This little story  was originally written as a series of articles for the Greater Vancouver Garden Railway Club newsletter, the Burnt Journal. If it seems a little choppy, it's because I haven't edited it very well. I hope you enjoy it and perhaps learn from my mistakes.....

James

In the Beginning -

 So, you want to know how I got started in  uh, Gauge One, 1/32^nd,1/29^th ,  1/24^th,   1/22 ½ ,  1/20 ½. Okay, . 'G' scale,
Well, I'm not proud of it, but I am happy. I fell into it by accident and spousal design.

First, a little background. I’m a railfan and have been since Great Uncle Alf,  who worked  on the Great Western Railway in England, hoisted me onto the footplate of a little 0-6-0 tank shunter, somewhere in southwest England. I think I was six.
I’ve been a modeler of railways, cars, airplanes and such for about 45 years, off and on. I started with a “00” trainset at age ten and have kitted, kitbashed, freehanded and fumbled through plastic, metal and wood. My claim to fame is that it usually works, is seldom immaculate but I always have fun doing it. So, what about Skeena Pacific and Gauge One?

Dari (my wife) and I were looking for a Christmas Tree. We were cruising through Art Knapp's in  South Surrey in early December '99 and discovered Large Scale Trains. I had been involved in model railways in HO scale for a long time (off and on) and immediately showed the interest that many males do, in models of fine machinery.
Now, here’s a further brief explanation. In our living room we have high ceilings and at the height of a normal ceiling, on one side, is a foot-wide shelf. Since our move to the sunny-south, a certain railroad-ness has invaded our household and I had this idea of putting some sort of static Railroadiana display on that shelf. Before you think me completely blasphemous of Large Scale Trains, let me continue.

While at Knapp's I saw this large model of a Canadian National steam locomotive, a  4-6-2 Pacific. Now being that Christmas was coming, I made some gentle, but brazen, hints that I would just love to have that locomotive to fill the spot on that high shelf, for all the world, and especially me, to admire. 
Now I admit it would be a shame, in some respects, to a have good working model on static display. But if that's the only way I could enjoy it for the moment, so be it. Of course, because Christmas was coming, no commitments, to my knowledge, were made and plans for that joyous event proceeded. Yes, we did eventually find the tree, at Knapp's in Port Coquitlam.

Christmas morning arrived and gifts were exchanged and low and behold, from my darling Wife, a huge box. Could it be? Yes, it was. The Aristo Pacific. But, what's this? An oval of track and an LGB one amp powerpack!(?). My static display plans had just become the start of Skeena Pacific, Garden Railway Edition.

So Christmas 1999 landed me an oval of track, a one amp power pack and an Aristocraft Pacific. I kept the track. Through the courtesy of Art Knapp’s in South Surrey, I exchanged the one amp pack and the locomotive for an Aristocraft 5460 Ultima 10 Amp Power Supply and more track and a couple of cars. We also bought, from a "friend" in the north, an Aristocraft FA-1 diesel and a Train Engineer walkaround throttle system. What I didn’t know was that the throttle and the loco were somewhat aged. (Pre-owned as they say of used cars) Hey, you learn.

And that I did. Learn, I mean.
Now for those of you scratching your heads as to why I dumped the Pacific and got a diesel, an explanation is in order. My dad got me involved in this rail model thing well over forty years ago (ouch). His advice, well remembered, was to have lots of track, some cars, and a loco that didn’t overpower the little that you start with. I was given that advice, a lot of track, and a “Jinty” 0-6-0 at Christmas  back in 1957 (00 scale, 4mm to the inch), and the idea sort of stuck. It did make sense. At the time, getting a “smaller” diesel didn’t seem like a bad idea. There are jokes about doing things that " seemed like a good idea at the time". I’ll let you think of one of your own.  Mind you, I discovered that the darn diesel was almost too big as well. But you'll see more on that later.

 2    Skeena Pacific Railway – The Start

 Skeena Pacific itself has existed in my mind and some models since 1976. And like many DreamWorks, has a manufactured history, based on the truth.

