Long Island model railroad hobbyists build mini worlds in their backyards

Ray Shelton is a retired Nassau County Police officer, but he has been working on the railroad for 40 years.

Shelton’s Hicksville backyard is landscaped with bushes like a large, blooming prickly pear cactus and a waterfall. But that is just a backdrop to his primary passion: a sprawling garden railroad.

Not all model train lovers confine their layouts to their basements, spare rooms or garages. Some, like Shelton, 78, don’t have the space indoors.

So they operate G-scale, or garden-scale, trains, usually 1:22.5, with the distance between the rails about 1.75 inches.

These trains, about twice the size of the Lionel and American Flyer trains that many baby boomers grew up with, are designed to endure harsh outdoor conditions.

The hobbyists often intermingle their trains with floral arrangements like what you would see at the annual Holiday Train Show at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. Some skip the landscaping, running their trains with or without buildings and other scenery details on layouts raised off the ground to spare their knees and backs.

It is not clear how many garden railroads are tucked into Long Island backyards, but 63 of their creators and fans are members of the Long Island Garden Railway Society, formed by Shelton in the late 1980s. Its members trade tips and visit one another’s layouts.

While most of the club members are retired, there are a few younger hobbyists — the youngest is just 17 — noted David Morrison, 80, a retired Long Island Rail Road branch line manager and historian.

Morrison, of Plainview, had a 20-by-30-foot garden railroad that took up his entire backyard until a decade ago, when it became too hard to manage. He donated his trains in 2019 to the Oyster Bay Railroad Museum.

Although club members’ home railroads are private, they create and display temporary public layouts at Planting Fields Arboretum State Historic Park in Oyster Bay, Old Bethpage Village Restoration and the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Uniondale each year so nonmembers can see their handiwork.

“My thrill in garden railroading is watching the faces of kids from 1 to 101 who are totally amazed and shocked at what they’re looking at,” said club president George L. Stamatiades, 84, of Southampton.

Ray Shelton

For Shelton, it started when he got a set of LGB brand G-scale trains as a present to run around the Christmas tree in the late 1970s.

When he learned that hobbyists in Europe were running those trains outdoors, he said he expanded to a circle of track around a pond in the backyard.

“Of course, it’s grown over all the years,” he said.

Now his Cripple Creek Railroad, named for the Colorado mining town, has a single dogleg loop of track about 85 feet long. Its most impressive feature is the waterfall made last year by a friend to replace a pond that had been invaded by raccoons. There is also a working water mill, an airport with a large hangar built from scratch by a friend last year, farms, a church with a cemetery, campgrounds, a playground with swings and a miniature pond occupied by a duck and ducklings.
”It’s always changing, and that’s what makes it great,” said Shelton, who built a shed to house his trains and the transformers that power the layout. “The section by the little shed is going to become an industrial area and the section where the little houses and the church are located is going to be a small town. I come out and enjoy it and look at it and play with it, and I’m thinking about what the next step may be.”

Shelton, whose wife, Maggie, died in 2000, said she “had been 100% behind” his hobby “as long as it didn’t take over the whole backyard.” He said his three daughters — Jane, Jean and Joan — loved helping build the layout when they were growing up.

While he was modeling Cripple Creek, Shelton said, “back in the latter part of the ’80s, I started to realize there must be some folks here on the Island that are interested in garden railroads. So I put flyers in all of the hobby shops.”

About 20 train lovers showed up for their first meeting in the late 1980s, and the Long Island Garden Railway Society was officially launched in 1991.

Anthony Marino

Anthony Marino, of Levittown, a retired Nassau County deputy superintendent of buildings, eventually followed the advice of club members to build his layout at waist level.

Marino, 61, created a 40-by-18-foot layout with two main lines of track and sidings (side tracks to store trains) on one end of his backyard. It features several stations, houses under construction, a farm and several half-timber structures from a collection he bought. The farm and commercial buildings are named for family members.

“I got interested in trains when I was a little boy at my grandparents’ house, watching the High Line of the New York Central,” Marino recalled. He and his brother Joe used to create a window display with a Christmas tree and American Flyer trains at their father’s Kew Gardens TV repair shop.

As an adult, “in the back porch every year I would do a different setup for Christmas,” he said. “But I got sick and tired of setting them up and taking it down, and I saw a video on YouTube about garden railroading, so I decided to go that route.”

After he connected with the garden railway society, “I started a layout behind the garage on the ground, and I found it difficult getting on my knees with a locomotive that weighs 30 pounds. All of the older gentlemen in the club told me, ‘Don’t put it on the ground.’ So I decided to raise it” and start a new layout two years ago.

He named it the Marino Brothers Railroad in honor of Joe, who died last year and helped with the planning.

Like the other hobbyists, Marino concedes his layout will never be complete. “I want to extend the freight yard a little and make a switching station and a freight station. And then I want to make a second level that’s going to be a logging facility.”

Marino’s wife of 19 years, Susan, encourages his obsession. “I love it,” she said. “He did a beautiful job. It’s a great hobby. And the grandkids love the trains.”

Ed Assaf

Ed Assaf, a North Merrick resident who works in insurance, joined the garden railway society in 1997 and started building his layout two years later.

“It’s a raised bed, straight dog bone [shape] about 90 feet long, and at its widest point, it’s about 18 feet,” said Assaf, 71, who is a past president of the society. “I built the first section in about six weeks when I was in between clients in my former life as a management consultant. And then I added to it and added the remaining 60 feet or so over the course of about 2 1⁄2 years.”

While many of the club members, like Shelton, prioritize buildings and other scenery features at the expense of greenery, Assaf has taken a different track.

While the most notable features are two wooden trestles he built himself, “mine is mostly garden,” he said. “I have three or four buildings, and that’s it. I call it the Between Here and There Railway. It’s a stretch of track that goes through forested land.” 

Larry Kagan

Larry Kagan, an East Northport resident who owns a payroll and HR compliance company, has taken the track-over-scenery emphasis even further than Assaf. He has no buildings at all — just raised track on PVC pipes and cinder blocks. His only scenery is a 6-foot-tall metal rooster that lives inside a loop of track at one end of the layout near a shed that houses his trains. More interesting than the rooster is a siding that runs off that end of the track and through a dog door on the side of the shed so Kagan can put trains on the track inside the shed and push them out onto the main line.

“I started as a little boy, probably at the age of 6 or 7, with Lionel, and then my father got me interested in N-gauge,” said Kagan, 67. “I got interested again when I had my grandson, and I built an O-gauge Thomas [the Tank Engine] train on a shelf in his bedroom.”

His wife, Ellen, encouraged him to build a similar setup that runs along the top of the walls in their living room. “And then I learned that you can have trains outside in your backyard.” He found the Long Island club online and joined.

Kagan said he used a computer program to design a layout he liked and came up with a plan for about 350 feet of track. He paid a company to build it last year.

Then his friend Dave McConnell, a member of the garden railway society since 1991, suggested he add sidings and a turnaround to have more flexibility in running the trains.

Asked how she felt about her husband’s hobby, Ellen Kagan replied: “Well, initially I wanted a pool, but that didn’t work out. But I enjoy it. I actually like trains as well. And it keeps him out of trouble.”

As he finally began to use his layout this year, he said, “I keep learning and keep adding things.” He plans to add a section with buildings.

“You’re never done,” Kagan said. “It’s an addiction.”