# Live steam on Father's Day



## artfull dodger (Nov 19, 2016)

Since today is "my" day, I decided to enjoy some live steam operation on my raised outdoor railway. The weather was perfect, the high heat and humidity wont roll back in till Monday into Tuesday. Up first was my coal fired Riverdale Elke, which combines the Riverdale boiler with the time proven Billy chassis and body from Roundhouse Engineering. Ran him for about 2.5 hours total with two stops to drop the fire to clean out the grates. Part two is with my Roundhouse Billy gas fired live steamer, he has RC control and several upgrades from Roundhouse and lanterns from Regner. Part 3 is a twilight run after the layout's lighting has turned on for the night. All rolling stock is older LGB cars fitting with metal wheels from LGB. To me, the whole reason to have an outdoor garden railway is to run live steam, although I have been known to run the gas fired model on my inside loop around the living room during the winter time. That loop is up near the ceiling, so I have to be careful of the wet/oily steam from the chimney leaving a trail on the ceiling.


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## SF Gal (11 mo ago)

Thanks for sharing your day on the outdoor layout. Very interesting too that you can control the speed via RC controls.
Makes me want to engineer my own outside run!
Happy Fathers Day!


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## artfull dodger (Nov 19, 2016)

Thanks, glad you enjoyed. I can control both speed and direction. Eventually the coal fired Elke will also have RC control of speed, direction, whistle and the firebox door damper feature. I started out with a ground level layout, but the combination of nearly 50 year old knees and a tri color Beagle that likes to dig pushed me to rebuild the line as an elevated one and I am much happier with it. I have a nice bench I sit on to tend to my engines as they raise steam and a bar stool works for the other steaming location on the railway. Live steam is so satisfying to run. I do have a few engines, LGB, Kalamazoo and Aristocraft that are converted to onboard battery power. There is no track power on my railway.


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## Gramps (Feb 28, 2016)

Nice videos, thanks for posting. I had a G layout that I gave up on because it was mostly on the ground and track powered and I'm in my 70's. My yard actually sloped so a good portion of it was about 18" off the ground. I thought about converting to battery power using the Aristocraft covered gondola but decided to come back indoors on a shelf with HO. I did enjoy watching the trains run around the yard.


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## JeffHurl (Apr 22, 2021)

Very nice!!

A guy in our neighborhood would setup an outdoor train for Christmas. It just went around a tree in their front yard, but it was very cool! He stopped doing it when someone stole his train... track and all.


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## Gramps (Feb 28, 2016)

JeffHurl said:


> Very nice!!
> 
> A guy in our neighborhood would setup an outdoor train for Christmas. It just went around a tree in their front yard, but it was very cool! He stopped doing it when someone stole his train... track and all.


Proving once again that no good deed goes unpunished.


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## artfull dodger (Nov 19, 2016)

Yep, I would never do a set up in my front yard, to many sticky fingers in society today looking to make a quick buck. Mine is all in my secured back yard. And only the track, which is fastened down and the building remain outdoors. All the train cars and locomotives go back inside my house when I am not running trains


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## JeffHurl (Apr 22, 2021)

artfull dodger said:


> Yep, I would never do a set up in my front yard, to many sticky fingers in society today looking to make a quick buck. Mine is all in my secured back yard. And only the track, which is fastened down and the building remain outdoors. All the train cars and locomotives go back inside my house when I am not running trains


Not sure what scale he used. It was somewhere between HO and G. 2-rail, so could have been S or O, I guess. He had a really cool hand built trestle bridge that went about 1/3 the way around the tree. Thieves took all of it. It was right in a flower bed in their front yard. Probably only about a 4'-5' circle around decent sized shade tree.

I only met the guy once, and that was when I asked him why he wasn't putting the train out this particular season, which is when he told me someone stole it the year before.


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## artfull dodger (Nov 19, 2016)

Sadly, the devolution of society has made it where we cannot even enjoy things in our own yards without fear of theft. I had a ground level loop in the front yard for one year when we first moved here as there was zero shade in the back yard and total shade in the front yard. Now its the opposite, both front yard trees are gone, but I planted some fast growing ones in the back yard and the largest shades the whole railway now. But is far away enough from our pool that the pool is in the sun all day.


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