C.B.&Q. Garden Railroad

Link: http://www.kywd.com/bob

In 2005 the C.B.&Q. Garden Railroad participated in the annual tour of the North Texas Garden Railroad Club. On a very hot June afternoon, about 350 guests visited our backyard to enjoy the railroad. The following video was taken the week after the tour, but it essentially shows the railroad as our guests saw it.

Early in 2007, there was a lot of track work that needed to be done before trains could run. When the work was nearly done, railroad executives decided to inspect the work aboard a short Great Northern train.

When I was a kid on the farm, the Burlington ran a mixed train on the failing branch line that crossed the back of our Iowa farm. In the early 50’s the train was led by an aging Atlantic (or maybe it was something else… I don’t remember). By the time I really began to notice, it was a switcher. The train was almost always mixed, so a discarded old coach or combine was tacked on behind. In the spring, the Q would add an additional coach to accomodate school children taking end-of-school-year field trips. The train would turn on the wye in Washington (my home town) around noon, and then head back to Burlington, Iowa, tip-toeing through the corn fields and past the little farm towns. The tracks have been gone for almost 40 years now, but the following video helps me keep this memory from my childhod alive.

The following two videos were taken late in the summer of 2007. The flowers have matured, and we have finally finished the Gazebo.

On June 8, 2008, the North Texas Garden Railway Club met at our home for their regular monthly gathering. The following screnes show the trains that were running that day.