This page is about maintenance of a garden railroad in your yard. In our short (3 months) experience in operating a G gauge garden railroad, we have encountered a few areas of periodic maintenance:
(1) Track cleaning -- We ended up with a mixture of stainless steel and brass track, with the preponderance being stainless steel. From the first few times running our Bachmann Mountaineer train on the 100' loop of track, we found that stainless steel is way better than brass outdoors. It is said that brass has better conductive properties than stainless but that stainless oxidizes less quickly. We didn't notice brass even having better conductive properties. We found that everytime we went out to run the train (about once/week) the locomotive would consistently falter or even stall on the brass portions and just as consistently would not falter or stall on the stainless portions. About every couple of weeks the stainless parts would accumulate enough tree sap, or splashed up debris from a rain that it would cause faltering and stuttering but it was easily wiped off with just fingers and even better with a soft cloth. The brass portions did not clean so easily because they had oxidation, not just debris. So we had to use "Brasso" to clean the brass sections. While we were at it, we usually used Brasso on the stainless sections too. So, we end up hand rubbing the entire loop of track about once per week with Brasso. I'm expecting that as the ballast gets settled it will splash less after a while and therefore reduce the required frequency of cleaning. We have also procured a drywall (sheetrock) sanding pole and screen for it to wipe the track. This seems to be a common method of periodic cleaning of in-place track.
(2) Locomotive Wheel Cleaning -- After about 8 hours of running your locomotive, it's going to accumulate gunk on the wheels. This is a combination of plastic from the plastic wheels on the train, tree sap, dust, and other assorted contaminates including squased ants that were crawling on your track. Just look at the underside of your loco occasionally to check for this. You won't be in doubt when it has gotten to the point of needing cleaning. The black build up will be clearly visible. I got the tip for cleaning this stuff from someone else on the internet. It's pretty easy to clean and gives you a little satisfaction from knowing that the locomotive will run smoother and be happier (can a locomotive be sad?). All this operation requires is some WD-40 and a paper towel. Everyone has those things, right? Spray WD-40 on a corner of the paper towel and rub the perimeter of the wheels with it. You can freely spin the pilot truck wheels and get to all sides of them with no problem. When it comes to the drive wheels of the locomotive though, it's a different story. You won't normally be able to hand turn these wheels. So, you need to either bring your train control to your cleaning area or, do like I have done and have a spare control and transformer on your workbench or work area. Touch the DC wires to a set of pilot truck wheels and turn the drive wheels about a quarter turn. Clean that quarter of all four drive wheels (in the case of a 4-6-0) and then turn the wheels again, clean again, etc. Continue until you have removed all the gunk from the contact surfaces of the wheels and they look nice and shiny. Voila! Your locomotive is now happy! : )
(3) Track Joints -- Again in our short experience we find that having good sound track joints is important. At first we had a couple of joints where the screws didn't seem to line up well so I had just left out a couple of screws, particularly at a joint between regular track and a rerailer section. The plastic base of the rerailer lifted the rail joiner up just slightly but enough to misalign the hole in the joiner with the screw hole in the track. I found that even though that was a stainless section of track, the train began to falter there after a few rounds. I'm thinking that the action of the train eventually moved the joint enough to break contact there. I bit the bullet and spent enough time lying on the ground to get the joiner lined up enough to get the screws in it. It did make a noticeable difference in the running of the train. So, it is important to get ALL the screws in. I also noticed that it is possible to tighten the screws too much. One joint or two I could tell that the screw had stripped out. It was still holding fairly tight so I left it. Eventually, I might have to cross the bridge of putting a slightly larger screw in the hole there or using the other type of rail joiner (clamp type). Keep the screws tight but don't get overzealous like I did. Anyhow, it is clear that good sound joints will all the screws in place does affect the electrical conductivity of the loop. I note here that I only have power connected to the track at one location on the 100' loop. Apparently some people provide power connections at multiple points to avoid voltage drop on sections further away from the power connection. I will likely face that issue when I expand my track on Phase II to a total length of about 160'. It's easy to add another connection point though.
(4) Building Cleanliness -- We found that rain splashes dirt, sap, and whatever else up onto everything. We placed a small concrete slab to serve as a base for our Arist-Craft 7206 Church building but lo, dirt (or concrete dust) somehow still splashed up on it. So, A periodic wiping with a rag or brush is obviously going to be necessary. One house we have (Aristo-Craft Farmhouse, yellow) has a base of sorts on it that protrudes about an inch or so out from the house. We thought this might also help prevent splash dirt but it gets way more splashed on it than the church. I suppose it is partly because the ground has been freshly disturbed. Perhaps it'll settle down and not splash so much later but I tend to doubt it. We figure to try a piece of artificial turf around it.
(5) Track Ballast -- Rain also settles the ballast. I expect that this occurs more significantly on a new route but probably will always be an issue to some extent, like it is on a real railroad. It's one thing to just add ballast where there is a void. If the grade of the track has not changed, just add ballast in the same manner that it was originally done. But we found in one instance that ballast settle so much in the areas where we had made embankments of the ballast material that it settled the track down up to two inches in one area. That aggravated the issue of grades. Our grades were already near maximum and a two inch settling of the track at the low point increased the grade above tolerable. I can vouch for the 4% maximum recommended grade. When our track settled it increased the grade in one area to about 5% and the train slipped trying to get up the grade. We had to raise the track back up and build up the base, then reapply ballast between the ties.
(6) Drainage -- Even though we planned for site drainage originally, when the rains came it identified some new areas that had drainage problems. I expect there will always be small washes here and there, just like the real world, that requires a little maintenance. If it is consitent and bad enough, you might have to install a drainage culvert in a new location or dig a small ditch or drainage swale. Yes, that word is "swale" not swell. It means a shallow ditch that is not really noticeable as a ditch, just a low point for water to drain to and out. Occasionally you are going to get a "gully washer" rain intensity that is going wash something out. That will just be a cost of having an outdoor railroad. Just suck it up, repair the washout and move on. : )
(7) Electrical & Equipment -- Please note that we don't leave our controls or our locomotives exposed to the rain. We bought a storage bench from WalMart and all our locomotives, train cars and electrical controls are kept there. We are still using the transformer and speed control that came with the Bachmann Mountaineer train set. It's working fine as long as we don't leave it out in the rain. We do leave the track connection in place. We just unplug from the Bachmann control, store it, then plug it back up when we are ready to run again. We have not yet gotten into DCC so the Bachmann control is all we need.