A Railfan’s dream wedding. Featuring a railway theme with model and real trains.

There were many great spots for wedding photos around the park for the families with trains and in the gardens. The restored business cars hosted the bridal party to relax before the reception, and a made a grand platform to enter from. The last couple of shots the feature mountain peak the day after, it was partially covered in clouds on wedding day.

The wedding reception was hosted in the roundhouse with the Royal Hudson Steam engine on one side and Vintage business cars on the other tracks framing the reception area. Great place for photos. The head table was in front of the Royal Hudson where I placed my Weaver Royal Hudson O scale model and Sunset CP heavy weight passenger cars on the head table. I have an old early sound system that has a Royal Hudson Steam engine whistle recording from the real train. This was placed under the head table with the button for the Bride to push to blow it.

The last couple of shots of the Rocky Mountaineer that sits in the railway museum shops rail yard between trips.

Beside the bar as requested by my daughter we featured the MTH Coors Silver Bullet train, with a poster of the train as seen in a Coors commercial. Unfortunately the computer board died and I could not run the sounds or open the freight car doors that looks really neat. I bypassed the dead computer board and wired the motor direct to the power pickups and powered it with a DC transformer. I could not get this to run on my preferred display track Supersnap track as the large wheel on the engine hit the LED’s on the power track, so had to use the Lionel Fastrack. I did have to rejoin the track a couple of times it does not stay snapped together tight, and there was noticeably loud track noise during the speeches though running at low speed. The Coors train was a real feature for guests and generated much discussion and ?’s on the model railway hobby.

The wedding cake was placed on a custom built foam mountain model train base. 4x5 feet to fit in a small station wagon or van, it was to be strong for future model train display use. I used some metal corner right angle glued, screwed and taped on to the edges of the base for support.  Foam board glue to glue each layer of foam and ran some old large nails through from one level to the next as I built it up to keep it tight together for future trips. A drywall knife to carve off the mountain shape one layer at a time. A coat of some old left over grey paint from the garage. I painted it with mix of white glue and water then used 20 bags of dried moss, a $1 a bag from the $1 store.  A mixture of commercial trees and some I made from wood skewers and plastic plant bits from the $1 store on various shapes, a coat of glue and sprinkle of ground foam and grass bits made for a good crop of cheap trees. Atlas 3 rail track on the bottom loop and Peco ON30 track for the top loop. I doubled up the power pickups. Ballast was from sifted non scent kitty litter, with a mixture of white glue and water to hold it tight. My daughter walked around the house picking out the model trains for the wedding. A Bachmann Shay with 3 log cars. The bottom loop featured Script Canadian Pacific cars, Lionel, MTH, Weaver and an MTH Caboose. I needed a matching steam engine that she picked and I re-lettered. A Lionel 0-8-0. As suggested on the forum the Mr. Clean Magic eraser worked well for rubbing off old lettering on the tender, a coat of Tamiya black and some box car CP decals, a clear coat and I had a matching engine.

The top part  of the mountain transition from trees to snowy mountain and the cake was another foam stack carved and sprayed with different colors darker sprayed up from the bottom lighter from the top down. A sprinkling of dark then light turf and glue water spray over top.  Small black nails hold on small bits of ground foam clumps. As requested by the bride the wedding cake was layers of chocolate cake with white icing. The icing carried down onto the foam base like a snowy mountain top transition to the trees. A figure set of mountain hikers was the cake topper.

A model vehicle similar to the wedding couple’s truck was featured on the base, I took photos of the license plate and stuck them on. Some Bear figures and logs around the mountain finished it off. The trains running around the wedding cake mountain were a real hit with the guests. They all speculated on how much of the cake mountain was edible.

Unique! Very fun!

Peter

This needs to be in the ogr magazine.This is fantastic

What a fantastic wedding theme. The best thing about this is that it was your daughter's wish.

How cool is that??????? Congrats to the new couple. Best wishes.

It clearly demonstrates that if you instill a love of trains in your kids, this will pay big dividends in the future. Congratulations to your Daughter and her new husband. The location for the wedding was spectacular.

That's really cool!  It looks like beautiful country outside as well.

--Greg

What an inspired concept!

I have two daughters (age 18 and 15)...hmmmmmm good ideas!

Great concept • For Wedding Theme

Congratulations

I think they won the Internet. That is seriously the coolest wedding I have ever seen.

Many years of happiness and trains to them! (I noticed the disc golf disc there, too. What, you didn't put any baskets on the layout? )

--Becky

Many tks for the comments all.

It was a wedding to remember.

The Frisbee was for many of the friends at the wedding were on the university team and the couple met through the team. They all played an ultimate Frisbee league.

Still unpacking have to wash/ clean the icing off the top section of the mountain.