From 1974 to 1998, my wife, Dari, and two kids (eventually) lived in the beautiful valley formed where the Kalum and Lakelse Rivers join the Skeena River for it's tumble to the Pacific. The town is called Terrace. It’s the point on Canadian National's Northern Mainline where the Skeena, Bulkley and Kitimat sub-divisions meet. During our first five years there, my job had me travelling extensively and involved many overnights away from home. I'm not a bar-crawler and TV in the motels of the north was very limited back then. As the mainline of CN ran within a hundred feet of the road most of the way from Terrace to Prince Rupert and not far away from the highway almost everywhere else, I started taking an interest in the Rail, as a railfan. This was a rebirth. It lead to my thinking about modelling. Railway modelling. I had done it before, as a kid, starting with a much extended trainset for Christmas, in 1957.

I built myself a briefcase into which I put exacto knives, files, glue and all the related stuff needed to assemble and finish Athearn, Roundhouse, Mantua and other kits. I could take this with me on my road-trips and while away many happy, if somewhat lonesome, hours. Then I started kitbashing a Mantua Mikado (2-8-2), complete with feed-water heater, double cross-compound air system and all-weather cab. I realised I needed a railroad, even though space for a layout would be limited in our first, little house.

I sat, (several times) and thought about where, when and how a small railroad could be built so that it would provide carloads, revenue and a variety of motive power. My HO road already had a Mike, an A-B-A  EMD F7 lash and an EMD SD40-2. How could I have these all working the same road without too much of a stretch?

 Digging through the library, in Smithers I think, I found reference to the Kitamaat  Omenica and Pacific Railroad. A line proposed from Fort George, (now Prince George) to Kitamaat, an Indian village located on the deep fjiord of Douglas Channel which opens to the Pacific Ocean. The line was planned to haul lumber and minerals from the interior to this port on the Pacific, two days closer to the Orient than Vancouver. They actually started on that line in the early 1870’s, probably part of the railroad mania of the time. But it never happened. Backers backed-out and eventually the Grand Trunk Pacific showed up. But what if they did build a line through the beautiful Kitimat Valley, up the Skeena and Bulkley Valleys and across to Prince George. The Kitamaat, Omenica and Pacific RR would own the trackage and CN would be begging for running rights. Hey, this could work. A railway through mountains, across rivers and the occasional flatland, all in less than five hundred miles. A line with a hundred year history and modern mainline road power. Maybe throw in some older steam on the Kitimat Sub, the line that time forgot? This really sounds like something I could model. Well, maybe.

  3  A Garden in the South

If you’ve been following along, you know that the Skeena Pacific Railway was really going to be built in 1/87^th scale. But the HO plans never got much further than a collection of track and a good deal of rolling stock. The benchwork just never seemed to materialize. And then other interests and activities got in the way. I’d tell you all about it, but all this may be too boring already.

Dari (my wife and Gardener-in-Chief) and I had some extended discussions around where to go with the train. This was done nicely and fortunately we both agreed, so far, that the railway should be integrated into the existing garden for our first go at all this. It seemed like a good idea, and still does, though I think we might replan the garden a bit.

First move was to survey the existing landscape. Measurements were taken and the location of immovable objects, such as the gazebo, the vegetable garden, several trees and the rhododendron bushes were carefully transferred to paper. The lay of the land, ups downs and molehills, were also measured and placed on our now not-so-blank, plan. The expanse (and expense) of the line was carefully calculated and a way was found around and through the trees and bushes, while every attempt was made to carefully maintain elevations. I knew that railways do not like sudden, heavy grades. More than a few percent, even in a model, can spoil a lot of fun later. (Or maybe provide fun for double-headers later – you choose).

The choice of roadbed came next. I read all kinds of neat ideas about raised posts, plastic and metal, wooden plankways, imbedded concrete and a method of laminating pvc strips to pvc pipe. Then one day I was railfanning. I’d decided to get a few pictures the passenger service running on CP Rail tracks. Hey, what did I know, I thought schedules meant something. It turned out that I had quite some time to study how they actually build roadbed. Grading, riprap fill, crushed rock ballast. Maybe with the big scales you can just emulate the real thing. Whoa, such a concept. So I immediately went home. And I thought about it. Then on my next visit to Art Knapp’s I overheard some gentlemen talking as if they knew something about garden railways. Apparently this occurs quite often there. So I asked. So I was told, ”Dig a shallow trench, grade it with rock, ballast it with crushed fines. Works great”.

