welcome to seilhac, in corrã¨ze, where a new railway garden just opened. american and european trains operate on 2 tracks built in the park of a house overlooking the city. today in aiguillages, we'll discover them and we'll get to know their creator. seilhac is right in the middle of corrã¨ze, south of limoges and near tulle and brive la gaillarde. that's where grã©goire portã© and his family decided to settle to live a new life. well actually, it's not completely new to grã©goire : he is the creator of the garden built in saint-didier, in the vaucluse and he's starting again here, with a new garden trains layout open to the public. here is the control room : everything works under analog control, so there are only lgb transformers. the only thing is that i set up digital decoders in each locomotive,
with a maximum and minimum speed set, as well as soft starts. gradual stops work with resistors set up at the entrance of depots. i wanted to make something really simple : everything works under electromechanical power, in case of a breakdown, we know exactly where the problem comes from. using computer is great indoors, but for an outdoor layout it's terrible, mechanical programming is great, but it requires way more work and one has to be an electronics engineer or a computer scientist, i didn't bother to do this, i used it in my other park and it was fine but i wanted to change and to control all the components of the park, so i was able to do everything myself. i'm going to start it, progressively : first, a part of the american trains that are up there are going to start,
i'm connecting it so it starts operating outdoors. it allows me to check everything before opening, and if there's a problem i can fix it before the public arrives. here is the roundtrips transformer, here is one of the 2 american lines, here is the second one, and here are the european trains that operate in the lower part of the park. they're independant, so if there's something wrong on one of the tracks, the rest still works. i have a power inverter that delivers stable current : in case of power failure, 10 minutes of autonomy remain to stop the trains or not, if it's just a short-term power failure, and at least i'm not bothered by trains brutally stopping and derailing, as there are very long trains. everything is automated, each layout has a kind of depot that is completely independant,
there's a system that detects switches and reed switches at the end of each section : a train gets in, moves the switch on the next track, the next train uses another track. at the entrance of each station, i put a reed switch, the former lgb transformers jumbo were great, with them one can set a temporization with gradual stops in stations and a slow restart. the amtrak entered santa seilhacruz station, here we're in seilhac, it makes people laugh, so it's going to start again, i just put a magnetic plate on the first wagon, you'll see the detector at the entrance of the station, so passenger trains stop at the station and freight trains keep running. i almost created the same visual aspect as the one i made in the other park with a 90 entrances program.
grã©goire learned from this previous experience and used his knowledge to built his new creation. it took me 9 months to make the first park, and 7 months to make this one. it was rather fast, i had to work a lot during 7 months, 7 days a week during 10 to 14 hours everyday. - why here, why in seilhac ? - because we moved from the vaucluse, we sold everything and we wanted to start something new, my wife who's a violin teacher and i : i had completed the park there, and i wanted to start something here. here, we're home, we've found this park, this house, right in the middle of the village, seilhac is a small town of 1,800 inhabitants, it's charming, and i was looking for a flat and treeless land, but in the end i got a very sloping land with many trees, some are a hundred years old.
it's an old park in front of the castle park, we have a beautiful view of the village, but maintening it is crazy. last year, we opened in october, leaves were starting to fall, and at the end of the all saints vacation we had to vacuum them for 3.30 hours every day before opening. thankfully, the falling leaves season isn't longer than a month, but still ! the garden covers more than 3,000 mâ². visitors follow a route that takes them from animations to animations from the upper part to the lower part, before going back up to their starting point, to go around again if they want to. several small layouts are to be discovered between the 2 main ones, some are even interactive : trains are waiting for the visitors' orders to start.
here, everything was made so as one can enjoy watching and playing with trains. it's a childhood dream, i had an ho track, i lived near the loire and my dream was to drill a hole through the walls and to get my trains to operate in the garden or in the fields that were in front of us, but my father never let me. here, i'm unwinding my imagination and creation, making this park is like painting, or rather i feel like i'm sculpting, it's a sculpture. i don't make plans, i just think of what i want to do and then i adapt it according to the land, i adapt it to the environment as it's not possible to just transpose an idea into nature, one has to observe it before and during works to create something harmonious. two different railway universes are offered during the visit.
