Video Review: Outdoor Model Train Garden At The B & O Railroad Museum

Reviewed By John V. Smith

There's nothing quite like being able to see a Garden Scale model railroad layout, and this is definitely the place to see one. This was a lovely three and a half minute video of the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore. This video was shot on just a lovely day. The train layout is on a raised garden complete with real topiaries as landscaping!

We are able to see so many examples of model trains representing prototypes form several eras. The video opens with a diesel engine pulling a five car freight train, and then disappearing down the tracks as it crosses a bridge in the distance. As this train disappears, another one crosses the same bridge on parallel tracks, this time coming straight for us! It passes a railroad water tank before it rounds the curve. This one is a g scale model train, pulling a coal car, an oil car, and three grain cars for its rolling stock.

As the previous train disappears around a bend, yet another model train rolls past on a lower level, vanishing into a tunnel then emerging on the other side of a hill. Then the locomotive and its cars fade out of sight into a dual-track tunnel.

The video fades out and back in focused on a single car passenger tram vehicle as it skirts the outermost tracks, a massive wooden truss bridge in the background, spanning a huge valley in this model railroad dreamland. Then the passenger tram crosses model vertical lift bridge and disappears into the distance.

Then the viewer gets treated to a great slide show of the whole model railroad experience at the B&O Model Train Museum. In some ways, the slide show of the still photographs was more enjoyable than the video as we could hear some really nice guitar music in the background and not the voices of all the people going by at the museum. However, we would not have been able to hear the sound effects of the model trains had we not had the audio. Additionally, the still photos are much clearer on the details of the trains than the video was. So clear in fact that we can see the Baltimore And Ohio lettering on all of the model trains. We can even clearly see details of the mulch and ballast stone used on the model railroad tracks.

Some very impressive model trains can be seen in the stills of this g scale layout. For example, we see an old diesel engine pushing two flatbed cars, stacked hight with logs from a logging camp as it crosses the wooden truss bridge.

In another of the still photos, we can see a nice juxtaposition of a full size prototype diesel B&O engine in the background and then later a scale model of its counterpart!

The B&O garden scale layout represents a really well done model train layout! This video does a nice job of showcasing one of the layouts at the museum.