(The following story by Les Harvath appeared on the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review website on July 20. Allen Hartman Sr. is a retired member of BLET Division 590 in Conway, Pa.)
PITTSBURGH, Pa. — For 35 of the 39 years Allen Hartman Sr., worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Penn Central Railroad, and Conrail, he was an engineer, guiding the massive multi-ton locomotives westward from Conway in Beaver County to Fort Wayne, Ind., and eastward from Conway to Harrisburg.
Even though he retired 14 years ago, Hartman of Baden still drives trains, but they are nothing like the proverbial iron horses he once conducted, and he doesn’t even have to leave his back porch.
As president of the 65-member-strong Pittsburgh Garden Railways Society, Hartman still wears a conductor’s hat, but now at his fingertips are three G-gauge garden railroad layouts he guides remotely.
While visiting the Pittsburgh Home Show in 1996, Hartman saw the society’s garden railways layout — and was hooked.
Almost as soon as he joined the organization, “18 members came to build my layout,” he recalls. “I had the materials, and everybody contributed different ideas and suggestions. … It took them three-and-one-half hours, and everybody helped in some way. By the time they left, my layout was up and running.”
Hartman’s original layout was an oblong 18-by-26-foot design, but he has since added 20-by-36-foot and 20-by-24-foot layouts, a fish pond, a marsh behind the fish pond, waterfall and tunnel. His track follows the outer edge of the pond.
And all he has to do is push the buttons on his remote to operate the trains.
“When people find out what I actually did for a living, they say, ‘I can’t believe you actually did that and now you are operating these trains,'” he laughs.
Garden railways are exactly what the name implies, outdoor model train layouts, complete with buildings, people and tiny plants that meander their way through full-size gardens.
When it rains, everything on the layout gets wet, but G-scale locomotives and cars are built to be waterproof, so trains can be operated when it’s raining or snowing. Tracks are made of brass, stainless steel or aluminum, and do not rust. Many buildings remain outside all year round, but some of the more fragile buildings are stored inside during the winter months.
“Don’t try this with your Lionel train at home,” says Dave Bodnar, a Mt. Lebanon resident and club member.
The organization includes teachers, octors, lawyers, truck and bus drivers, a financial advisor, contractor, housing authority director, nuclear engineer and landscaper.
It was by chance that the organization came into existence. In 1994, co-founder and former president Lee Brandes says he and his late wife, Susan, were shopping at Sears when “a customer in front of my wife was explaining to the cashier about garden railways, and my wife said, ‘Another nut like my husband,” Brandes says.
Brandes and that customer, Mark Mamros, met and discovered a shared interest in the hobby.
“We got to talking and went to the Greenberg (Model Railroad) Show at the Monroeville Expo Mart and got a table,” Brandes says. “There were only a few garden railways in 1994, and we took a railroad station, water tower, several pieces, some track, one locomotive and started talking to people. By the end of the second day, we had 10 more members in our organization.”
When Brandes and Mamros formed the club, they adopted only two rules: 1. Have fun; and 2. See rule No. 1.
“With G — for garden — gauge, the appeal is, as you get older — because it is bigger — it is easier to see”, Brandes says. “These trains are a lot of fun. It’s amazing to see trains run outside in the rain and snow, which definitely puts a different perspective on the displays, and especially at night with the lights on.”
Brandes resides in Connecticut, but will relocate to the Pittsburgh area and bring his 30-by-50-foot layout and 300 feet of track.
Shortly before Alycefaye Stewart retired in1999 from teaching art in the Norwin School District, one of her students talked to her about his interest in model railroads.
“He had different gauges and was in a local train club,” she recalls. “He mentioned the annual Greenberg Show, and I was curious to see what was involved. I met the guys who started the (Pittsburgh Garden Railways) club and joined on the spot.”
When Stewart’s husband, Paul, was growing up in North Versailles, his family “couldn’t afford trains,” he says. “This gives me a chance to be a kid again.”
Just off the patio in the backyard of the Stewarts’ Greensburg home is a 35-by-12-foot layout, which includes two tracks, on which they alternate six engines. Two tunnels enhance the outside oval-shaped track, while the inside track is an elevated figure eight with one tunnel, a spiral downgrade and an underpass.