It happened that the “gentlemen” were members of the Greater Vancouver Garden Railway Club, whose newsletter they were willing to send me “just to look at”, no commitment, no pressure. Nice!

 And on the railbed, they were right, it works GREAT.

It’s easy to tear up and relocate as well.  I know! But more on that some other time.

 4  The Work Begins

After several visits to Art Knapp’s in south Surrey, and learning from several wizened members of the Greater Vancouver Garden Railway Club, I felt almost prepared to start my own garden railway. The Pacific had been traded for track and an FA1 that might look more at home on my short and somewhat tight-turned railplan.

Temporary trackage was setup on the patio on 29 January 2000 and on the first of February, a route-mileage survey was started. By 20 February, earthworks and some initial track laying had commenced. Work progressed slowly through March, with several modifications to the route. Initially we were going to loop around in the garden plot but concerns were expressed by the Head Gardener (my wife, Dari). The Chief Engineer agreed, bought more track, and changed the route.

On the first of April, road mileage was sufficient to open temporary service. While some track was laid in the manner of the prototype, mush of it was temporarily suspended on planks, cedar stakes and bricks! We were doing fine until the temporary trackage sagged at Cedar Curve, derailing the line's only locomotive. Thankfully no injuries and the loco un-damaged.

A "contractor's" loco was obtained in early April, as it was clear that the big FA diesel was a bit too much of a handful for the lightly laid and sometimes just plain rickety line. A Porter 0-4-0 Tank loco showed up and was immediately put to work hauling solder, paste, brushes and ballast as the trackwork was improved. It soon became clear that this loco had insufficient range (and no sound) so a tender (with sound) was added and the locomotive modified by the removal of the tanks.

Did I mention that this whole thing is track powered? That in itself has provided some challenges. Despite ominous warnings about loss of power and the like, I blundered ahead with the idea that those two tracks of brass should provide all the conductivity I would need to successfully run trains. The continuity along the line proved difficult. I eventually settled on the idea of soldering every joint together. Not just bridging the joint with a wire, but actually soldering it tight. I discovered the folly in this when I eventually had to take the whole thing apart, but that story comes later. Just so you know, I’ve now settled on a method, using a very high-heat soldering gun (260 watts) where I solder the frogs (fishplates?) to the rail. This seems to be satisfactory as it uses the fishplate for continuity and is relatively easy to un-solder if necessary. It does work, by the way. Before I switched over to real block running I had an entire run of more than 250 feet powered from just one input with no power dropouts.

Spring brought some new challenges as the animals returned. A mole created the occasional earth movement, resulting in a small avalanche. Nigel, the loco engineer, was not impressed.

 5   An Operating Garden Railway .. and Disaster.

By the summer of 2000, my wife Dari’s 1999 Christmas gift to me had blossomed. The track and locomotive had multiplied and the layout stretched around the south and west side of our garden in a folded-dogbone loop. A small yard, with power-interrupter switches for each line, provided space to hold or make up trains and for the first time in a very long time, I had an operating layout, in the garden. The track swung around two large cherry trees on the southside, curved past our vegetable garden and turned back in a loop three quarters of the way along the west fenceline.

The mole problem we had suffered early in the year had disappeared. “Your trains create a vibration, hnn?” said our neighbour. “Moles, they do not like the vibration, they leave. Thank you.”  Hey, it’s a good theory, and I never thought of my garden railway as a mole removal device. But my neighbour was happy, so who was I to disagree.

Those magnificent cherry trees, however, were now creating a nuisance. The trees must have been fifty or so years old. They were very big and prolific in their production of tiny, juicy cherries that were far too far up the tree to be picked. Then the cherries started falling. Do you know how sticky cherry juice is? Did you know that when it gets onto the wheels of railway rolling stock it goes everywhere, sticks dirt to your track and the wheels, and really fouls up electrical pickup to locomotives? It really does! Did I mention that the railyard was built right under the biggest, juiciest cherry producer known to man?

