Building Structures for Your Garden Railway Paperback – July 30, 2010

Nicely illustrated, very informative. I wish it was twice the number of pages.

ok

This book had a large amount of information building scaled structures for a garden railway. It discusses tools that I did not even know existed such as pin nailers and mini power miter saws for attaching and cutting the construction components. ( I found a pin nailer at Harbor Freight but have not found a mini power miter saw yet.) Besides basic wood structures, working with plastics, styrofoam, precision board and epoxy putty is also discussed. For a beginner like me, this is just the book that I needed to begin my garden building career.

good reference

great resourses

Good general info.

This was a gift to a fellow modeler. He told me it useful for him and he liked it.Have no info from me since I do not have a copy.

Every so often, Kalmbach, publisher of Garden Railways magazine, mines its own resources by publishing a collection of previously published articles. Unless you've been subscribing to Garden Railways for 30-odd years, this is often the only way to get access to the "best of the best" in a handy format.Jack Verducci is a professional gardener, landscaper, and garden railroad designer/builder who has contributed countless articles on various subjects. This book collects Jack's best articles on building weather-worthy scale structures for garden railroads. As a collection, it is not linear - that is, it doesn't start with something easy and work its way up to something hard. Rather it provides an overview of a couple dozen different techniques for creating, enhancing, and maintaining miniature buildings in your garden - by the way, I love garden trains - but in years past, people used to put miniature houses in the gardens as decorations, and everything Jack has written applies to that as well. Not to mention buildings for indoor trains or holiday railroads.Jack's articles provide tips for working with plastic kits, "scale lumber" (wood strips), or sheets of plastic, or plywood, or styrofoam, or resin components you cast yourself. Depending on your creativity, aptitude, and preferences, you will probably find some articles useless and some others very helpful. That's okay, the next reader will like the ones you don't - there's no "one right way" to do this hobby.As a web writer, I admit that there are some good articles on the web that supplement Jack's work. But this collection is by far the best single collection of instructions, templates, suggestions, tips, and illustrations you're likely to come across in your lifetime. I rate it five stars, not because it couldn't have been better if Jack had started, say, from the "ground up," but because it's the best book on the subject you or I are likely to see in this lifetime. Those of you who rated this book lower - please tell me where to find a book that is more helpful on these subjects, and I'll gladly revise my rating.Best of luck with your own projects. - If you build anything using Jack's instructions, consider posting them on Amazon as "reader-contributed" photos.Paul Race - Chief Editor, Family Garden Trains