South County Garden Railroad Tour

Every year the South County chapter of the Bay Area Garden Railroad Society (BAGRS), whose members are affectionately known as "baggers", organizes a layout tour that doubles as food drive to benefit local charities. In the last couple years I've seen garden layouts in Morgan Hill. This year, Tatjana accompanied me further south to see layouts in Gilroy.

The  Mount Madonna Railroad has a good size with a lumber industry theme. The railroad is nicely set in the backyard with space to spare. When we arrived, the house was hard to miss.

Because garden railroad scale is rather large (1:22.5 typically), there is plenty of opportunity to build detailed models and lively scenes, which is often a good part of the fun of visiting garden layouts.

On most layouts structures, trains, details, and decoration are taken inside when the layout is not operating, so everything is movable.

There is always opportunity for jokes, too.

Our other stop was the Elia Family Railroad, set in a smaller area than the Mt. Madonna Railroad, but nevertheless making good use of the space. There was a Shay operating on the upper loop.

A local freight was running on the lower loop around the town of Old Gilroy.

This railroad has a lot of highly detailed scenes all over the layout.

I very much liked this scene of a crew repairing the bridge.

When I got home I noticed that I didn't take a photo of Old Gilroy and Main Street. Beautiful small trees and shrubs surround the town. They can be seen a little bit in the farm scene below. A perfect combination of model railroading and gardening. That's what garden railroads are all about.

Overall, two very nice layouts, and we had a good time. What more could you ask for?