My friends Darrell and Mary Anne took me on a garden train tour yesterday, an organized event where train nuts in and around Tucson put their outdoor G Gauge (G for garden, I guess) railroad setups on display. I visited three different homes; there were at least eight on the tour but I didn’t have time to see them all.
Check this out:
This is one of about ten different rail layouts in one couple’s back yard. It’s a quarry, about four feet deep, and the locomotive is actually steam-driven.
Would this be fun? I don’t know. I used to love model trains, but never with this level of enthusiasm. God, think about it. First comes an oval track and one train. Then the magazines. Then you start landscaping and adding more track, more trains. Swap meets. More track, more trains. Then you start painting G Scale houses and people, then roads and little cars. Meetings with other train buffs. It would take over your life!
These people are, in short, fanatics. What wife would go along with this obsession? How do these couples keep their marriages together? Surprisingly, though, my wife says she’d love to have a G Gauge train in our back yard. So maybe the couples who displayed their railroads yesterday are into the hobby together!
Here’s another photo (that’s Mary Anne and her grandkids in the background):
Yes, it would be fun. But am I crazy enough? Probably not, but maybe Donna is. Because one of us would have to get down on hands and knees at least once a week to keep the tracks clean, and it won’t be me!