That cherry tree had to go.

Eventually we asked an arbourist to come and look at the tree and see about its removal.

It was late January 2001 and I had been having fun again. I developed a little track cleaning car and had purchased Aristocraft’s snow plow so my tracks were clean and clear. I’d even plowed some snow in early December.

The Arbourist stopped by one late afternoon that January, poked and tapped, hummed and tutted and came to us with his findings. “Your call was very timely.” he said. “That one’s just starting to rot about a foot up but the other one is almost in dangerous shape.” The Other One? “I’m sorry but I think you’d be wise to get rid of them both before they do you some damage. I can get them down without getting too near the gazebo, BUT YOU”LL HAVE TO LIFT ALL THAT TRACK”

You know that feeling you get when you’re between a rock and a hard place? That’s how I felt. He would be back in about a week. The core of my railway would have to be gone.

 And it was.

 6  Marking Time

 February of 2001 brought an entirely different outlook. Two of the largest trees in our yard had to be removed. They were rotting and posed a risk to the property. To get them down safely, the railyard and most of the mainline had to be ripped out, or be trampled by the tree cutters. In keeping with my self-imposed policy of never not-having a functioning railway, I was able to retain a small circuit out of harm’s way. One circle, eight feet in diameter, was all that was left of Skeena Pacific in the garden. But it worked and occasionally I could quiet my misery by running the little “contractor’s” loco, a tender 0-4-0.

I had learned a great deal about how (and how not) to lay track. The crushed limestone base used as rip-rap with the track sitting in and ballasted by  #2 chicken grit seemed to work quite satisfactorily. As long as I tamped the base under the roadbed firmly before putting down the limestone, nothing seemed to move much in our Winter.

The electrical connection using the rail joiner soldered at each end to the rail and using a high power soldering gun, instead of the butane torch I had started with, also proved to be a sound method. I was going to get to prove it all again by rebuilding the whole thing.

And then we decided to add “features” to our back yard. Storage of garden implements and the lawnmower and the like had been making the garage very cluttered. Since, in the two years we had been here, the garden plot had been much under-utilised, we decided to rip it out, too, and put a ten by ten garden shed into that area. Might as well add a porch for the shed, to make it look nice.

We sought out shed kits, as I’m not a carpenter and the sheds from Sunbury Cedar worked out to be cheaper than buying the raw lumber.

While we were redesigning, we also thought we would like to put in a “water feature. So we started planning again.  We shopped around for pond kits, but discovered most were very expensive, or came nowhere near to what we would like to build. The shed would be a kit and the pond would be kitbashed from a basic pond kit!

All the while, Skeena Pacific in the garden was an eight foot circle.

 7  The Phoenix Rises

April 2001 arrived and Skeena Pacific Railway in the garden looked very forlorn. It had gone from a 250 foot long folded dog-bone loop the previous year, down to an 8 foot circle of track, butting onto the patio. It had been unmercifully deconstructed so that a pair of ailing cherry trees could be cut down, bucked up and removed. When the initial whimpering was over, we decided it was the opportune time to put in a garden shed.

The main right-of-way out of where the Kalum (main) yard should be, was torn up and dug down nearly three feet so that power could be extended to the soon-to-be constructed garden shed. While I was at it, I buried a conduit back from the shed location to the point where I had determined I was going to put the block-power control panel. The idea was to put the power supply and two radio control “Train Engineer” throttles in the shed and have my block switches on a panel near the Kalum yard. I also included a line to carry low voltage a.c. power for the switch machines.

