I am not sure if I ask this question before and if it got answered.
Reading about garden layouts and I was wondering; What was the first garden layout to be built in todays standards?
Streamline:
What do you mean by the phrase "today’s standards"? Scale trains have been in the garden for many more years than most of have been alive. I saw a heated "discussion" about which was first "outside" or "inside" scale trains. BTW outside won that argument. Our friends across the pond have one that has been in operations for at least 40?~60? years in a commercial enterprise (amusement park, I think). Come on, our British friends, give a bit of help here with the name of that amazing line.
Tom Trigg
The Home of Articulated Ugliness
In terms of what we'd call the modern garden railway movement in the U.S. (as inspired by LGB, et al), the first garden railroads really came into being starting in the mid 1970s. I don't know if anyone can necessarily claim the crown of "first," as I'm sure someone was doing it here while someone else was doing it elsewhere. The "Big Train Operators" club (what would become the LGB club) was started around then, and there were a few members who had railroads in their back yards at that point. How many of them are still in existance? Who knows. Dad and I started ours in 1980, and it's probably among the oldest still in operation. It's not the oldest by a long shot.
A friend of ours had O gauge (three rail) out in the garden from the 60s if I recall, and replaced it with G scale in the 70s. I believe his railroad is still running, too.
Later,
K
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