the first layout one discovers when entering is the american one, i really love american trains, they sound like diesel engines and they're really long, and the second layout one can see when going downstairs was inspired by european trains. i didn't reproduce any model, any place that exists, everything is imaginary : i created about 70% of the models, and when i start one i draw a sketch on a paper or on a board, then i built it little by little. we arrived in corrã¨ze 2 years ago, we looked for a place for a year while renting, and during that year i also built layouts, a great part of them, and i built more this winter. those 7 months when i created the park were used to set up the structure, it used to be a jungle here,
the entrance of the park hadn't been maintained for years. i will not try to hide that i had times of doubt, i got scared because we sold everything, it took us a year to find the place, so money goes out and as it didn't come in anymore we had to restart something. although i was confident deep down, it was a scary moment. confidence came back when the park was opened to the public, last year, and then during spring. we opened for 20 days in october 2015, and we had 2,000 visitors, so we were happy, and since the beginning of april we should reach 2,000 visitors soon, in spite of the terrible weather we've had. and people come back, since the beginning of april several people have come 2 or 3 times :
first with their grandchildren, then without them, they take their time, they sit down, i've made lots of benches, i love wood. people tell me : "here, times doesn't exist, we can breathe and regenerate, we can dream", it's good to hear. i have no doubt for this park, it works, there's not reason it wouldn't. it's a tourist region but there are few things to visit, everything here is based on nature, and we're the only ones in the south-west, there are 3 others but in the south-east of france. some visitors are train enthusiats, but many have nothing to do with trains, and they like it here. to make it even more enjoyable, we've laid 1 km of line, 1 km of cables, we've set up almost 70 layouts,
there are more than 600 figurines, there are cars, roads, bridges, rivers, and 3,5000 dwarf plants : those species can reach 1,20 m, and i regularly prune them for the whole to stay coherent. i really enjoyed doing this, in this region there's more water than in the south-est, i really like dwarf maples so i enjoyed planting them, it's very colorful, now there are many colors that i love here. when the public arrives, i give them a list with about 60 figurines they have to find in the scenery, and children and adults all find everything before leaving. they don't want to leave as long as they haven't found the turtle, the marsupilamis .... it's fun and it creates bonds as people exchange information, it's like : "oh, so you've found the hare, what are you looking for ? the dupont ? i know where they are !"
it's very funny to watch. in his project, grã©goire didn't forget about children, he thought about the flame that can light when they discover how nice it is to play with trains. in his park, there are trains that we can only watch, and those we're allowed to touch. there are large tables made of brio wood that i set up under a shelter, and once children start playing with them they can't stop, they scream because they don't want to leave. there are places where i've made tracks with buttons, one just has to press them and trains start or stop, children love and it creates vocations for sure. here, children can play and touch, there's the scenery part that is made to watch,
and there's a part that is made to play and touch. children need it, it's part of their development, if they can't touch they either want to leave or they will mess around, and there are many things that could happen here ! but it's fine, despite gravel and small ropes, not one child ever threw a rock on the rails, of course i give instructions at the entrance, but it also shows there is respect for the work that has been done, many children come to me and say : "sir, what you've done is very beautiful, but you must have worked a lot !" and i say "yes indeed, i worked a lot". children are very sensitive to that, they see it and recognize it, many of them take a look at the pictures of the works, they see how the park used to be,
they see the backhoe loader, the wholes, the tons of ground that had to be moved with all the rocks. we had to move more than 150 tons of rocks with a wheelbarrow, it's a lot of work. now that the structure of the park is set, the hardest part has been done. the scenery, however, is constantly evolving. during summer i can't build anything, so i just think about what i'd like to do and during winter we make everything i imagined. when i built a model, i don't know where i'm going to put it, it finds its place and i adjust what's around it. i don't lack ideas, and there's still space left, so it changes little by little, every winter we close after all saints vacation, i only leave the rails and the plants outdoors,
i take the rest inside to restore it, as the sun's uv rays damage pigments, paint, frames, so i restore and make new things, all figurines have to be repainted, and the following year i create new scenes, so i change, people come back and discover new things, it's like nature is renewed ! we hope this is the beginning of a wonderful adventure. the park is opened everyday from april to the end of all saint vacation, for more information about the opening times and the access, you can visit their site : www.lespetitstrainsdeseilhac.com next week in aiguillages will be the last episode of season 8, and as promised we'll go back to mini-world lyon for the opening day of the theme park.
we'll see the first hours of opening to the public, after more than 3 years of works. aiguillages offers two new reports every week, either 'the aiguillonautes' images' or 'mondays video' at the beginning of the week, and a longer report every friday, about model making at the beginnning of the month, and about railway heritage or tourist train on the last friday of the month. to be sure not to miss any of the next episodes, subscribe to its youtube channel and to its newsletter, you'll find it on the site : www.aiguillages.eu you'll receive reports in your inbox every monday and friday. to help me offer you new reports from francophone europe every week, you can become a vip aiguillonaute:
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