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Backyard railroad
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A backyard railroad is a privately owned, outdoor railroad, most often in miniature, but large enough for one or several persons to ride on. The rail gauge can be anything from 2-1/2" (63 mm) to 7-1/2" (190 mm) or more. Smaller backyard or outdoor railroads that you cannot ride on are called garden railroads.
Hundreds, even thousands of backyard railroads exist, especially in the UK and USA. One of the most famous backyard railroads was Walt Disney's Carolwood Pacific Railroad, in operation from 1950 to 1953, which inspired Disney to surround his planned Disneyland amusement park with a working, narrow gauge railroad.
Tracks for the layout can be either portable (i.e. removable), or permanent. The former may be of fairly simple welded steel construction, but the latter are usually built from miniature steel or aluminium rails attached to wooden or plastic sleepers (US: ties), and put on a proper foundation of crushed stone ("track ballast"), just as in full size. Turnouts (US: switches) are also fabricated from these basic materials. Usually, prototypical appearance is sought for, but some portable tracks may not closely resemble real railroad tracks.
Rolling stock is often modelled after real railroad equipment, as far as being painted with logos of past or existing railroads. Boxcars, flat cars, tank cars and cabooses are common. For passenger use, special cars are constructed, with a low center of gravity for safety.
Locomotives on a backyard railroad can be of different types; steam locomotives, gasoline or diesel engines, or even electrically operated, using rechargeable lead-acid batteries inside the locomotive.
See the Live steam article for more information on miniature steam locomotives.