Los Angeles Live Steamers Garden Railroad

My daughter Kelly and I headed out on the last day of the event to try and find a good example of Scale, and we succeeded! This is the brand new G-Scale Garden Railroad located at the Los Angeles Live Steamers Railroad Museum in Burbank California.

Los Angeles Live Steamers Website

J. Kent Inasy and his wife are the volunteer builders and operators of the Garden Railroad. When we arrived they were working on some of the finishing touches of the layout (hence the assorted tools and a few rough edges). Our arrival and request for a picture were a complete surprise to them, but they were welcoming and accommodating!

Mr. Inasy, a local Cinematographer, offered this interesting information about the creation of the Garden Railroad, and some information on the origin of the "G-Scale" gauge:

"I've been Garden Railroading for many years.  I would visit the Steamers on Sunday mornings with friends until one Sunday I noticed how run down and abandoned the area which is now the Garden Railroad was.  After becoming a member I spent the next two years hauling in tons of dirt and rock one wheel barrel at a time to form what is now what we refer to as the Mountain Division.  Being a fan of Colorado Narrow Gauge Railroads of the past I based my design on the twisting tracks and trestles that served the mining districts of those mountainous regions like the Colorado and Southern and The Rio Grande Southern.  G gauge refers to the metric distance between the model rails.  Standard gauge track is four feet eight between the rails.  Because of the construction and financial limitations of building these mining railroads they developed a smaller gauge rail of three feet between the rails.  Or narrow gauge.  The engines and cars were smaller to accommodate the winding canyons and the growing costs of building a standard gauge railroad.  Thirty years ago a German company, Lehman Gross Bahn, started producing trains based on the three foot gauge trains that were used in the U.S. and Europe.  Because of  the quality of the their products people found that they could use them outside rain or shine.  That revolutionized what has become the Garden Railroad Hobby.  The "G" from the German company's name "gross" or "big" became the standard for modeling 45mm between the rails or roughly half inch per scale foot."

Thanks to all the hard working volunteers who make the Los Angeles Live Steamers Railroad Museum a great place to visit on a Sunday Afternoon.

Check out the live Steamers Facebook page, which includes a ton of great photos of the Garden Railroad.

LA Live Steamers on Facebook

Facebook photo gallery of the Garden Railroad

Thanks to my photographer daughter Kelly for letting me use her camera and for helping out during the location search and photo shoot.

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USA-Canada / USA-California

Lat: 34° 9' 18.74" N
Long: 119° 19' 11.13" W

→ maps.google.com [EXT]

Precision is: Unknown / Undeclared.