A garden railroad or garden railway (Railroad in the US, railway elsewhere) is a model railway system set up outdoors in a garden. While G is the most popular scale for garden railroads, 16 mm scale has a dedicated and growing following especially in the UK. Model locomotives in this scale are often live steam scale models of British narrow gauge prototypes. 16 mm scale (which runs on 32 mm/1.260 in) track, the same gauge as O gauge is probably now more popular in the UK than G scale.
A garden railway's scale tends to be in the range of 1/32 (Gauge 1) to 1/12 (1:12), running on either 45 mm (1.772 in) or 32 mm (1.260 in) gauge track. 1/32 scale (1:32) is also called "three-eighths scale" meaning 3/8 of an inch on the model represents one foot on the real thing. For similar reasons, 1/24 scale (1:24) is also called "half inch scale". Other popular scales are 1:29, 1:20.3 (representing 3' gauge prototypes on 45mm gauge), 16mm (1:19). They are smaller than the Backyard railroad, or what is commonly called a miniature railway, and would not provide a ride-on facility, being intended instead as a display railway. Smaller scales and gauges are used in the garden, but in general garden railway is used to refer to the medium scale sizes which would be impractical to use indoors.
Famous quotes containing the words garden and/or railway:
“Paradise endangered: garden snakes and mice are appearing in the shadowy corners of Dutch Old Master paintings.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)