Hello everyone, New guy here and I’d like to introduce myself and my railroad to this incredible site. Been lurking for a while and learning much from you all. It’s amazing to see such creativity generated from such a great group of individuals. I am a bit intimidated in jumping in like this, but here goes. My name is Rick and I live in a great community of Costa Mesa, CA US with my wonderful wife and adopted little 3 year old boy Joey. I have had an interest in trains for much of my life and a desire to try model railroading. HO being very popular and relatively inexpensive, I built a 4’x8’ table in the garage and proceeded to plan and build my dream layout. Time and priorities resulted in a heavily cluttered table. You know how any horizontal surface can soon become covered with stuff other than what was initially intended. I soon needed that space and commenced to dismantling the railroad. Much sadness. With Joey turning three last year and his interest in trains (Thomas), we headed over to the train show in Anaheim and saw some fun trains, including some large scale trains. Having little knowledge of them other than their price tags, we left for home where I started researching G scale and found this site, among others. The wife and I were wondering what to do with a small part of the garden in our front yard and I suggested a garden railroad. Something small mind you. She thought that sounded fun and that’s all I need to hear. I’m an old west fan and wanted something from the steam era, so off I went to order an AristoCraft Santa Fe 0-4-0 starter set and some extra track. Small circles are so boring so I left the 4 foot dia track in the box and got some 6.5 footers. Here is where it all started.
A few trees, a homemade bridge, some rocks and a cabin kit later, things were starting to take shape.
But it needed more…
During the following year I built up the fleet and attracted all the neighborhood kids. Joey is very popular. Recently I got approval to acquire additional land.
I of course had to come up with a name for my new railroad. My wife’s parents own some land in Northwest Arkansas on Piney Creek, which I am in love with. Odd, me being a native Southern Californian and all, but I am a country boy at heart I guess. The city of Costa Mesa was and still is known as Goat Hill. There is a local 7 1/2” scale train club in the area that opens up once a month with free rides around their 5 miles of track. The kids, including Joey really love it. Their railroad is called Mackerel Flats & Goat Hill Junction Railroad. So I combined the two and came up with Piney Creek & Goat Hill Junction Railroad. More to come soon.