With her artistic background, Alycefaye Stewart constructed many of the buildings for their display, using concrete patch with a wooden frame, chicken wire, and burlap soaked in quikrete. Her final touch is painting the buildings which, this summer, include a passenger station, freight station, log mill, two churches, a graveyard, school with a tree swing, an adobe town with jail and cantina, a ranch with a log home and a bunk house with an outhouse, a forest fire tower, water tower, an old mine and camp, and finally a farm with a barn — with sounds of farm animals — and a new “field of dreams” baseball field, with accompanying graffiti on a rock hill behind the backstop.
The Stewarts’ “people” are engaged in mundane activities such as washing clothes, drinking beer at “Rob’s Camp” and playing ball. A road crew is digging dirt, while a tourist is taking pictures from the upper level of the fire tower.
Alycefaye Stewart designed and constructed the adobe homes used for the society’s recent Southwest-themed exhibit at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Oakland’s Schenley Park.
Bodnar’s personal layout, one of more than two dozen outdoor layouts in the greater Pittsburgh area, includes a 200-foot main line (on a 30-by-80-foot layout), running primarily on trestles and integrated into extensive stone walls that were once part of a formal Japanese garden, complete with pond and two waterfalls. Two bridges and two tunnels, one of which passes through a tree trunk, are attractive features of the long and narrow layout with loops on either end.
Bodnar, a retired Mt. Lebanon sixth-grade math and science teacher, has offered hands-on electronics, mechanical design, computer, modeling, soldering and technology tips during club meetings or at model railroad shows.
“My wife, Lois, and I felt the backyard of our new home was ideal for a garden railroad,” he says. “One or two trains can run on the main line. They are radio-controlled and battery-powered and can run independently.”
Vegetation in Bodnar’s layout includes miniature or dwarf conifers, May apples, ferns, boxwoods and a variety of small plants that provide ground cover, all selected to fit in with the scale of the railroad. Irises are in the pond, and moss covers many of the stones on the pond’s edge.
Like Hartman, Frank Magri and his wife, Jackie, who reside in McMurray, discovered the Garden Railways Society at the Pittsburgh Home Show.
A retired US Airways ramp supervisor, Magri purchased a raffle ticket for a locomotive from Brandes, but “even though we didn’t win, that’s how we got started,” Magri says
Magri’s display includes a 110-by-20-foot layout with two loops that resemble dog bones. It takes about two minutes for a train to complete the loop. Magri built a bridge similar to the Westinghouse Bridge in East Pittsburgh. Another homemade piece is a water tower with 960 cedar shingles, built to 1/29th scale of a full-size cedar shingle. Magri’s shingles are slightly smaller than a Scrabble letter tile.
“Our layout is on a hillside in the backyard and resembles the hills of Western Pennsylvania,” Jackie Magri says. A pond and waterfall are on one end of the layout. Four tunnels are built into the hillside, including one 15 feet long and 10 inches wide.
“We have a groundhog who thinks that tunnel is his,” Frank Magri says, laughing. “He burrows up into the tunnel flooring, but I’m redoing the tunnel with a concrete floor.”
Not all garden railways have to be outside.
Society treasurer Ann Celento and her husband, Ed, run two trains on about 50 feet of track that goes from their living room to dining room to kitchen.
When one train passes behind the living room couch, another train emerges from the other end. “We have a switch track behind the couch and adults are usually slow to notice the different trains, but kids notice much faster. I also warn people to be careful that a train is coming, but I’m usually the one who kicks the train off the track,” she says.
According to club secretary Larry Marcinko, the club essentially went “public” in 1998 when Brandes successfully lobbied Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh to permit the club to install an operating G-scale layout that patients or visitors could operate at the push of a button. Train manufacturer LGB donated items for the display. It is on the second floor of the Oakland hospital’s DeSoto wing.
“That’s my baby,” Brandes says of the Children’s Hospital display. “That’s one of the things I am most proud of, but the club put it together as a team. … It has been more-than-popular with people of all ages ever since.”
What adds to the appeal of garden railways is that “it becomes a true family hobby,” Brandes says.
From modest to large, garden railways become whatever enthusiasts desire, and the expense matches the sizes of the respective layouts. Collections can vary from hundreds to thousands of dollars, while a starter set, which includes engine, two cars and track, sells for $250.
Participants say the expense is dwarfed by the amount of fun and enjoyment garden railways provide, which leaves the society’s lengthy list of two rules still intact.