With power in place, the foundation and shed-building went quite quickly. When the shed was mostly complete and the “spare” bits of lumber were out of the way. The new landscape was surveyed and a route planned along the south fenceline. This time, instead of curving around the trees that were no longer there, I decided to go through them. If I had been thinking straighter at the time the trees were felled, I would have had the Arbourist cut the trees down a little higher above the ground. Then I would have created a tunnel through the stumps. As it was, I had to drill and hack a cutting through the one stump and take a third of the back off the other, otherwise grades would have been unacceptable. I redeveloped Kalum Yard between the Gazebo and the south fence. This time all the block wiring, and some spares, were laid down using the crushed limestone base and chicken grit ballast method. I should just mention, to prevent the return of the mole, I had dug down an extra three or four inches and laid in some very heavy open-weave matting, kind of like chicken wire only plastic, and then place some landscape mat on top of that, to prevent anything from coming up into my Yard. It seems to have worked, so far. (2 years). With the necessary track supplies on hand and my previous experience in grading and levelling, the second edition went quickly and smoothly. By the end of  May, the Yard was operational and the mainline had returned to its former glory.

 In fact, it was even better. This time I had put concrete blocks across the back fenceline to solidly raise the embankment. This also stopped the dirt from actually leaning against the fence and causing a more rapid rot. My usual crushed limestone/ chicken grit combination for the roadbed was put in place and then the embankment was back-filled with dirt to provide a place to grow ground cover.

The first of our new plantings were put in and things were looking fairly fine. Skeena Pacific in the Garden had risen from the cherry tree sawdust.

 8  Dig We Must

May, June and July were busy months, but not just for the garden railway. Having recovered from the disaster of tree-removal that required a completely new rail alignment, we pushed forward and decided to add a pond to our terrain. Once more the track had to be pulled back a little, to allow clumsy-booted construction workers (that would be me) and petite footed gardeners (guess who), to dig and create. We used a wall of concrete blocks as a retainer and dug down for a lower pond, built up for an upper pond and put a small stream in between. Without too much detail here, let me just say that you should always buy pumps that are bigger than you think you’ll need and dig ponds much deeper (and maybe larger) than you initially plan. Trust me, you won’t be sorry.

When it was mostly finished, the rail line again expanded, cutting across the stream and looping around behind the upper pond. It looked pretty good, but there was still the entire north-side fence-line that could accommodate more mainline track.

 Enter February, 2003. With some additional track on hand, it was time for another expansion, only now we have a grade problem. The bridge at Meziadin (the stream crossing) was more than a foot above the immediately adjacent grasslands. Spiral Tunnels? No Way! I’m not going to burrow under the stream. Even a tight drop around the back of the pond would create very steep grades and I didn’t want to go more than 2 percent (about 2 inches down for every 8 feet forward.) So what to do? Why not take the front of the loop and bend it forward along the north fence line and let it slowly dropdown so it could pass under itself to join the back of the loop. That would mean a tunnel.

The digging of the new right-of-way began in the rain and eventually we got a 9 foot section of 12 inch sewer pipe delivered and placed. The track inside is actually screwed down to a piece of 1 x 4 which it overhangs at each end, allowing me to add ballast at each end making it look like a regular section of ballasted track. That section, soldered solidly together, is then rail-clamped just outside of each tunnel entrance to allow lifting out the tunnel section, should it ever be necessary.

Building of the expanded loop took way more time than expected. First I had a tough time getting any decent alignment. There were bushes and heather and stuff to get around and I wasn’t quite sure how much lawn I could get away with destroying. As it turned out, Dari (Head Gardener)  wanted rid of the heather and my new track proceeded fairly smoothly, until I realised I needed a passing track and other facilities at this new location. It’s now called “Dee’s Junction” for my mother. It has cab-control, turnout and auxiliary power provided by cutting a narrow trench across the lawn from the main controller and burying a conduit with the necessary wires inside. (Hint: if ever you do that, put in some extra runs of wire for future expansion. Trust me, you won’t be sorry).

To Be (or being) Continued....... the story is pretty much told in the pictorial, so just go back and wade in, the water's fine!

The Garden Railway Pictorial

Skeena Pacific Railway

Bliss Bakery

Analogue to Digital - Your Challenge is Our Business      Send mail to the web master with questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 1976 - 2014 Skeena Pacific Consolidated  Last modified: 03 Jan 2014