Training Ground Couple Combines Passion For Trains And Gardening In Outdoor Rail Line

A railroad runs through Fred and Janice Weigold’s back yard.

Don’t feel sorry for them. The Valley couple built it there.

It took them five years. Now, they have bridges, ponds and waterfalls. Mountains, tunnels and 400 feet of track.

They’ve created a personal refuge in their small yard — one few of their neighbors know about. But passersby do probably wonder about the frequent train whistles.

“Neighbor kids will sometimes peek over (the fence),” Janice Weigold said.

But for the most part, the Possum Lake Railroad is their oasis.

The Weigolds are garden railroad builders. Fred is the conductor — that is, president — of the Inland Northwest Garden Railroad Society, a relatively new local group trying to promote the hobby.

It’s an activity that combines railroading, gardening, landscaping and miniatures. And it creates the additional challenge of dealing with Mother Nature through rain, snow, mud and dirt.

“The track has to be cleaned and polished once a week,” Janice Weigold said. Scattered logs and boulders — er, twigs and pebbles — must be cleared away.

In the winter, the hobby is most challenging.

To keep the trains running, Fred built a miniature snow plow and attached it to one of his engines.

Of course, it won’t work in severe storms.

“The snow has to be to scale,” he joked. “It’s like a little winter wonderland.”

The couple began laying track five years ago, before the Spokane area even had a garden railroad club. Fred was a retired contractor; Janice, a medical transcriptionist.

Then, in 1994, eight collectors formed the Inland Northwest Garden Railroad Society. The group has since grown to 27 members in Washington and Idaho. They meet once a month, coming from as far as Pullman, Bonners Ferry, Idaho and Coeur d’Alene.

The club has a handful of members from the Valley and hopes to attract more. Especially since Weigold is pulling up tracks and heading to the Boise area.

There, the couple plans to build an even larger outdoor railroad, on their six acres next to the Snake River.

“I’m already getting excited!” Janice said. “It’s an ongoing hobby.”

The Weigolds took up garden railroading in the Valley for a simple reason: Their house was small - too small for setting up a track inside.

But their yard was big enough. And most of it is now covered with track.

The track weaves through a rock garden planted with dwarf Alberta spruces, miniature roses and colorful purple, red and white thyme.

“The challenge is finding plants that won’t overpower (the miniatures),” Janice Weigold said.

The spruces are planted in the ground in pots, and their roots cut each year to keep them small. Weeding can’t be put off, she said. Otherwise, the renegade plants quickly grow taller than the miniature people who dot the railroad town.

Janice is the gardener and painter of miniature buildings. Fred takes care of the trains, the track and construction.

The railroad has become their child. Pictures of it, they admit, fill two photo albums.

They spend hours with it each day, maintaining it, changing it, expanding it. They add and build miniature figures and buildings. They buy new trains and alter old ones.

They use chalk to make a new train look weathered. They use paint to keep them looking new.

They fill in old ponds and create new waterfalls.

“It develops on its own,” Janice Weigold said. “It’s never finished.”

But it’s not all work.

A wooden bench allows the couple to spend lazy evenings watching the trains roll by. Magnets in the track activate the whistles. Birds wash themselves in the pond. A friendly male pheasant often drops in to sit on top of the rocks.

When Fred and Janice leave, the Valley will lose one of its best garden railroads, fellow club members said. The Weigolds plan to remove their 400 feet of track, pack up their trains and turn the garden railroad into a rock garden for whomever buys the home.

There’s always the remote chance that a fellow garden railroader will buy their small, two bedroom home, and save the Possum Lake.

But the Weigolds aren’t counting on it. The hobby still is too small, they said.

But they hope that will change.

“It’s about nature, working outside, working together,” Janice Weigold said. “It’s basically a labor of love.”

GET ON TRACK The Inland Northwest Garden Railroad Society meets on the third Saturday of each month, at varying locations. For information, write to Steve Hughes at P.O. Box 581, Otis Orchards, WA, 99027.