Garden railways winding through backyards all around Colorado reveal a cast of passionate characters.
There are the rivet counters who obsessively mirror details of big trains in tiny replica and those who delight in beads and baubles, artfully constructing trains that sparkle with glitter.
And then there are guys like Ron Keiser, a self-proclaimed scale nut.
“What I’m into is realistic. If you were a person this size, you’d fit right in,” he said of the Denver & Rio Grande locomotive that whistles through Animas Canyon, made miniature for his Arvada yard.
More than 1,000 backyard-train buffs will descend on Denver during the 25th National Garden Railway Convention, which starts today.
Most come from the United States, but hobbyists also will travel here from New Zealand, Austria, Australia, England, Canada and Germany.
“The last time we had it in Denver, we had a whole busload of Germans,” said Gordon Calahan, president of the Denver Garden Railroad Society, which has 200 members.
Calahan’s own garden railway, rolling through his Lakewood backyard, happens to be a slice of postwar Germany. There are Fachwerk timber- framed buildings, miniature fir trees and railway cars imported from Germany. There’s even a brothel.
“We’re just finishing the landscape,” he said. “Over 1,500 miniature annuals.”
This dual hobby — gardening and model railroads — attracts everyone from architects and paramedics to accountants, general contractors and teachers.
Denver lawyer D.A. Bertram spent countless hours creating a layout set in the American West, with miners and mine shafts and abundant landscaping. Woolly thyme and Irish moss have tiny leaves, perfect for small-scale shrubs.
Although Bertram has a degree in architecture, his layout has more plants than buildings.
“I’m an architect, so I should probably be building all kinds of different little houses and whatnot,” he said. “But I find having the trains running and doing that stuff more enjoyable than just seeing a village with a bunch of people stuck in there.”
The tweaking and tinkering is endless — building real stone walls and bridges, creating waterfalls and ponds, sculpting polymer-clay people.
Constant maintenance includes pulling weeds that grow between the tracks and derail trains.
And the hobby can be expensive.
A plastic engine costs $300 to $500. A brass or metal engine costs about $1,000, but can be priced as high as $3,000. Railroad cars cost about $450.
“Some people spend tens of thousands of dollars,” said Keiser, who works at Caboose Hobbies on South Broadway.
He spends 10 hours a week fine-tuning his layout, including an hour every morning.
His Rio Grande layout, circa 1940s, is featured in this month’s issue of “Narrow Gauge Quarterly,” and will be on the convention tours.
It’s a marvel of detail: a farmer in overalls with a parrot perched on his shoulder, a cemetery and stock pens filled with tiny cattle waiting for trains. The work never ends.
“What I’ll be doing for years is detail stuff,” he said.
“Newspapers blowing up against a building, posters on brick buildings.”
In this world, they do sweat the small stuff. It’s what makes a scene real.
“I’m concentrating on junk,” Keiser said. “I just asked a guy to send me a bag of reject mine parts, like old pulley wheels. I’m going to paint them rust, and throw them around my mine.”
Colleen O’Connor: 303-954-1083 or coconnor@denverpost.com
About the convention
The 2009 National Garden Railway Convention is in town today through Saturday at the Denver Marriott Tech Center Hotel.
Fifty vendors will sell the latest products, and there are clinics galore, covering topics from Garden Railroading 101 to landscaping and the basics of live steam engines. Particularly popular are bus tours to the garden railways hidden in the backyards of metro Denver and the mountains west of town.
The cost is $120 per family for access to all the clinics, vendors and garden railway tours.
On Saturday, the convention is open to the public, for a $5 ticket, so people can meet with local club members and vendors to learn more about trains that run in the garden.
For more info: .
