Train adds unique feature to villa landscaping

Patio life is at its best during the summer. Villa resident Donna Brown loves hearing her soothing water feature alongside the subtle clickety-clack of a model train as it rolls through their backyard.

Gary and Donna Brown pose near the model train that enhances their landscaping.

“It’s so relaxing,” she enthuses. “I love it in the evenings, too, because the cars have lights inside.”

Donna is the one who suggested her husband, Gary, take his indoor hobby outdoors last summer. It’s a different take on the entire room of smaller, intricately laid out N scale models that were profiled in the March 2024 issue of The Journal.

Gary thought it would be time-consuming to add a larger O scale version outside, but it ended up taking just a month to put it all together.

“I assumed I’d have to run electrical wire,” he says, “but I started investigating and found another option called dead rail. The track isn’t electrified so it can stay outside all winter.”

Donna was inspired by a model train previously used in a landscaping display at the Cedar Valley Arboretum.

In fact, his 160’ of track got buried by about five feet of snow in January, but it only took a day or two to make a few repairs and level it out. The cars are another story, though; they’re not weather resistant. Once he left them out in the rain and discovered it takes a long time for them to dry out.

The four locomotives use lithium batteries and could run all day on a full charge. Gary bought all the cars used or damaged and rebuilt the insides; each has a 1” square Bluetooth decoder that tells the motors what to do. All the sounds – including the train whistle and track noise – come from the locomotives, not the track.

Train cars curve around the corner of the villa sunroom.

He controls it all using an app on his phone, BluNami from Train Control Systems. It launched last year, just in time for his project.

“This is a lot simpler and less time-consuming,” he admits. “I still like the N scale because it’s easier to work on. This does take up a lot of space.”

This sign and a model train greet visitors near the front door.