Baker and Grande Ronde Railroad

The third railroad I visited on this year's Rose City Garden Railway Society tour was the Baker and Grande Ronde Railroad. This is, quite simply, the best garden railroad I’ve seen in person up to now. This railroad was started in late 2003 and was featured in the April, 2013 issue of Garden Railways Magazine but has matured so much since then. If you have a subscription you can download the article here and see how much the plants and trees have grown.

An eastbound train crossing the last trestle before reaching LaGrande. It's coming down from the summit and had earlier crossed over the long trestle in the background.

The concept for this railroad is a line that ostensibly ran between Baker City and Ukiah in the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon in the 1880s. There are many small industries along the line, mostly related to timber and mining. It is a long point-to-point railroad with over 800 feet of track (that’s 3.6 scale miles) that gradually climbs about eight feet from the base to the summit. There are a few tunnels and many curved trestles along the route, the largest of which is about five feet above ground level. All the bridges and trestles are wood as that is what would have been used at the time.

When I first visited here last year I was totally wowed by the huge number of Alberta spruce which have been meticulously pruned to resemble mature conifers, and further up the slope the Alberta spruce give way to blue cypress. There are points along the line where the landscaping has been done so well that your sense of scale is tricked into believing you are in a forest.

This year I was amazed by the incredible ground covers that had established themselves in the more open areas, all of which seem to have magically come into bloom at the same time. The west end of the line has hardly any trees at all—just open area with ground cover plants on a hummocky terrain—and the effect is magnificent.

Keep in mind that all the railroad structures are wood and all this track is hand laid. That is, the rail has been attached by spikes to every wood tie by hand with little tiny spikes. Given the age of the railroad, these wood ties need to be replaced just like on a real railroad, and you can see in a few spots along the route where older ties have given way to newer ones.

And it's not just the railroad. The structures along the route were also all scratch built, as were most of the rolling stock and locomotives. Truly amazing.

A glimpse through the trees of of the LaGrande station.

Just wast of the station, a train is pulling up to the water tower.

The main street through Keg Springs. 

Across the creek from Keg Springs is a beautiful water powered mill. Of all the structures along the railroad, this mill, dam and mill pond were my favorite.

Here the railroad is passing over a creek on a curve before heading into a tunnel. Note how the left side of the bridge truss is held up using cribbing instead of a trestle bent because of the uneven terrain.

Another beautiful structure hidden in the trees. Maybe a stamp mill?

Sidings at Odell Summit.

This creek has two crossings, a through truss bridge for the railroad and a covered bridge for road traffic. 

An ore loading facility on a spur off the main track.

As the railroad rounds a hill, it is supported by a pair of truss bridges. There is a lot of variety in how the trestle structures were built.

Once again, it's easy to lose perspective of the scale. This environment looks so natural that the 1:24 scale trees in the foreground blend in with the 1:1 trees in the background.

Another view of the longest trestle, which features a truss bridge span near the center.

Even this smallest of bridges show an amazing amount of detail, like this small span over a dry creek bed. If you enlarge this photo you can see the spikes that were placed by hand.

The variety of colors and textures of the ground cover plants was amazing.

Another view of the same area from the reverse angle.

End of the line, at least for now, is a train shed and facilities at the town of Ukiah. As you can see in the photo there is still plenty of undeveloped land further on, so it's possible this layout might continue on in the future.