Deck Stain on Garden Railroad Roadbed and Custom Truss Bridge

I spent much of the day yesterday working on our garden railroad again.  I stained all of the bare wood for two reasons...  first, bare wood looks unfinished but I wanted more of a finished look and next, the deck stain that I used will help to protect the wood from the elements.  I also primed the new truss bridge.  Right now it is primed black but I will probably finish it with a medium gray color and then weather it.

I plan to add some gravel to this front section of the railroad to be used as ballast.  In an effort to keep the gravel from inevitably falling off this elevated train station section, I needed to add some short guard rails along the edge of this decking to keep the gravel up where it belongs.  Once I had cut and installed all of these side rails, I was ready to do some staining.

There is a rather stark difference between the unstained wood in the above photo and the stained wood in the photo below...

I also primed the new truss bridge.  Next week I hope to get to toning down the black primer on this bridge with paint that is more of a middle gray.  I also plan to weather this bridge but I might add some additional details before I do any weathering.  Once it is weathered, I'll seal it with a matte spray sealer that also provides UV protection.  

And, a quick shot of my custom timber trestle bridge...

This little garden railroad is coming along nicely.  This all started with stumbling across and purchasing a used large scale steam train set for $40 about ten years ago.  At the time, the locomotive was sold to me as "not running" so I had planned to use this set as a large shelf display but, fortunately, I easily managed to get the locomotive running nicely enough to upgrade it so that is what I did a couple of months ago.  Like most of my projects, this little upgrade grew into something larger!

Here is a very short video...