Skeena Pacific Railway (in the Garden) actually started out as a 1/87th scale  railroad (HO), the planning for which was started in 1976. 
I got into working with personal computers in 1980 and started a small computer support company called Skeena Pacific Data.  The railway got a little lost when I got thoroughly involved in other things in the community of Terrace, BC, our home for nearly 25 years.  Though many pieces of that small scale railroad still exist, it never became an operating railway.

At Christmas, 1999, Skeena Pacific branched back to the model railroad when Dari bought me the beginnings of a Large Scale model railway.  A Garden Railway.  It runs on Gauge One tracks, about 1.75 inches (45mm) between the railheads, which is really 1/32nd scale for a standard gauge railway.  For the long-winded version of how it happened, click on The "Modeling Career"

The garden railway was not built using some great, master plan.  When I started it, it was going to be just a dog-bone loop down one fence-line, swing around a small vegetable garden and return. If you look at the Pictorial, you'll see it grew a little further than that.

The garden railway is based on my original premise of the small scale line.  I wanted to run modern diesels alongside some big steam, so I had to come up with a history that would account for such an anomaly. So, based on a real railway started in 1876, I made it up.