Don Nute walked out his backdoor on a recent December morning
and stepped casually into Middle Earth.
"That's
a hobbit hole," he said, then as if to explain, "Like in the movie."
It is here in this fantasy land, Nute and his wife, Jane, run
their miniature electric trains. They are among a fast-growing
sector of train hobbyist known as garden railroaders. These are
railroads built in the outdoors on brass tracks able to withstand
the toil of Mother Nature.
And developing a scene to wrap around the tracks is a major part
of this model train hobby.
Nute decided on the Middle Earth theme, derived from J.R.R.
Tolkein's novel "The Hobbit," because he enjoys the books and the
movies. On one side of the layout is the village of Hobbiton with a
general store, a bakery, an inn, train station and water tower. A
focal point of the layout is a lake and a mountain, places that
would make any elf or dwarf happy. The Nutes call their backyard
island "Old Lake Town and Shire."
The Nutes even name their locomotives after characters in the
book, such as Gollum and Sam Gamgee, the latter a name he gave to a
locomotive that was a gift to him when he retired from the
philosophy department at the University of Georgia.
 |
| Jeff
Blake/Staff |
 A train motors past a hobbit's home in Don
and Jane Nute's train garden.
| |
They even have expert help with a few of their
characters.
"Our son-in-law designs and makes monsters out in L.A., so he
made some of our hobbits," Jane Nute said.
The Nutes have several locomotives and a control system with
which they can navigate the trains by remote control from the shade
of their backporch if they so choose. The trains are also about
twice the size of the typical Lionel electric train that one would
find in a home system.
"We have grandpas that bring their kids over to see this, and I
don't know who enjoys it the most, the grandpas or the kids," she
said.
Train gardening is a growing hobby and the Nutes are members of
the Georgia Garden Railway Society. They meet regularly, usually at
one of the member's homes. The Nutes hosted the meeting in October.
The Nutes actually became interested in the railroads due to
their interest in gardening. And the hobby blossomed into
cross-country traveling. They now visit locations across the United
States and Canada to see steam locomotives, which is their primary
interest in trains.
"We got into gardening about 15 years ago," Nute said, explaining
they began landscaping a yard that contained virtually nothing but
pine trees. But a few years ago, they went to a nursery in Atlanta
and saw a garden train.
"And we said we've got to have one of those in our garden," Nute
said. Later they visited the EPCOT Center in Florida and saw a more
extravagant layout.
"Disney knows how to do it," Jane Nute added.
 |
| Jeff
Blake/Staff |
| Don and Jane Nute sit near their garden
train.
| |
And in building their layout into a slice of Middle
Earth, they began looking for the right plants.
"We have to pick things that stay small or will trim to a good
size," she said. "This is a dwarf pomegranate. We found it once and
haven't been able to find it since. I need to propagate it so I can
give more to the other train people."
Jane Nute was complimentary about the way her husband is able to
take miniature structures, like a saw mill, and paint them so that
they look old and weathered. He also puts together kits of miniature
objects that fit with the layout's theme.
Don Nute said there are at least two other people in the Athens
area who are developing railroad gardens.
"You can get a locomotive with two or three cars, some track and
a power pack for around $200 to $300. Now that track can be used
only inside. It'll take $150 to $200 to get a brass track you can
put outside and leave outside," he said.
The layout for the train is equally important to the hobbyist.
 |
| Jeff
Blake/Staff |
| A train emerges from a tunnel in Don and
Jane Nute's garden train.
| |
"You can have a garden railroad or a railroad in your
garden," Jane Nute said, explaining they plan to extend the track
out from their Middle Earth layout to points further into the
backyard. "As we go around the back we won't worry about keeping
things to scale so it will be a train in our garden. But here, it's
a garden train. Everything is to scale."
The Nutes now like to travel to destinations where they can view
steam engine locomotives.
"Steam technology, I find fascinating," Don Nute said. "I've
learned an awful lot. There are places you can go and they will
teach you how to drive a steam engine. I think I'd like to do that
someday."
"When you ride them, they're noisy, gritty, sooty," his wife
added. "When we ride in the cab, we come off black, but it's so
exciting. That sound is exciting."
The Nutes are both originally from Maysville, Ky., a city located
on the Ohio River and founded in the 1780s, and the home of movie
star Nick Clooney and the singer Rosemary Clooney. Jane Nute is a
retired school teacher and her husband worked in the philosophy
department at UGA where he is a founding director of the Artificial
Intelligence Program. He now teaches part-time. They have a
daughter, Achsa Nute, a graduate of Cedar Shoals High School, who
with her husband, Chris Burdett, now lives in California.
Nute now has more time to spend on his hobby. He integrated a
digital command control into his system.
"You can have two engines on the track going different speeds or
whatever direction you want. Whereas in the old system, they had to
go in the same direction at the same speed," he said.
His wife enjoys the train and the new hobby it spawned.
"A whole new thing for us is to travel and ride trains," she
said.
• • •
Don Nute's Web site is www.lake townandshire.net He has more
photos on his layout and hundreds of photographs taken of trains
across the country and in Canada.
