to design your own garden railroad that is a reflection of your own preferences.

Good luck.

Walt

[Rastun]

[#ditto]

It really needs to be what your interested in or it wont be as satisfactory to you and may even lose it's appeal. My wife really like the old west look of the wood burners, which I can't say is a bad thing. She doesn't like the looks of the Pacifics and Mikados which I dearly love. So in a compromise the Garden railroad here is probably going to be made up of mainly narrow gauge american steam. I will probably make this more along the lines of not trying to model after anything specific, but with small areas devoted to diferent little aspects of industries along the way. I'm thinking the whole picture of my area will be more like a dynamic piece of landscaping that happens to have some miniature buildings and trains in it. In doing this I should be able to when I get the train together and finished the way I want it be able to run that Mikado pulling a line of passenger cars around the main line every now and then without it looking out of place. Good luck in your adventure Poppins, and always remember it's not what other people think about anything you do it's what you think about it that matters.

Later,

Jack

[van buren s l]

Bert and Mary
Walt's comments certainly hit the nail on the head. On another thread in this forum Kimbrit mentioned that he doesn't have any buildings and he can run anything he pleases in any scale and it looks just fine. A few month's ago I picked up a 1990's copy of GRM ( I hadn't even dreamed of garden railroading back then). There was an article by a couple where the wife was German and the husband was American. One end of the lay out had a Bavarian village and the other a frontier town. The only ones you have to please is yourselves.
Bob

[markperr]

Poppins;

If one or the other doesn't really suit your fancy, then make a list of the pros and cons of each. Whichever has the most pros, you model. That is unless you'd really like to model the one that you didn't come up with the most pros about and then you have your answer.

Mark

[Rene Schweitzer]

Poppins,

Garden railroading is a hobby where there are no right or wrong answers. YOU have the freedom to choose what you'd like. Maybe you can start with what trains run in your area, or a train you've seen before and thought was interesting.

Your own interests within a hobby are going to change as you go along, and that's ok. If you start out in steam and decide you'd rather have diesel, it's your choice. Many hobbyists run and buy whatever they enjoy, even if it's not prototypically correct. A saying we have at GR is "if you're having fun, you're doing it right."

[Anonymous]

This is really your choice! Browse you issues of Garden Railways looking at the avialable choices and choose what you like. Some of us like mainline and some of like narrow guage. I have both just in different areas of our yard and these do connect together. Just make a choice and stick with it, plan well and have fun.

mikadousrp

[Anonymous]

We're leaning greatly toward American, Euros you need to chime in!

[Anonymous]

Thany You,

I like All american and Europen Narrow Gauge. I am more of running trains, but I only plan to have like a station, water toer or pump, coal tower, and a engine shed in each town, maybe not even that.

I think I will go with what my mind says, just do thwm all. That is what I am going to do.

Poppins

[vsmith]

I'm all for American narrow guage but my opinion isnt really important...its what YOU like that should decide what you want to model. After all its YOUR railroad, not ours...

Ask yourself some questions, like...

What specific real life RR's do you like?

Are they standard guage, narrow, in America, or in Europe?

Once you start asking yourself these kinds of questions you'll be answering your own question.

[Anonymous]

who cares just do what you want!


Ian

[Anonymous]

I love my Mich Cal live steam narrow guage shay, but I just bought a pair of CP GP9s to run. So I pretty much like anything american. I do have fond memories of riding on Puffing Billy in Melbourne as a child though [:D] I JUST LIKE RUNNING TRAINS, is that so wrong!!!!!!
cheers,
Mark

[Anonymous]

Go buy something and get it running. My first buy in the 80's was an LGB Stainz passenger starter set (see Iandors' picture), the coaches have all been bashed into something else and the loco was eventually attacked with a saw and styrene and glue, a tender was built and now it's a kind of American switcher. The moral - you get trains running quickly and it won't go to waste. I now run 4 different scales, 1:20.3, 1:22.5, 1:24 & 1:29 and it all looks fine to me but would have someone else pulling their hair out.
Go & enjoy, you'll always remember the moment you buy your first garden train.
Cheers,
Kim
[tup]