Hey / thanks so much. Your thoughts are very appreciated. It took us many years to create this layout!

@@dennissirrine how long did it take you to build this layout????

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Thanks so much for your kind remarks! They are very much appreciated.Dennis

Thanks for those wonderful comments - much appreciated Dan! Dennis

Thanks for those extremely kind comments! Those types of comments mean a lot to us - because there is so much work to keep this layout up and going. People have no idea how much time and money go into making this layout great. So again - thanks for your remarks!Dennis

Thanks for the kind remarks Tracy!

What outcome are you referring to?

@@greerengineering ie " grow old and die" unless there are heirs that preserve it.

You are welcome! It was a lot of work, but it was so much fun to play with all the trains on this great layout.

+TheSerpent753We have almost 6,000 feet of track

We had two full time employees who kept this layout looking like a million bucks. People have no idea the work and money it takes to keep something like this up and going!

+unifrax5 I am using signals from a company called South Bend Signals. There products are first rate and work fantastic outside or inside. And definitely use air for the switches! I have had air powered turnouts for 8 years now and not one problem. It's the only way to go. And a small layout can be just as interesting as a large one. It just depends on how creative you are. So Good Luck on what you do! If you need any questions answered e-mail me at ranchodetiarosa@cox.net and I will see if I can be of assistance.Dennis

+Dunbar SteelDragon Yes, we have an expansion planned. All we have to do is lay the sub-base, install the track, and finish the landscaping. We have been at this stage for over a year now and can't seem to get any further. I have been way too busy with my restaurants and family life.On the construction side of things - here is the problem - once I teach someone the correct way to build a G scale layout, they all say, "forget it!" The reason, because the correct way takes to long and costs to much. And no one wants to invest that much time and money into a G scale layout.Most G scale layouts are small. People want to put down the track and start running trains right away. They are not into it for the long haul. But the correct way to build G scale is the best way. When you build it right, it lasts a long - long time with no problems, and is lots of fun to run on!Dennis

+dennissirrine : I understand what you mean about no one wants to do stuff the correct way due to time and money. I see it all the time in the construction industry. They will drop 20-30k on a project; and rather than spend the extra 10k to do it correct and have that "wow, this is really nice" effect; and never have to fix anything later, they dont. They dont look at the big picture and down the road. All they see is that they are spending 20-30 thousand dollars. What they dont or cant realize is that by spending the extra 10k now, they wont have to spend another 20-30k in 10 years and go through the hassle of another construction project. My wife did this to me when we were first married and I had to teach her the hard way. We had a project that needed to be done. I wanted to do it right the first time and have it last. She said, "no we dont have the money. lets just do this so we can get going and get it done. " Well, about 10 years later, we had to redo the same project with the correct material. It cost me 4 times more than it would have from 10 years earlier. And I made her be out side in the summer sun working on it with me the whole time till it was done. I told her, if we had done it like this 10 years ago, we wouldnt be doing it again now and we would have saved nine thousand dollars. Boy was she really pissed, but she never challenged the logic after that. As far as the G scale trains, yep, people just want to plunck down track and mix and match stuff. Thats why probably 75- 80% of all the you tube vids of garden scale trains look like toys. Nobody wants to spend the time or money to make them look good. Ironically, a large percent of the Ho/N scale guys do spend a great deal of time and money to make layouts look as realistic as possible.

+Dunbar SteelDragon I was also in construction for 21 year, and what you said is dead right on! No one I built for wanted to do things the right way - everyone wanted something for nothing, and life doesn't work that way. You only get out what you put in. So if you cheap something out, it will come back to haunt you! Guaranteed! I am a perfectionist, and things have to be done the right away, or I don't want to even do them. So the homes I built, the restaurants I have, and the train layout I engineered, were all done the right way. And I am glad my personality is geared forwards the perfection side, because it makes me feel really good when everything is finished.Dennis

"As far as the G scale trains, yep, people just want to plunck down track and mix and match stuff. Thats why probably 75- 80% of all the you tube vids of garden scale trains look like toys. Nobody wants to spend the time or money to make them look good". I think thats a little off the mark. I would suggest that many of the "toy train videos" are because people DON'T have the time and certainly not the sort of money to make them look good like this.

So your saying they have the time to do a poor job; but they dont have the time to do it well? Sorry, I dont buy that. Thats a bs excuse. IF they have the time to do a crap job, they can certainly MAKE the time to do a good job.

Wow! - Really! I didn't know that. I have bee so busy as of late, that I have kind of sluffed off putting videos together. We shot a lot of video in February - March - and April - so we have a bunch of clips to show. I will start working on shows! Just didn't know there was a lot of people waiting for some stuff! Dennis

To quote Ale LGB "This is probably the biggest and the most well done G scale railroad I've ever seen. It's just amazing". Of course there are people waiting to see new footage.

Okay - we will start getting some really nice videos put together! Thanks for the encouragement Dennis

+NTCGRR M.C., when you pulled back from G, we all lost! What U going to do with that amazing bridge of yours?

+NTCGRR Why would you do that? You have such a great layout! And lots of people have enjoyed it over the years. Just scale back a little and make it more manageable, because it is so much fun watching those incredible G scale trains transverse your track!Dennis Sirrine

It takes 28 minutes to complete the entire mainline run - which makes running these trains very realistic

+Dunbar SteelDragon There is a guy in the Phoenix area who casts the rocks we use from molds he made from real rocks out in the desert. Once he has the molds ready, he pours this lightweight concrete mix into the molds, let's it set up for 24 hours, and these realistic rock panels are the by-product of that. He then takes these rock panels, cuts them into smaller pieces, and artistically muds them all together to form these beautiful rock formations. Then he grouts between each rock piece and uses different colors of paint to bring out the colors he wants to have. It's a pretty cool process. But you have to have some artistic ability to make these rock formations look realistic. If you don't have any artistic ability, the rock formation you create could look like a bunch of Dinosaur Poop!Once he did a few formations for us, I got the hang of it, and understood what you had to do. So I taught my workers how to do these rock formations. 90% of what you see in the videos was done by my guys. I have a video somewhere that goes through the process of making these rock formations. I will see if I can find it.Dennis

+dennissirrine : That would be great. Would love to see it.

Hi dennis. Did you happen to find the rock formation video?

It was located in Mesa, Arizona. But after living there for 22 years and raising 8 kids, we decided to down size our lives. So we sold our beautiful home, which included the layout / and moved to a smaller home. But the new owners didn't (or couldn't) keep it up!

+ecoRfan The locomotive has a QSI sound card in it.

Ok thanks

Unfortunately, we have never had any track plans designed or published. It is something I always wanted to do - but never got around to doing it. You can use Goggle Maps and get a pretty good view of our layout - but right now, that's the best we can do. Dennis

@@dennissirrine is it still there? It seems it has been dismanteled in the meantime :-(

Unfortunately / it is no more. Sorry!

It was located in Mesa, Arizona

@@dennissirrine I’m just curious, what happened to it?

Whatever locomotive sounds good to you Dennis

Essas flores você poderia me dar o nome delas? Vou plantar em meu jardim.lindas flores, você tem muito bom gosto. Parabéns.

Você não faz mais vídeos atualmente com esse modelo de câmera a frente da locomotiva mostrando os vários percursos diferentes que tem esse jardim lindo? Volte a fazer vídeos como há anos atrás.

+Wilhelm Leipzig You are correct - We have straightened that pole on two other occasions, and after being fixed, it starts to lean all over again. It's almost like we have a "Sink Hole" there or something. We will straighten it out a third time when we open back up in November.Dennis