On Sun, 30 Jan 2005 05:34:56 GMT, Puckdropper wrote:

I'm thinking about putting an HO Scale railroad in the garden when I
plant it this spring. I'm posting here because I need advice on what I
can lay track ON that would be sturdy and not harm my tomatoes,
strawberries, watermelon, carrots, green beans (or whatever else I plant.)

I think something as small as HO in an outdoor environment will make
you crazy; it takes so little to disrupt models that small. You'll
have dirt and corrosion interrupting the electrical pickup off the
tracks, plus whatever weeds, runners, etc. manage to grow
up/through/over the rails. At Morris Aboretum, not too far from me,
they have a garden railway running in the warmer months. It's the "G"
scale or whatever the big stuff is, but I note that quite a bit of it
runs on elevated trestles so it's not all at ground level. The
trestles are made of all sorts of interesting stuff -- like bamboo and
other atypical model RR material. It's been several years since I
visited, I guess they're still doing it. Even with that size, there
was a bit of "right-o-way" maintenance going on when I was there.

You could probably elevate strips of Trex or other synthetic deck
lumber on posts of plastic pipe or something along those lines. Is
the garden fenced? You could run a strip of Trex around on shelf
brackets.

I think you should consider doing a big garden and get more serious
about the models:
http://www4.pbase.com/dw_thomas/pls

:-)

DaveT