Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2022 i Garden Rail

In Garden Rail 290, I described how I created an imaginary mineral railway, on which I could run my equally-imaginary diesel conversion of a WW1 Baldwin 4-6-0 pannier tank loco. It uses the same layout as my 16mm scale Welsh Highland Railway (WHR), and even some of that lines’ structures. The ‘dieselised’ Baldwin was soon joined by models of real-life weird and wonderful internal combustion locos, which had emerged around the time of WW1, and I had quite a lot of fun building and operating them as an alternative to my strictly-to-prototype WHR stock. There was a bit of a snag, however. The layout is end-to-end, so eventually, all the loaded mineral wagons arrived at the transshipment sidings, while all the empties were back at the quarries. This didn’t bother…

Years ago, Bachmann sold a working tipper wagon in 45mm scale, and when Rannoch Sidings sent me its latest tipper wagon kit, I was very intrigued to have a go at it. Available either in 45mm or 32mm, and either with Binnie Engineering nylon wheels or, for £12 extra, slightly modi˜ ed Accucraft metal ones. Out of the box the kit was very well received with well over 100 parts in this mixed-media kit to assemble. Yet, thanks to the easy-to-follow instructional video on YouTube, this model was done and dusted, including the painting, in 14 hours. This was partly due to an acquisition of a new airbrush, which made painting the individual components quicker and easier, saving me a couple of hours at least. What’s in the kit? Well,…

When I saw a Mamod steam train set for sale in the Train Shop in Lichfield for £99.95p in 1979, I bought it straight away, after getting permission from my wife. After laying a more or less level track in the front garden, I had it running several times a week every summer until we moved to Knighton, Wales, in 2022. It then stayed in a box for 17 years because, living in a flat, I had nowhere to put track down. I did, however, have a fairly big allotment (about 40 lugs) and the northern end was unproductive due to the trees along the border, so the Mamod and its trucks were unpacked and, in November 2019, a patch was levelled, ready to put down a circle of track.…

Llanfair Garden Railway Show The Yorkshire Garden Railway Show For more garden railway photos, follow us on Instagram @garden_rail…

It took me 40 years, but I got there. It was when the first lockdown of 2020 started to drag, that I finally got around to building the railway I’d dreamed about since I was a kid, and, well, I suspect that over the next few years, quite a lot of articles in Garden Rail will start like this, so I’ll spare you the details. Let’s just say that my lightbulb moment came on 9th May, 2020, and the #TwitterSteamRally – the day that social media filled up with images of people running live steam in lockdown. And there I was, stuck at home, without even a whiff of steam oil to raise the spirits. If not now, then when? Circumstances could hardly have been better. They could also hardly…

When I started this project, I naively assumed all I had to do was bolt the parts together, and a working model would be the result. It seems there is more to building a working steam engine than that. There is a phrase I’ve read in many model engineering articles - “The chassis was run on air.” A pretty standard part of any build it seems, but not something that I’d ever imagined I would need to do. But I did. Running a locomotive chassis on air is a vital part of the build it turns out. This is how you discover if the valves are set properly, and if all the mechanical parts will actually do their jobs. And it’s easier to find this out before hot steam is…

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LOCOWORKS 16mm scale ‘Upnor Castle’ locomotive Locoworks has announced its first battery electric locomotive. As used on the Ffestiniog & Welsh Highland railway, they are producing the medium-sized 1954 F.C.Hibberd & Co. ‘Upnor Castle’. Specifications: 32/45mm adjustable gauge Insulated blackened wheels, running in roller bearings for ultra smooth operation Full radio control Working headlights Digital sound option All steel chassis, with detailed brass etched bodywork Full cab glazing and interior detail Optional inertia unit Fully painted including red pinstripe lining and cream cab Name and works plates fitted Onboard charging socket and smart charger included Dimensions: Length: 272mm Width: 95mm Height: 145mm Prices: Standard loco: £930 Sound option + £140 Inertia option +£40 Running boards for Roundhouse locomotives Also new from Locoworks, running boards are now available for Roundhouse Engineering’s…

At open days and shows, models of trams kept grabbing my attention for photographs. I had never really considered them as a railway item for my garden, but several of my friends have bought them and I was impressed by how good they looked. Perhaps it was their compact size and the fact you could run them on their own. The Donor My first challenge was to buy one at a reasonable price and then try and convert it to radio control. I also wanted the interior to look normal – as in not full of wires and batteries – and be able to carry passengers. I managed to buy one on eBay for a very reasonable £50. A bargain, and if the radio conversion failed, it was not too…

Like so much that happened in that Victorian technological hothouse, now known as the industrial revolution, no one person can be singled out to have made the breakthrough inventions that changed our world forever. In the six years between 1829 and 1836, we see Stevenson start to nail steam traction technology, Fox Talbot nailed the negative process for reproducible photographs, and by 1836, our favourite Ffestiniog railway was shipping slates to Porthmadog. Very quickly, photographers started to record these exciting subjects. There are probably only a few posed photographs of those early 2-2-2 singles. The railway owner will be posed in top hat and frock coat, the Chief Engineer in a bowler hat and well-cut suit, the railway employees in bling encrusted uniforms, and as for the engine drivers, they…

SHUNTERS TRUCK Thank you for the Article on the Jurassic Models Shunters Truck in the September issue. I would like to raise a few points. Firstly, and most importantly, the kit material is PLYWOOD, not MDF as stated! Secondly, I don’t have an eBay store, as stated in the resource box, but I do sometimes put kits on as availability, time and inclination permit. It’s best if people email me (mike.jurassic@btinternet.com), I’ll send them details of how to pay when kits are ready to despatch, bank transfer is preferred, but I can do other methods. The instructions/photos on a CD, this is a legacy thing, particularly as I didn’t have a printer at the time, and is an issue that I need to address. I am aware of the CD…