Garden Railway & Santa Fe Garden Railroad

In the summer of 1989, my wife, Joyce, and I attended an NMRA Regional Convention in Omaha. One of the layouts on tour was a garden railroad owned by Dick Milroy, now deceased. We had no idea or concepts about garden railroading. In fact, I almost dismissed the idea of stopping by as I thought garden railroading was all about Lionel type toy trains running through the tulips. Instead we walked into a well landscaped yard, with trains running everywhere, two ponds connected by a waterfall, tracks running into tunnels and through natural looking scenery. And there were sounds, coming from everywhere, such as a barn with mooing cows inside and outside. My wife has always been interested in flowers, gardening, and landscaping, and I like anything that remotely resembles trains. So our tours began and ended in that back yard as we spent the day asking questions, observing, making notes and using up all the film in the camcorder.

We left Omaha with lots of ideas, thoughts, reasons why we should have one and reasons why we should not. I thought that having a second railroad outdoors, with all the work involved in building it and maintaining it would cut into my quality time with the HO layout in the basement. Also a second railroad would mean diverting funds from the HO to the outdoors. The trip from Omaha to Kansas City went quickly and when we got home, our first stop was the backyard. We had been planning to do some landscaping, in part to help solve a drainage problem. So we looked, talked, dreamed and then unloaded the car.